Ice Fire: A Jock Boucher Thriller Read Online Free PDF Page B

killer. He’d been offered the assignment because he never failed, and accepted it without hesitation for the same reason he accepted them all. He needed the money. Being one of the best meant that his client list was short, and it could be a long time between jobs. Though he was well paid and his lifestyle was not extravagant, the money went only so far. The timing of this assignment was particularly welcome. He asked the obvious questions, and the not so obvious. One aspect stood out. He was tempted to smile but knew better. Never in front of a client. But when asked when he could do it, he said, “Tonight. There’s no time to waste.”
    After Perry left, Quillen searched the medicine cabinet in his house. He found what he was looking for. There was a certain genius to his manner of operation. If a SWAT team had come busting through his door at that very moment, they would have found no weapons, only generic and nonlethal medications. Among his talents, he was a pretty damn good chemist. Nonlethal chemicals took on a new character under his direction. It was all in the mixing. In his home medicine cabinet he had all he needed to commit a murder. Timing. It was always about timing. If the client had come one day later, he would have had to devise a different strategy. But tonight he knew it would be as sure a thing as anyone in his business could want.
    He began his assignment at four a.m., his favorite time, darkest before the dawn and all that. From experience—he hadn’t always been an assassin; he’d spent his early adulthood in law enforcement—he knew that cops patrolling on the nighttime shift had lost their edge by that hour. The house’s security apparatus he analyzed in no time. He wasn’t even earning his pay tonight; this hit was a gift. He put on surgical gloves, wrapped his shoes in foot covers, and entered through the back door. God, night-lights, in the kitchen and up the staircase! Could this get any easier? He’d brought a penlight but wouldn’t need it; he could walk through the house unaided. He found the stairs and slowly ascended. The art of his craft was the entry, then getting close to the victim without setting off alarms. If there was any challenge it was here, but in this house there was no problem. He found the master bedroom and opened the door slowly. Sounds of sleep. The deepest slumber occurred at this time of the morning. To ensure his safety and his success, he took from a shirt pocket one of the two tools he had brought with him. It was a narcosis-producing aerosol in the shape of a fountain pen. From generic components in his home he’d formulated his own concentration of fentanyl and butorphanol tartrate, synthetic opiates related to morphine, used both by doctors and veterinarians, which would metabolize in the liver and be expelled, impossible to trace. He reached around the door and sprayed, closing the door quickly. He looked at his watch. The knockout spray would send anyone in the room into a stupor—the only deeper sleep would be death itself—then it would dissipate. Quillen had learned early not to trust everything he’d been told about a victim’s lifestyle. Wives, kids, nurses, lovers straight and gay—there could always be surprises behind closed bedroom doors. He waited, counting time inhis head, opened the door again, and walked to the side of the bed where his target lay.
    With the victim immobilized by the knockout spray, the easiest thing to do would have been to squeeze the nostrils while keeping the mouth closed. This method he’d employed successfully a number of times but didn’t want to use on this job because there was the slightest chance the police might assume a pattern and investigate more thoroughly. Quillen preferred avoiding any inference of a crime even having been committed. Also, suffocation was boring. This situation offered the opportunity for a little creativity.
    He looked down at the unconscious figure, then unbuttoned the top three