Larison shot Carl a look. Carl smiled.
“That’s gross,” Schrader said. “I don’t want someone watching.”
“Hold it in if you want,” Larison said. “I won’t complain.”
Schrader shook his head. “I can’t.”
Larison glared at Carl. “Then let’s get it over with.”
Another keypad, and they were inside as vast a kitchen as Livia had ever seen. Stone floors, high ceilings, top-of-the-line appliances. But like the garage, it was too spotless, and somehow soulless. A space designed to impress, but not really to live in. “If we run into a problem,” Livia said to Diaz, “get behind something solid if you can. If you can’t, then get low and get out of the way.” She turned to Schrader. “That goes for you, too.”
“Why would there be a problem?” Schrader said.
“In case you haven’t noticed,” Diaz said, “there are a lot of people looking for you.”
There were fewer obstructions than in the garage, and the kitchen took them only a minute to check. They proceeded into a hallway as long as a bowling alley.
“You always leave all the lights on?” Carl said, sweeping left and right with the Wilson.
Schrader looked up as though noticing all the recessed lights for the first time. “I don’t know. I think so.”
Partway down the hallway was a bathroom. Larison took Schrader in. While she waited, Livia glanced around. Marble floors, wood paneling, leather sofas in case, what, someone got tired traveling down the endless corridor and needed to sit? The notion of one person living in a place like this disgusted her. She didn’t begrudge people success. But when she thought about how little there had been in the village she had grown up in, and how happy she and Nason had been, at least before what her parents had done . . . she couldn’t help but find this sort of excess both sickening, and a sickness.
After a few minutes, Schrader emerged from the bathroom, Larison behind him. Larison glared at Carl, wrinkled his nose, and said, “Expect payback.”
Carl laughed. “This was payback. For you mocking me for having to ride a damn three-wheeled motorcycle.”
Larison half smiled, half grimaced. “Oh, we’re not done with that.”
They followed Schrader down the hall, passing innumerable rooms as they moved, their footfalls echoing off the high ceiling. Livia and Carl checked each room they went by, but they were all empty. Larison stayed in the hallway, making sure no one surprised them from the front or behind.
“Seems quiet,” Carl said as they walked. “Would you say a little too quiet? ’Cause when they say that in the movies, the next line is always We’ve got company.”
“I told you,” Schrader said, “the maids work when I’m gone. I don’t know where everyone else is. I haven’t been in jail before. Or at least, not in a long time.”
They came to another doorway, inside of which was another enormous, overdecorated room. “My office,” Schrader said.
They followed him in. Everything was dark, polished wood—the floor, the bookcases, the ceiling twenty feet above. On the walls were paintings of hunting scenes in heavy gold frames; above them, a second-floor walkway encircling the room, its bookcases filled with volumes doubtless read by no one. A spiral staircase. Chandeliers. Thick oriental rugs. Two leather couches and a half-dozen upholstered chairs. And a wooden desk as long as a city bus, two giant computer monitors perched on top of it.
And between the monitors, a keypad, a microphone, and a fingerprint reader. And a vertical, elegantly curved device of polished metal. The retina scanner.
“I get it,” Carl said. “A place for quiet, solitary contemplation. Reminds me of my ancestral home in Abilene.”