The Breach - Ghost Country - Deep Sky

first passengers. He paused briefly at the door to the plane, where a stewardess blocked the way. She glanced through him down the jetway, saw nobody coming just yet, and ducked back in to speak to one of her coworkers. Karl slid past her and went to the back of the plane.
    On a 737, depending on its configuration, the best place to ride out the flight was almost always the aft concession storage. The tiny room was empty for much of the flight, and even when a crew member came in to take or return a cart, evasion was a simple matter of ducking into the nook beside the ice bin.
    Getting off the plane, of course, would be even easier than getting on.
    Karl sat at the edge of the shade, five feet from the naked girl sunning herself by the pool.
    By far the most interesting aspect of wearing the suit was the ability to study people when they thought they were alone. Until the first time he’d found himself in that position, it had never occurred to him what a unique perspective it could be. Ordinarily, you could never be with someone who was alone, simply by definition. You could set up a hidden camera, but it wasn’t the same as being there.
    Nobody ever showed outward signs of anxiety when by themselves. No one ever fidgeted, or blushed, or moved awkwardly. What a strange thing to find: everybody was cool when there was no one around to judge them.
    The girl was twenty-three and heartbreakingly beautiful. Olive skin. No tan lines. Deep brown eyes and sun-faded hair. She was five-foot-two and probably not a hundred pounds soaking wet. Five minutes ago she had in fact been soaking wet. Karl had watched her remove her clothes and dive into the pool. Now the Caribbean sun had almost completely dried her. He watched the last little collection of moisture droplets evaporate from her skin in the dry heat.
    Her name was Lauren Cook. Karl had learned that fact along with everything else he’d learned about her father, Ellis Cook.
    Lauren had the house to herself at the moment, all fifteen thousand square feet of it, overlooking Bodden Bay and the wide, blue Caribbean to the south. There were security personnel, of course, manning the entrances and ready to storm the place at the first cry for help. They were American, and professional; Karl had taken a close look at each of them and concluded that they were ex-something impressive, a hell of a lot more impressive than cops. The house’s fortifications were rounded out with thermal cameras and motion detectors, all of which might as well have been hollow decoys where Karl was concerned.
    A yellow cabbage butterfly landed on Lauren’s thigh. She flinched and waved her hand at it, then saw what it was and smiled, watching it corkscrew away. It flew behind Karl and, by chance, dragged Lauren’s line of sight directly to meet his eyes for just a heartbeat. He felt a chill pass through him, meeting her innocent gaze. Then she sank back into her lounger and closed her eyes again.
    Beyond her, the two-story house more than filled Karl’s frame of vision, extending seventy feet both to his left and right. Several of the second floor windows were open above the balcony, which was easy to climb to. Karl had already done so, had already walked the rooms of the house, inspected cabinets and drawers in Ellis’s bedroom, and formed his plan. It was very straightforward, no room for mistakes. Don’t fuck around.
    A few minutes later Lauren rose, gathered her clothes and went inside, locking the patio door behind her. Karl went to the poolside rail and gazed down at the manicured lawns, and the yachts riding at anchor in the harbor beyond. He felt bad for the girl; she didn’t deserve what was coming. Though he had yet to see her interact with another soul, she had kind features and was probably a nice kid.
    Well, it wasn’t a nice world.
    Twilight over the bay. Haze had rolled in during the afternoon, and now the horizon was a blur between pink water and purple sky. Only the brightest stars shone through.
    Karl watched Ellis enter the bedroom. The man walked past all three sets of balcony doors, wide open to the sea, without shooting so much as a glance through them. Why live here, then, Karl wondered.
    Ellis went to his computer, switched it on, and paced while it powered up.
    At the back corner of the desk were two framed photos: Lauren, and Ellis’s wife. Karl had seen no evidence of the wife’s presence in this house. The information provided by his superiors had indicated