The Husband

in his chair, he sought a reaction, though he spoke in the brotherly voice that he had always used before, as if his tongue was so accustomed to the soft tones of deceit that it could not sharpen itself to the occasion.
    "Just so you won't feel that you mean less to me than Megan, Connie, and Portia, I should clarify something. I didn't give them money to start businesses. That was bullshit, bro. I handled you."
    Because a response was clearly wanted, Mitch did not give one.
    A man with a fever can suffer chills, and Anson's stare remained icy though its intensity revealed a feverishly agitated mind. "Two million wouldn't wipe me out, bro. The truth is...I've got closer to eight."
    From behind the burly bearish charm, a goatish other watched, and Mitch sensed, without fully understanding what he meant, that he and his brother, alone in the room, were in fact not alone.
    "I bought the yacht in March," Anson said. "Come September,
    I'll run my consulting service at sea, with a satellite uplink. Freedom. I've earned it, and no one's gonna bleed me for two cents of it."
    The library door closed. Someone had arrived—and wanted privacy for what came next.
    Rising from his chair, pistol ready, Anson tried once more to sting a reaction from Mitch. "You can take some comfort from the fact that this will be over for Holly quicker now than midnight Wednesday."
    Defined by a confidence and grace that suggested miscegenation with a panther somewhere in his heritage, a tall man arrived, his iron-gray eyes bright with curiosity, his nose raised as if seeking an elusive scent.
    To Mitch, Anson said, "When I'm not home to take their call at noon, and when they can't get you on your cell phone, they'll know my buttons can't be pushed. They'll whack her, dump her, and run."
    The confident man wore tasseled loafers, black silk slacks, and a gray silk shirt the shade of his eyes. A gold Rolex brightened his left wrist, and his manicured fingernails were buffed to a shine.
    "They won't torture her," Anson continued. "That was bluff. They probably won't even screw her before they kill her, though I would if I were them."
    Two solid men stepped from behind Mitch's chair, flanking him. Both had pistols fitted with silencers, and their eyes were like those you usually saw only from the free side of a cage.
    "He's carrying a piece in the small of his back," Anson told them. To Mitch, he said, "I felt it when I hugged you, bro."
    In retrospect, Mitch wondered why he hadn't mentioned the pistol to Anson once they were in the Expedition, in motion, and not likely to be monitored. Perhaps in the deepest catacombs of his mind had been interred a distrust of his brother that he had not been able to acknowledge.
    One of the gunmen had a bad complexion. Like aphids at a leaf, acne had pitted his face. He told Mitch to stand, and Mitch got up from the chair.
    The other gunman lifted the back of his sports coat and took the pistol from him.
    When told to sit down, Mitch obeyed.
    At last he spoke to Anson, but only to say, "I pity you," which was true, though it was a wretched kind of pity, with some compassion but no tenderness, leeched of mercy but transfused with revulsion.
    However this pity might be qualified, Anson wanted none of it. He had said that he was proud of Mickey for not being molded in their parents' forge, that he himself felt broken. Those were lies, the lubricating oil of a manipulator.
    His pride was reserved for his own cunning and ruthlessness. At Mitch's declaration of pity, disdain narrowed Anson's eyes, and his clear contempt brought a harder edge of brutality to his features.
    As if he sensed that Anson was sufficiently offended to do something rash, the man in silk raised one hand, Rolex glittering, to stay a gunshot. "Not here."
    After a hesitation, Anson returned his pistol to the shoulder holster under his sports coat.
    Unsought, into Mitch's mind came the seven words that Detective Taggart had spoken to him eight hours before, and though he did not know their source and did not fully see their appropriateness to the moment, he felt compelled to speak them. "'Blood crieth unto me from the ground.'"
    For an instant, Anson and his associates were as motionless as figures in a painting, the library hushed, the air still, the night crouched at the French doors, and then Anson walked out of the room, and the two gunmen retreated a few steps, remaining alert, and the man in silk perched on the arm of the chair in which Anson