The Threateners Read Online Free PDF

sir.”
    I watched her move away from me, a slender woman in her thirties, looking very competent in a severely tailored business suit, black with a fine white stripe. Nylons black, very sheer. Pumps black, with high, slim heels. Height medium. Hair brown, not too long, carefully arranged about her head. A lady who, five years ago, had made a spectacular comeback from almost total disaster with, although I wouldn’t have dreamed of reminding her, some help from me.
    She’d been in bad shape, defeated and hopeless, when I’d picked her up at the prison on the day of her release, with orders to keep her alive, never mind why. There had been others around who’d had instructions that conflicted with mine. Playing bodyguard, I’d wound up having to throw myself heroically between her and a distant rifle, taking a bullet in the shoulder. After getting patched up locally, I’d had her drive me to the Ranch in Arizona for more permanent repairs. The reconstruction had taken some time, and I’d arranged for her to be put through the less classified parts of our basic training course so she could help defend herself while I was semidisabled. The experience had taught her a number of things most women don’t know, and our demanding exercise program had turned her from a soft, helpless victim into a lean female predator who’d repaid me for saving her life once by saving mine twice. I was glad to see that she’d kept the taut figure she’d attained back then. I wondered how much else of the Ranch course she retained. No one unaware of her history would associate knives and guns and unarmed combat with the handsome businesswoman in the pinstripe suit and severe silk blouse who emerged from the kitchen.
    She took the glass I offered her and sipped from it while looking around the room. It was typical Santa Fe, with heavy mud-brick walls plastered smooth and painted white, a rounded kiva fireplace in the comer, and a rather low ceiling with the round exposed roof beams, natural timbers, that we call vigas. The wooden dining table and four chairs at one end of the room, and the cocktail table and the two big wooden armchairs facing the fireplace at the other, were all of local manufacture, heavy and dark and picturesque and ethnic as hell, but, I’ll admit, not remarkably comfortable.
    Madeleine said, “I always thought people who went in for burglar alarms must be slightly paranoid.”
    "It was already installed when I bought the house," I said. “The lady who lived here used it as a summer home; she spent the winters in Scottsdale, Arizona. The place was ripped off twice in her absence, so she put in the alarm system; but nothing could keep the crazy drivers from knocking down her front fence occasionally, and she was getting pretty old, so she decided to live in Scottsdale full-time and sold me the property complete with furniture, kitchen appliances, and security system. Considering my line of work, I feel I’d be tempting fate if I didn’t use it; and it does make me worry a bit less when I’m away on business. These days, around here, most people feel obliged to hire house sitters for protection while they’re gone.’’ I grimaced. ‘‘I can remember a time in this town, not too many years ago, when we didn’t even lock our doors.”
    I took the Anschutz out of its case and slipped it into its place on the five-gun rack on the wall beside the fireplace, below the two shotguns that are designed to cope with big birds and little ones, and the two hunting rifles intended for use against larger animals and smaller ones. The firearms designed to cope with people of all sizes I do not keep on display; but there was a large knife in an elaborately carved leather sheath lying on the shelf below the guns. It was a giant Bowie of presentation quality, with elaborate grips and engraved blade. At fourteen inches it was really too big to be a practical fighting knife unless you had Tarzan dreams and a tiger in mind. It had