RainStorm

so, avoiding the possibility that the toilet might still be
    running when Crawley came in and alert him to the presence of an
    intruder. Failing to flush would be unacceptable for similar reasons.
    At eight o'clock, just after one of these quick trips to the bathroom,
    I heard the sound of a key in the lock. I got up noiselessly
    and moved to the closet. I held the door open a crack and turned
    off the light, the stun gun ready in my right hand.
    A moment later I heard the apartment door open. The lights went
    on. Soft footfalls on the carpet. There he was, moving past me. Noting
    the curly, wheat-blond hair, the thin features I had seen in the
    photos Dox had taken, I watched him walk into the living room. He
    tossed the mail on the coffee table. I smiled. Call me psychic.
    He shrugged out of an olive trench coat, grabbed a magazine,
    and made his way past me again, toward the bedroom. A minute
    passed, then another. And another.
    He was taking longer to return to my position than I had expected.
    Then I realized: he was on the can, probably reading the
    magazine. I had planned to wait until he was back in the living
    room, but this was too good an opportunity to pass up. I picked up
    the spare sheet plastic and the duct tape and moved out of the closet.
    I eased inside the bedroom and stood just outside the open door
    of the bathroom. I saw the trench coat, a suit, a dress shirt, and a tie
    on the bed. I set the plastic and duct tape down on the carpeting.
    Another minute went by. I heard him stand up. The toilet
    flushed. I held the stun gun in my right hand at waist level, my
    thumb on the trigger. I breathed shallowly through my mouth.
    I heard footsteps on the tile, then saw his profile as he emerged
    from the bathroom, wearing only a -white tee-shirt and matching
    boxer shorts. I stepped in. His head started to swivel toward me and
    his body flinched back in surprise and alarm. I jammed the unit
    against his midsection and depressed the trigger. His teeth clacked
    shut and he jerked back into the doorjamb.
    After four or five seconds, enough time to ensure that his central
    nervous system was adequately scrambled, I released the trigger
    and eased him down to the floor. He was grunting the way someone
    does when he's taken a solid shot to the solar plexus. His eyes
    were blinking rapidly.
    I laid the plastic out on the floor and rolled him onto it. I placed
    his arms at his sides, then I -wrapped the plastic around his body and
    secured it with duct tape, first at wrist level, then the ankles. He
    started to recover, so I zapped him again with the stun gun. By the
    time the effects were wearing off for the second time, I had him
    pretty well mummified in plastic and duct tape. Other than his
    head and toes, he was immobilized.
    I grabbed a pillow off the bed and propped it under the base of
    his skull so he could see me better. Also so that, if he started thrashing,
    he wouldn't bruise the back of his head. My concern had less
    to do with consideration for him than it did with -what might show
    up in a forensic examination.
    I squatted down next to him and watched his eyes. First, they
    blinked and rolled. Second, they steadied and regained focus. Finally,
    they bulged in terrified recognition. He tried to move, and,
    when he found he couldn't, he began to hyperventilate.
    "Calm down," I said to him, my voice low and reassuring. "I'm
    not going to hurt you." Which I supposed was the literal truth, after
    a fashion.
    The hyperventilating went on. "Then . . . then why have you
    tied me up?" he panted.
    Not an unfair question. I decided to level with him, at least
    partly. "You're right," I told him. "Let me amend what I said. I'm
    not going to hurt you, if you tell me what I want to know."
    He swallowed hard and nodded. His eyes were still wide with
    terror, but I could see he was making an effort to pull himself together.
    "Okay," he said. "All right."
    I paused to give him a moment to more fully appreciate his new
    reality. This guy was obviously no hard case. Sure, he was Agency,
    but the college-boy type, not one of the paramilitaries. The last violence
    he'd seen firsthand had probably been on the grade-school
    playground. And now, suddenly, he was tied up and helpless, with
    a known killer squatting next to him, looking at him like he was a
    frog about to be dissected. Of course he was terrified. And that was
    good. If I managed his terror correctly, there was a reasonable
    chance that he would tell me