The Eyes of Darkness

Naked. Sitting in a bathtub full of bloody water, staring at something fearsome beyond the veil between this world and the next. One arm trailed out of the tub; and on the floor, as if it had dropped out of his fingers, was a razor blade.
    Elliot stared into the flat dead gaze of the pasty-faced corpse, and he knew that he was looking at Luciano Bellicosti. He also knew that the funeral director had not killed himself. The poor man's blue-lipped mouth hung in a permanent gape, as if he were trying to deny all of the accusations of suicide that were to come.
    Elliot wanted to take Tina by the arm and hustle her back to the car. But she sensed that he'd seen something important, and she wouldn't go easily until she knew what it was. She pushed in front of him. He kept one hand on her back as she leaned toward the window, and he felt her go rigid when she glimpsed the dead man. When she turned to Elliot again, she was clearly ready to get the hell out of there, without questions, without argument, without the slightest delay.
    They had taken only two steps from the window when Elliot saw the snow move no more than twenty feet from them. It wasn't the gauzy, insubstantial stirring of windblown flakes, but an unnatural and purposeful rising of an entire mound of white. Instinctively he whipped the pistol in front of him and squeezed off four rounds. The silencer was so effective that the shots could not be heard above the brittle, papery rustle of the wind.
    Crouching low, trying to make as small a target of himself as possible, Elliot ran to where he had seen the snow move. He found a man dressed in a white, insulated ski suit. The stranger had been lying in the snow, watching them, waiting; now he had a wet hole in his chest. And a chunk of his throat was gone. Even in the dim, illusory light from the surrounding snow, Elliot could see that the sentry's eyes were fixed in the same unseeing gaze that Bellicosti was even now directing at the bathroom window.
    At least one killer would be in the house with Bellicosti's corpse. Probably more than one.
    At least one man had been waiting out here in the snow.
    How many others?
    Where?
    Elliot scanned the night, his heart clutching up. He expected to see the entire white-shrouded lawn begin to move and rise in the forms of ten, fifteen, twenty other assassins.
    But all was still.
    He was briefly immobilized, dazed by his own ability to strike so fast and so violently. A warm, animal satisfaction rose in him, which was not an entirely welcome feeling, for he liked to think of himself as a civilized man. At the same time, he was hit by a wave of revulsion. His throat tightened, and a sour taste suddenly overwhelmed him. He turned his back on the man whom he had killed.
    Tina was a pale apparition in the snow. "They know we're in Reno," she whispered. "They even knew we were coming here."
    "But they expected us through the front door." He took her by the arm. "Let's get out of here."
    They hurriedly retraced their path, moving away from the funeral home. With every step he took, Elliot expected to hear a shot fired, a cry of alarm, and the sounds of men in pursuit of quarry.
    He helped Tina over the cemetery wall, and then, clambering after her, he was sure that someone grabbed his coat from behind. He gasped, jerked loose. When he was across the wall, he looked back, but he couldn't see anyone.
    Evidently the people in the funeral home were not aware that their man outside had been eliminated. They were still waiting patiently for their prey to walk into the trap.
    Elliot and Tina rushed between the tombstones, kicking up clouds of snow. Twin plumes of crystallized breath trailed behind them, like ghosts.
    When they were nearly halfway across the graveyard, when Elliot was positive they weren't being pursued, he stopped, leaned against a tall monument, and tried not to take such huge, deep gulps of the painfully cold air. An image of his victim's torn throat exploded in his memory, and a shock wave of nausea overwhelmed him.
    Tina put a hand on his shoulder. "Are you all right?"
    "I killed him."
    "If you hadn't, he would have killed us."
    "I know. Just the same . . . it makes me sick."
    "I would have thought . . . when you were in the army . . ."
    "Yeah," he said softly. "Yeah, I've killed before. But like you said, that was in the army. This wasn't the same. That was soldiering. This was murder." He shook his head to clear it. "I'll be okay." He tucked the pistol into his coat