Westergaard was home at his town house in Ventura when his eyes opened in the dark.
Was it the alarm? he thought. No. By the faint glow on the barrel ceiling above, he knew that he’d just received a text on his work phone.
To his right on the bedside table beside his phone was an old-fashioned mechanical clock and he listened to it tick. He turned and looked out the big picture window beyond the table. There wasn’t any light in the sky over the water yet.
He turned left to his perfect blond wife. Elena always slept in the buff, and he reached out and softly laid a hand to her stunning bare back. He listened to her soft, measured breathing. Then he passed a finger down her spine and over to the valley upslope of her men’s magazine model hip and smiled.
He’d met her in Las Vegas a year before at a crazy casino bar where all the bottles were stacked two stories high up a kind of climbing wall. For hours he sat and drank glass after glass of wine, mesmerized by Elena and two other beautiful bartender girls in bikinis as they were hoisted up on climbing harnesses to get the bottles.
He’d only gone for the weekend to gamble with Maniscalco but two whirlwind weeks later, Elena had moved into his hotel room. It was two weeks after that that she’d told him she was pregnant.
After the announcement, that very night he found himself drunkenly standing at an altar. He’d been unable to contain his laughter as the Elvis preacher thanked him very much before he asked him if he had brought the ring.
He’d brought the ring all right, Westergaard thought, looking at the bulge of her belly. Bought the ring and bought the farm. Their kid was due in only a month and a half now.
A father, Westergaard thought, shaking his head.
He thought about his own father back on the farm outside Mutare in Zimbabwe that he’d bought them after being a lawyer in Sun City. He’d always thought him a simple fool, the serious way he’d pore over his planting schedules. Like an accountant over a spreadsheet.
But maybe not, Westergaard thought with a glance at his phone.
Why not cash it in like his father had done? he thought as he lay there. Get out of the city. Live simply. Maybe get a farm. Hell, with the money he had squirrelled away, they could do anything. Or nothing at all. They could get a trailer out in the country, have one of those cheap pools in the back. Watch the sunset from it. Watch his kid learn to swim.
His new American daughter, he thought, smiling.
He pretended he wanted a son, but he secretly wanted a daughter. He’d had three older sisters back in South Africa who’d always been so nice and kind and loving toward him.
Well, at least before the rebel soldiers came that New Year’s night when he was seventeen and raped and hacked them to death, then hung them up in the barn with barbed wire beside his mother and father.
If he hadn’t been away at Danie Theron Combat School at the time, he would have been up there with them himself.
Westergaard listened to his phone buzz again.
He put a hand to his bandaged ear.
The man they’d been up against in Denver was, like himself, quite obviously a professional. A dedicated professional.
He pictured the American. Pale and broad-shouldered and square-edged. A block of marble, he thought. A stumbling block. A life-sized Lego man who one messed with at the peril of their life.
What had the American said the next round was going to be? A Sunday church barbecue? He didn’t even want to know what that meant. And the authoritative way he had said it. Like he was really looking forward to it.
Did he really need that? Westergaard thought with another sigh.
He turned and stared at his wife’s belly, her perfect ass.
Wasn’t it time to hop off the gravy train with all his cash and prizes?
Westergaard lay between his pretty pregnant wife and his phone, thinking.
He touched his ear again.
One last time, he thought, and he leaned over and finally lifted up the phone.