67
THE POWDER ROOM OFF THE FOYER was empty. But when Pine and Mercy reached the doorway of the main floor bedroom, Pine hissed, “Shit!”
Wanda Atkins was lying motionless on the bed. Len was in his wheelchair, but hanging off to the side in a way that suggested a total lack of consciousness.
“What’s wrong with them?” muttered Mercy.
Pine edged forward and touched Len’s wrist with her index finger, holding it there, feeling for a pulse. She next checked his neck pulse, then ran a hand over his face.
Cold. She raised one of his arms. It was supple. He was dead, but clearly not long enough for rigor mortis to set in. That made sense because she had talked to Wanda only about six hours ago. She took out her light and ran it over him. She saw no obvious wounds or other marks and nothing that could tell her how the man had died. She looked over at Wanda to see Mercy standing next to the bed. Pine joined her.
“She looks like she’s sleeping,” said Mercy.
Pine dispelled that notion when she hit Wanda’s eyes with her light and got nothing in return, except the unrelenting stare of the deceased. Still, she checked for a pulse and found none. The woman was cold. She ran her light over her looking for ligature marks, a wound, frothing on the lips to indicate poison.
“She’s dead?” asked Mercy.
Pine nodded and then flinched as she sniffed the air. “Do you smell smoke?”
Both sisters turned to the doorway.
“Bertrand!” Pine cried out.
When he didn’t answer, Pine gripped her sister’s hand as she gazed at the large oxygen tank in the corner, and remembered the others in the front room.
“Bertrand!”
She edged out of the room, with Mercy right behind.
“Bertrand!”
They hustled forward and entered the kitchen.
Pine hit the room with her light. And stopped when it held on Bertrand sitting slumped in a chair.
She raced to him and almost fell. She shone her light on the floor and, with a sickening feeling, saw the fresh pools of blood there. She eased over to the agent, then took a step back when she saw the four-inch incision someone had made across his neck. She looked at his white shirt now turned red; the blood flow had reached all the way to his belt.
She pointed her gun around the space. Pine knew they had ambushed him as soon as he came into the kitchen, slit his throat so he couldn’t cry out, and dumped him to die seconds later in this chair. His eyes stared wide and unseeing at the pebbled ceiling, his jaw was slack, and his skin was already turning pale from no blood running through the veins.
She looked at the back door. It was open. The killer’s exit? The storm was raging out there now, and copious amounts of wind were being driven through the opening. If they could catch the bastard who had done this . . .
She looked back at Bertrand. She had lost an agent. The first time ever. Her fault.
“Lee!”
Pine jerked her head at Mercy, who was pointing at the cabinets. After finding Bertrand, Pine had forgotten about the smell of smoke. Now that dilemma was presenting itself front and center.
The cabinets were flaming up, the fire racing across the lacquered wood like someone had dumped gas on paper and struck a match. Pine had never seen a conflagration build that quickly.
She whirled around, forgetting about the fire just for a moment, and with good reason. It had been replaced by something even deadlier to them. For in her mind, Pine once more saw all the large oxygen tanks strewn around the house.
This was no longer a residence in the suburbs.
This was a bomb. Just about to detonate.