Lucid Intervals (2010)

would have killed her, too.”
    Hackett picked up the half-empty bottle of wine and his glass. “Come on, let’s finish this on the porch; it’s such a lovely day.”
    Stone picked up his glass and followed him outside.
    “Oh,” Hackett said, “given the favorable course of events, we can return to New York tomorrow morning. I’ll fly back with you.”
    “Fine with me,” Stone said, taking a rocker and sipping his wine.
    Hackett walked to the porch railing and leaned against it, facing Stone.
    Stone looked past him out over the water. It was a perfectly windless day, so much so that the towering cumulus clouds were reflected on the water. The boats in the harbor floated with their mooring lines slack.
    Hackett took a sip of his wine. “Something I’d like you to know, Stone: except for that business about the Whitestone grave in the Somersville churchyard, I never lied to you about anything.”
    Stone was about to reply when there was a noise, a thud, and Hackett made a peculiar jerking motion. He looked down at his chest, surprised, where a hole the size of a golf ball had appeared, then he sank to his knees, dropping his wineglass, and fell forward onto his face. There was another hole, smaller and neater, in his back.
    Stone hit the deck, which was splattered with Hackett’s blood. He waited for more shots, but none came. He felt Hackett’s neck for a pulse, but there was nothing.
    With no wind, it was deathly quiet for a moment—then Stone heard an engine start in the distance and raised his head from the floor long enough to see a boat leaving the harbor, seemingly in no particular hurry.
    Stone clawed at his cell phone.

53
    F elicity was working in her temporary office on Sutton Place when her cell phone went off. “Excuse me,” she said to her agent, Smith, who sat across her desk with some files. “Yes?”
    “It’s Stone. Are you alone?”
    “No.”
    “Get away from whomever you’re with, right now,” he said.
    She took the phone away from her ear. “Smith, will you excuse me for a few minutes? I have a personal call to take.” She watched him until he had closed the door behind him and then went back to the phone. “What’s going on?” she asked.
    “I’m in Maine. Hackett is dead.”
    She was alarmed. “How?”
    “Bullet through the chest—sniper.”
    “Good God.”
    “Hackett told me that if they got Whitestone, they’d go after you, too.”
    “They?”
    “Palmer and Prior. Now listen to me very carefully.”
    “All right, I’m listening.”
    “Can you get out of your building without being seen?”
    “Probably,” she said.
    “Do you have any cash?”
    “A few hundred dollars and some pounds and euros.”
    “I want you to do exactly as I say,” he said.
    “Well, maybe. What do you want me to do?”
    “I want you to leave your building without being seen, find a cab and go directly to my house. Make sure you’re not being followed. You can’t trust your own people, so be careful.”
    “Why do you think I will be safe at your house?”
    “You probably won’t be for long. I want you to pack a bag and leave the house by the rear door. Walk across the common garden; you’ll find a corner exit to the street, one block over. Take a cab to Teterboro, to Jet Aviation, and take a seat in the pilot’s lounge, not the passenger lounge. I’ll have a man named Dan Phelan meet you there and bring you to me.”
    “Bring me where?”
    “To the place we went where you worried about landing.”
    “All right.”
    “Are you armed?”
    “I can be.”
    “Good. Also, go into my dressing room and find my safe, behind a picture.” He gave her the combination. “Bring me the little .45, an extra magazine and a box of cartridges.”
    “All right.”
    “Any questions?”
    “How long will we be there?”
    “Not long, I hope.”
    “I’m on my way,” she said. She hung up and buzzed her secretary. “Send Smith back in,” she said.
    Smith returned and took his seat. She spent ten minutes going through the remainder of the files and then sent him back to his own office with a task to perform. As soon as the door closed she got her coat, took a pistol from her desk drawer, put it into her handbag and left her office by a rear door that opened into a stairway. Moments later, she was in a cab, looking over her shoulder.
     
     
     
    STONE LOOKED FOR Dan Phelan’s number in his cell phone and then dialed it.
    “Phelan.”
    “Dan, it’s Stone Barrington. Where are