The Threateners Read Online Free PDF Page A

involving national security of which she had not been guilty. Freed at last, and eventually exonerated, but with her career and life in ruins—her husband, a scientist employed at one of the secret government installations near Los Alamos had been murdered at the time of her troubles—she’d been determined to achieve the kind of complete social rehabilitation no gun-toting secret-agent type could give her, even if he’d been instrumental in proving her innocent.
    I’d thought she’d attained her goal with her second marriage, to a very respectable young lawyer named Walter Maxon. I’d made a point of keeping away from them—no marriage needs old lovers hanging around the bride—but after a couple of years I’d read about the divorce in the newspapers and heard that she’d left town. I’d been sorry, the way you are when things don’t work out for people you like, but not sorry enough to look her up wherever she’d moved to. I mean, that hand had been played.
    The autumn sun was bright and hot and I remembered that I’d left Happy in the closed station wagon with the engine, and therefore the air conditioner, turned off.
    I said, “Just a minute. Let me get the dog.”
    “Matt—”
    “Hold everything, this is no place to talk. Lock up your car and get out of the street, they take this comer like it was Indianapolis on Memorial Day.”
    I snapped the leash on Happy, grabbed the gun case, waited for an old pickup truck to roar past, and joined her at the entrance to my miniature estate. She was looking at the yellow sign indicating that the premises were protected by the Guardian Security System, known as GSS. I dealt with the padlock. Although the hasp is on the inside, a hand-sized hole lets you work the lock from outside. I rolled back the heavy gate far enough to admit us and rolled it closed again.
    “Give me time to turn off the alarm,” I said, leading the way to the front door, which is actually at the side of the house. “Once the door is open, I’ve got about sixty seconds to push the right buttons or all hell breaks loose. . . . Here, hold the dog.”
    I must admit that the crazy burglar alarm has me bugged; I’m always terrified that I’m going to forget the code and run out of time trying to remember it, or punch it wrong even if I do remember it. I don’t know why I make such a big deal of it; it’s not as if the system was wired to a lethal load of plastique or TNT. If I don’t turn it off within the allotted sixty seconds, all that’ll happen is that the noisemakers will scream and disturb the neighbors a bit, and the private security outfit monitoring the system will phone to find out if I goofed or if they should really call the cops. However, I made it to the control box in time and punched the right number on the keypad, and the little red light went out.
    “Okay, all clear.”
    After letting Madeleine enter, I took the leash off Happy and put him out into the yard, hearing Madeleine laugh as I closed the door behind him.
    “He’s kind of sweet, like a big friendly teddy bear, not at all the kind of dog I’d expect you to have,” she said as I turned back to face her.
    “You think I’m more the snarling pit-bull type?”
    "Or killer Doberman." Her voice was expressionless, but there was a hint of mischief in her eyes.
    I grinned. “I don’t need a dog to defend me; I can defend myself. But I’m very lousy at fetching ducks out of deep water in freezing weather, which is Happy’s specialty. Well, what do you think of my cozy domicile? Living-dining room before you. Bedroom to the left. Kitchen and bath to the right. . . Did I say something interesting?”
    “I’ve been waiting out there for quite a while,” she said.
    “Sure,” I said. “Into the kitchen and hard left. Guest towels on the top shelf. In the meantime, I’d say the sun is practically over the yardarm, wouldn’t you, ma’am? As I recall, the drink is Scotch.”
    “Your recollection is accurate,