Hard Fall by Ridley Pearson Page A

exhausted from the train ride; he had been unable to sleep, too preoccupied with the repercussions and subsequent preparations resulting from Roger Ward’s unintended murder. The last several days had been hectic; he didn’t like Los Angeles.
    He rechecked his watch for the date: August 27. Two weeks to the day since the explosion that killed Bernard. Hopefully, by late this afternoon the unfortunate loss would mean something. Bernard had made himself briefly immortal: he still lived in the form of the detonators he had left behind.
    Monique Cheysson arrived at the door of his Los Angeles hotel room precisely at nine-thirty. It had been nearly two years since he had last seen her but he recognized her face immediately, even when distorted by the door’s fish-eye security peephole.
    He opened the door for her.
    She entered in behind a waft of musky perfume and the rustle of fine fabric. She carried a black briefcase.
    Kort slipped the DO NOT DISTURB sign over the knob and closed the door firmly. The dead bolt insured privacy. She spun around dramatically to face him, the well-practiced turn of a fashion model at the end of the runway. Monique was always onstage.
    A curtain of fine black hair fell to just above her shoulders and then curled under stylishly. Low bangs shortened her forehead and framed a face that was all brown eyes, cheekbones, and red lips. She had perfected the demure expression of appearing half asleep—or ready for bed. Her self-confidence drew attention from across a room—it bordered on arrogance. She had square shoulders, high breasts, and a waist so tiny that he thought he might be able to reach around it with both hands.
    He had been fantasizing about her for weeks.
    â€œAny problems?” he asked her.
    â€œIt is right there,” she said, pointing to the briefcase. She had less of an accent than he remembered. If she tried hard, she might even pass for American. Her voice rang with disappointment.
    â€œWhat’s wrong?” His fantasy collapsed. He had imagined her seducing him. He had imagined a reenactment of Frankfurt.
    He recalls that first time he saw her with crisp clarity. He remembers the cold, his breath white, his nose running. So cold that her face is hidden by the mask of frost on the windscreen. It’s a silver Mercedes—stolen, of course, with stolen plates. His passport is a forgery, and therefore his identity; everything about him is a forgery. The door sticks with the cold as he attempts to open it. She leans across the front seat and bangs it open for him. He sees her for the first time through the frost-glazed glass, the determination on her face, the rouge on her cheeks, a silk scarf, dark sunglasses. Typical of these operations, they haven’t met until this moment the door complains open. How Michael manages this is anybody’s guess. The training, the logistics. ... A dozen or so people, all orbiting around him regularly, but not so much as a shadow shared between them.
    â€œThe fucking car wouldn’t start,” she says angrily, and he likes her right away.
    â€œThe suitcase?” he asks.
    â€œIn the trunk.” He offers an expression that questions the intelligence of that and she interrupts him before he speaks. “Where a suitcase belongs. Especially that suitcase. You think I was going to keep it on the backseat?” Yes, he likes her. Despite her obvious good looks, he is not physically attracted to her. It has been two years since his wife took her own life, and in that time not once has he felt anything like lust for another woman. Only despair. He feeds on the despair, like a tick feeds on the blood of a stray dog. It motivates him. It forces him toward purpose. It is this despair that has turned a grieving widower into a killer. He doesn’t know this killer—he doesn’t stop to know him—but he doesn’t know the other man either, the man of a wife and a child and a workaday life he