Chapter 46

 

 

When the buzzing from the front doorbell sounded in Zeya Hogmyre’s house, he glanced across the living room to the grandfather clock. Eleven pm. On a Tuesday night, maybe even too late for a lover.

Because his suspicions had intensified over the last forty-eight hours, he contemplated quietly taking a seat and pretending not to be home. But he’d come to the crossroads, he’d initiated the offensive—he needed to check the security monitors.

Before he did so, he quietly padded barefoot across the polished floorboards into the hallway, reached under a settee and withdrew a recent black-market purchase, a can of mace and a lead tipped blackjack. The entrance buzzer rattled again. It quickened his pace towards the study and the monitors.

The moment he peeked at the screens his gaze sharpened. Surely a joke—a convincing one. Nearly as if the monitor screened old footage of himself standing on the patio, ready to enter the house.

Outside, the Asian guy pushed the door button. Inside, the buzzing vibrated up Zeya’s spine. He studied the image, and tried to pick the puzzle to pieces. The visitor happened to look straight at the camera. Zeya zoomed in. Unmistakable, inconceivable. No one could pull off a prank this real, this elaborate. But there he stood outside the front door, a drawn, cheaply dressed double of himself wearing sandals, cotton trousers and a T-shirt, baseball cap in one hand, carry-on suitcase in the other. And the camera round the neck—it looked wildly out of place. And wildly out of date. And what did the furtive glances reveal? Worry?

The guy on the landing turned to leave, forcing Zeya to shelve any ideas of threat and fly down the hallway. Blackjack tucked into his trousers, a hand clamped round the mace, he slid the deadbolt back and peered past the safety chain.

Flesh and blood speaks its own language. And for the first time in his life Zeya understood it, a physical connection from gazing into another human being’s eyes, a stare more captivating than a lover’s look, an overriding sense and knowing that, now, nothing was missing.