The Face

suite.
        At the bottom of the list was the word SCAN, which he pressed. This gave him the option of scanning for movement on the third floor, the second floor, the ground floor, the first subterranean level, and the second subterranean level.
        Later he would use this feature to search for the boy. First, he needed to locate Ethan Truman and kill him.
        He might have been able to snare the boy and spirit him out of the house under the security chief’s nose. He’d feel more comfortable dealing with Aelfric, however, if he knew the ex-cop was dead meat.
        Any floor of the mansion was too large to fit entirely on the Crestron screen in a scale easy to read. Consequently, the eastern half of the ground level appeared first.
        A single blip of light blinked, indicating Corky’s position in the grand drawing room. He wasn’t moving, but the motion detectors were in fact motion and heat detectors. Even in his insulated storm suit, he produced a sufficient heat signature to register with the sensitive sensors.
        He took two sideways steps to his right.
        On the screen, the Corky blip moved a tiny bit to the right, in synch with him.
        When he stepped back in front of the touch-control panel, his blip moved, as well.
        [560] The complex floor plan of the western half of the ground level appeared on the screen, also with only a single lonely blip blinking in all those chambers and hallways: Ethan Truman, no doubt, in the living room of his apartment.
        This was where Corky had hoped and expected to find the man.
        He exited the motion-detector display, went to the nearest set of double doors, and stepped quietly into the north hall.
        Ahead of him lay the entrance rotunda and another spectacular Christmas tree. The residents and staff were rich with the Christmas spirit in Palazzo Rospo.
        Corky wondered what exquisite holiday cookies people of this wealth enjoyed. Once he had killed Truman and secured the boy, maybe he would dare to take a few minutes to investigate the stock of baked goods in the kitchen. He might pack a tin of homemade treats to enjoy later at home.
        He turned right and followed the north hall past the tea room, the intimate dining room, the grand dining room, toward the kitchen and ultimately toward the west hall where Truman waited to be killed in his apartment.

CHAPTER 92
        
        ON THE DESK IN ETHAN’S STUDY, THE telephone produced no dial tone, and when he tried to use his cell phone, he discovered that he had no service.
        Land lines might on rare occasion experience disruption after a two-day downpour. Not cell phones.
        In the bedroom, when he tried the telephone on his nightstand, he heard only a dead line. No surprise.
        From the nightstand drawer, he extracted a second magazine of ammunition for his pistol.
        He had prepared this spare on the evening of his first day in Palazzo Rospo, ten months ago. At the time, he’d seemed to be taking an unnecessary precaution. An extended shootout requiring more than ten rounds, within these well-protected walls, had been a possibility so slim as to be beyond calculation.
        Dropping the magazine in a pants pocket, Ethan hurried back into his study.
         The apple of his eye.
         Fric . Fric must still be on the second floor, in the library, selecting a book to get him through the night.
        Okay. The thing to do was go to the library. Hustle the boy into the [562] nearest panic room. Tuck him away safely in that comfy, armored, self-contained vault. Then chase this situation to its source, find out what the hell was happening.
        He stepped out of his apartment, turned left in the west hall, and ran to the back stairs that earlier he had taken to the third floor and the white room.

        Goofing, having more fun than the law allowed, proceeding at times with exaggerated stealth, in a crouch like a commando slipping through an enemy fortress, at other times strutting like Vin Diesel when he knows the script specifies that all bullets will miss him, Corky followed the north hall past the breakfast room, the butler’s pantry, the kitchen.
        He wished that it would have been practical to wear his yellow slicker and his droopy yellow hat. He would have enormously enjoyed seeing Truman’s amazed expression when confronted by a banana-bright assassin spitting death.
        In the west