Page 83 of The Children of Eve

But you managed to hit Harriet without any trouble, didn’t you? Right through the old ticker, no doubt there. Bull’s-eye, sir. Pick a prize from the top shelf.

“Fuck you,” said Hul aloud.

The torment came suddenly, starting at his back, worming its way through his insides, and exploding in a crescendo by his left breast. He felt something hard and sharp being withdrawn from his body, and then Hul Swisher was falling. He landed facedown and tried to raise the Colt, but his arm wouldn’t respond and he couldn’t feel his legs.

The gun was kicked from his hand before he was pushed onto his back, the pain of it causing Hul to shriek. He was staring up at a woman, and the moonlight caught the weapon in her hand. It was a bronze tumi, an ornamental Chimu dagger, but unlike any in the Swishers’ collection. This one was twin-bladed: the first blade six inches long, stiletto-thin, and currently wet with Hul’s blood, and the second semicircular and very sharp. The blades were connected by the effigy of a high priest, which served as the hilt. Under better circumstances, Hul might have been tempted to make an offer for it.

The woman moved to straddle him, her knees pinning his arms to the floor. With the tumi’s curved blade, she sliced through Hul’s pajama top and the layers of skin beneath. He was dying. He could feel it. He willed it to come quickly, before the woman commenced her labors in earnest. But it didn’t, and Hul Swisher was still alive when her fingers touched his heart.

CHAPTERLIX

Clemmie Dolfe joined her father in the kitchen, where he was brewing mint tea to help him sleep. Alcohol might have done the trick better, but Donnie Ray Dolfe had never been a drinker. He’d seen the damage caused to generations of his family by alcohol and had resolved not to perpetuate it.

“I’m not getting an answer from either of the Swishers,” said Clemmie.

“It’s late. Maybe they don’t answer their phones past a certain hour so long as they’re together.”

“Should I send one of our people over?”

Donnie Ray tasted his tea and worked through various options and outcomes. He’d killed people—fewer than rumor had it but more than many knew—and it was draining, even without inflicting the kind of additional suffering Emmett Lucas had endured. Whoever dispatched him must have been tired out after; they wouldn’t be human otherwise. Nobody went around murdering folk that way on a nightly basis. It got to resemble hard work.

Also, Clemmie was right: Lucas’s body had been left as a message, an ultimatum just short of dumping the remains on Donnie Ray’s doorstep. Somewhere, Blas Urrea’s agents were waiting to see how he wouldrespond, hoping the murder would induce him to hand over his prize without a fight. If they were watching the Dolfes, sending a search party to the Swisher house would only lead them to the children.

“I find it’s always best to sleep on a problem,” said Donnie Ray. “Let’s wait until morning, see what the dawn brings.”

CHAPTERLX

Seeley made the call from the Swishers’ back porch, and within minutes a van was pulling into the Swishers’ yard. Seeley and the driver, Harry Acrement, were old associates. The two men had familiarized themselves with the storage equipment, but this was the first opportunity they’d had to put that knowledge to use. The cases were lighter than anticipated, as the children didn’t weigh very much. La Señora shadowed them every step of the way: from the basement to the van with the boy, then again with the girl, all the time whispering to them in a language unknown to Seeley, though he didn’t have to understand it to know what she was saying.

“You’re safe now. I’m here.”

AFTER THE VAN WASloaded, now carrying two children in addition to a pair of mutilated human hearts in Ziploc bags, Seeley returned to the Marauder, la Señora beside him. He was tired but could get by on a few hours of sleep, and la Señora’s work wasn’t yet done. Also, it made sense to finish this part before Donnie Ray Dolfe became aware that the children had been seized.

They drove for twenty minutes—giving a wide berth to the roads around the barn, which were crawling with police—and arrived at apoint a mile northeast of the Dolfe house. La Señora got out of the car, the tumi wrapped in an oilcloth, and started walking. Seeley lowered his seatback and prepared to close his eyes. Should the police stop to investigate, he was a businessman taking a nap to avoid crashing from tiredness, his car filled only with religious publications. If the Dolfes came knocking, he’d bluff them. If that didn’t work, he’d kill them.

Seeley tried to descry the woman, but she was already lost from sight.

Seeley dozed.

HE WAS WOKEN BYa tapping at the glass. Beneath his coat, his right hand rested on the butt of a Heckler & Koch .45. Seeley rarely had cause to use a gun; when he did, he liked to be sure that whatever he hit was, unlike Christ, destined not to rise again. In addition, the H&K had suppressor-height factory sights, making it an ideal weapon to be fitted with a can, as now. If there was anything better than killing someone quickly, it was killing them quickly and quietly.

But he had no need of the gun, because it was la Señora returned. Even in the gloom, Seeley could see that her mouth was stained. He unlocked the door to admit her. In her left hand she carried one of the ever-useful Ziploc bags, this one containing a chunk of flesh. The heart, Seeley noted, appeared to have been gnawed, and the Marauder’s interior light revealed that the smudging on la Señora’s face was dark red. Seeley handed her a wet wipe and invited her to use the rearview mirror to clean herself. What was left of the heart he placed in a cooler box behind the passenger seat.

“How many did you have to kill?” he asked.

“Only him.”

Seeley was impressed. The Dolfes would have been on high alert after what had been done to Lucas, yet the woman had managed to enter and exit the house unseen, killing Donnie Ray Dolfe in the interim and extracting his heart. On the downside, they were leaving a chain ofcorpses in different states linked by the excision of an organ, and were about to add more to the tally. It wouldn’t just be Devin Vaughn and his associates trying to track them, or the police either, because the feds would soon become involved. It was too late to do anything about the remains of Emmett Lucas and Donnie Ray Dolfe, but Seeley decided it might still be wise to throw some smoke across the trail, both literally and metaphorically.

“We have to revisit the Swisher property,” he told the woman.

“Why?”

Seeley started the car.

“I want to burn their bodies.”

CHAPTERLXI

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