Niceville

to pull away when Mavis put her hand on his forearm.
    “Nick, while you’re up there, mind you mind the mirrors.”
    “Mind the mirrors?”
    A troubled expression moved across her open, friendly features while she worked at an answer.
    “Well, I—we—Dale and me both—we sort of … 
saw
things, in the mirrors. Dale saw a pretty girl in a green sundress, holding a big old coon cat. I mean, he sees her reflection in a mirror, but when he looks around, there’s nothing behind him.”
    “
You
see anything, Mavis?”
    Mavis lost her easy manner.
    “Yeah. Doesn’t matter what I thought I saw. Some stupid thing out of my own damn brain. Nothing I care to get into here. Maybe over a beer. What I think, the house is full of cut glass, crystal, big shiny windows, mirrors and metal and polished things everywhere, like it’s theinside of a rose vase, sort of, or like maybe one of those
collide-oh-scope
thingys, so when you move around the house you think you’re seeing things out of the corner of your eye, but when you look, nothing is there. So, like I said, don’t let the mirrors spook you.”
    “That’s not quite what you said, Mavis.”
    She was silent for a moment, patted his forearm and straightened up.
    “No, I guess it isn’t. I’m at home tonight, after six. Call if you feel like talking.”
    “You think I will?”
    Mavis shrugged, gave him another forearm pat. Nick looked up at her for a moment, and then he eased the accelerator down and they rolled up the long curved drive towards the big house, parking the car in a turnout paved in red brick in front of a separate three-door garage. Nick put the cruiser in next to a large antique Packard in official Florida colors.
    Both men climbed out, feeling the light mist of rain that was sifting down through the shredding clouds, here and there a patch of clear blue showing. The front lawn smelled of grass cuttings and the gardens were lush and wet, a riot of magnolias and bougainvillea and Japanese maples.
    Beau tried the door on the Packard, popped the latch, and leaned into the interior, basically poking around inside to see what there was to see.
    Nick left him to it and walked across the drive towards the stairs that led up to the big curved front porch, floored in strips of painted wood, set out here and there with graceful bentwood chairs.
    The door to the house was wide open, showing a lush Persian-patterned carpet that led away into the interior hall, a passage gleaming with polished wood and jeweled light from Art Nouveau shades and sconces along the wall.
    The main hall took a straight shot past what looked like a door into a huge bandbox on his right and another door opened onto a book-lined reading room on his left, running all the way to a large white-painted kitchen at the back of the house, a distance of maybe sixty feet.
    He stopped at the front door, listening to the house creak and groan and pop as the day’s heat warmed its old wooden bones.
    He looked up at the corner above the entry and saw a small camerafixed on a swivel, its red light a tiny ruby dot in the blue shadows under the porch roof. A surveillance camera, he realized, making a note to check for video.
    When he looked back down into the hallway there was a dark figure at the far end of the hall, silhouetted in the light from the kitchen. His breath stopped dead, a flood of glacier ice poured down his spine, and his heart began to thrum in his chest like a feathering prop.
    He blinked, but the image remained, a tall black figure, completely covered from head to foot in shapeless black robes, faceless and dead still.
    A Muslim woman, in a black burka.
    In a flash of white light his skin went numb and his revolver was in his hand before he had the thought—Beau, seeing the sudden flash of movement, came up the steps behind him, soft and quick, his own pistol out—Nick was aiming the Colt down the long dark hall at the still, black shape, his chest pounding and his throat aching and tight.
    Beau was at his side, his weapon also aimed down the long hall.
    “What is it?” he asked in a low whisper.
    “The woman in black, at the end of the hall,” said Nick, in a choked-off voice, more of a snarl, and as tight as a drumhead, “If she twitches, put two in her head.
Not
in the body. In her head.”
    Beau, trying to see what Nick had seen first, not sure what the hell was going on but seeing only a vague black shape shimmering there, followed as Nick moved quickly forward,