Blood risk

top-notch lawyers, bail bonds and an eventual dismissal of the charges on one ground or another.
        "Probably inside the house this early in the morning, this kind of weather," Harris whispered.
        "Of course," Tucker said.
        "As planned, then?"
        "As planned."
        Harris went first. He crouched so that he was only half his normal height, and he ran toward a line of shrubbery that ringed the inside of the circular driveway and provided a well-concealed vantage point from which they could safely gauge the presence of sentries at any of the front windows. For a moment there was the sound of his receding footsteps, soft, wet hissing as he disturbed the dewy grass. Then there was nothing at all. The fog swallowed him completely.
        "He'll be in place now," Tucker whispered.
        "Right," Shirillo said.
        The boy ran now, making even less noise than Harris had, bent even lower. The heavy fog opened up and swallowed him too, in one gulp, leaving Tucker completely alone.
        And alone, Tucker remembered the nightmare more vividly than ever: the shadows and the light, the reaching hand. He felt an itch between his shoulder blades, a dull cold ache of expectancy in the back of his neck.
        He rose and, crouching, ran to join the others.
        They lay on their stomachs behind the evenly trimmed hedge on the inside of the driveway fifty yards from the front doors of the mansion. Through breaks in the foliage they had a good view. The fog was not thick enough to shroud the house altogether at such a short distance, but it did dull the outlines of the roof and softened the joints between slabs of siding so that the place appeared to be made of a single piece of expertly carved alabaster. From their position they could see all the windows on the front of the house: four of them backed by dull yellow light, six of them perfectly dark on the first level; all ten windows on the second floor were dark.
        "Been watching," Harris said.
        "And?"
        "I don't think anyone's at the windows."
        "That's unlikely."
        "Just the same… Watch them and see."
        Five minutes later Shirillo said, "I don't see anyone, either."
        "Four windows are lighted," Tucker said.
        Harris said, "I didn't say there wasn't anyone inside there, awake. I just don't think there's anyone watching the windows. Probably that's because of the fog; they figure they wouldn't see much of anything even if there was something to see."
        In a few minutes Tucker was willing to agree that they were not being watched. If one of Baglio's men were standing at any of the front windows, on either floor, in a darkened room, he would most certainly be visible as a lighter gray blur against the deeper blackness of the room behind him. There was only half a moon, and the light from that was considerably diluted by the fog; still, a man's face positioned only inches from the glass ought to reflect enough light to stand out plainly to any knowledgeable observer. The lighted windows, of course, would have clearly revealed any posted guard; those windows were empty, the rooms beyond them apparently quiet and still.
        "Well?" Harris asked.
        Nerves. A case of nerves. After all, he was twenty-five years in this business, with two tours of a federal prison already behind him. He was too old and had weathered too much to risk getting shot down by a Mafia gunman in the pursuit of something as quixotic as tonight's goal; they would bury him above the house, in the woods, where his body would decompose, the component minerals washing down the slope to fertilize a hood's landscaped estate. In the grave, the only things that would survive the flesh were his bones-and the vinyl windbreaker with its alligator insignia. So Harris had a case of nerves. Of course, everyone had nerves; that definition of his condition was imprecise. Still, one day Tucker would be the same as Harris, tensed to the breaking point, promising himself he would retire, taking that "one last job" over and over again, until his case of nerves led to one final misjudgment.
        No. It would not be that way for Tucker, because he would have his inheritance by then. His father would be dead, his problems solved. It was, he thought, a sad way to have to live: waiting for your father to croak.
        Tucker studied the house one last time to make sure he knew what he was doing. All four of the