SEEING THE YOUNG girl’s head move, Marsha quietly takes two steps back, the rear of the couch now blocking the girl’s view. Fine. Marsha hears a siren from outside and thinks, No, the plan, the plan is a good one, let’s stick with the plan.
She goes back into the kitchen, sees a wall-mounted phone, and in a few seconds, a surveillance device is placed within the handset.
Next?
The bedroom, for whatever pillow talk this old lady might share.
Marsha goes down the hallway, opens one door, sees a neat and well-made bed with stuffed animals on the colorful bedspread, a bookshelf made of concrete cinder blocks and rough wood planks packed with kids’ books, and there’s a sharp tug, for without the stuffed animals—her parents never had any money for toys—this could have been her bedroom, back there in desolate Wyoming.
She closes the door.
Stop thinking so much, she nags herself, and now, here’s the old woman’s bedroom.
Plain and simple.
Just like her.
That makes her smile. There’s a phone by the nightstand, and that’ll be a good place and she works quickly, another device deposited, and then she thinks, well, maybe behind the bureau.
Marsha walks to the bureau and freezes.
A muffled adult voice, coming from the kitchen: “Honey, I’m here!”
Damn it!
Marsha whirls around—there’s no television here, no home computer, hard to explain why she’s here and what she’s doing, and that damn Secret Service agent, already suspicious and wired up by what she’s been doing—
Marsha sincerely doubts she’s going to give Marsha a friendly hello and usher her out of the apartment.
Then—
A figure comes into the bedroom, and Marsha throws herself at the shape, thinking of her old training—overwhelming and sudden force will win, nine times out of ten—and there’s a struggle and Marsha’s right hand touches a heavy scarf and she works hard, getting a superior position, her strong arms and hands around the slim neck, and a hard twist and crunch and it’s over.
Marsha drops the body to the floor.
Time to leave.
She bursts out of the dark bedroom, races back down the hallway, heading to the lights of the kitchen, and the young girl is in front of her, screaming and screaming, and for the briefest second, Marsha wonders if she should take her down as well…
A split-second decision.
No, to eliminate her would raise too much of a ruckus.
Marsha slams the young girl aside as she bursts through the apartment door.
Marsha reverses course—never go out the way you came in—by taking a rear set of stairs and going out a fire door. In a minute she’s out on the street, calmly walking along and stripping off her Comcast clothing, dumping it in a storm drain, hearing the sirens get louder as she gets closer to her parked Odyssey minivan.
Earlier, back at the waterfalls, Marsha had been oh so eager to speak to Parker Hoyt.
Now, not so much.