His heart hammered and he was having less difficulty focusing now. Better living through chemistry: Dexedrine, hydrocodone and a little epinephrine made it all better.

Clearing his house room by room, he searched for anything out of place. On the ground floor, his widescreen and computer were still there. Moving  upstairs to the bedrooms and bathrooms, he found no one. Nothing missing or disturbed.

Daniel left the basement for last. If there was anyone in there they should have heard him moving around. At least he hoped so. The house was forty years old, and it creaked. He really wished they had bolted out the basement walkout into the back yard, over his useless waist-high Housing-Association-approved rail fence and across the neighbors’ yards to escape.

No need to shoot some stupid kid or pathetic junkie. I’ve killed better men for better reasons.

He crept down the basement stairs, bad tactics to catch someone unawares. Obviously he should have gone back outside, and tried to sneak in the sliding glass door of the basement walkout. Actually he wanted whoever it was, if there was anyone, to leave by that exit.

Never corner a rat, unless you mean to exterminate him. Always leave him a way out.

At the bottom of the stairs he turned sharply left, back along a short hallway which opened out into the main finished part of the basement. He didn’t hear anyone, but he smelled him.

It was easier for Daniel than some people, because everything he used was fragrance-free. Artificial scents bothered him; they made his eyes water and his nose clog up. This smell was faint but unmistakable, man-cologne. Something expensive. Rubbing the bottom of his nose with his offhand finger, he kept from sneezing.

From being fairly relaxed, comfortable on the chems in a combat-mode sort of way, everything inside him shifted sharply into overdrive. This isn’t some kid, he thought, and he isn’t running away. The world crystallized in that way it did when he felt close to death. He’d been there before

The serpent in his head knew someone wanted Daniel J. Markis dead, erased, blotted out. Charging out of its cave, it sank its fangs into his hindbrain like a terrier on a rat. Everything took on a cut-glass clarity, with slightly rainbow edges.

Surveying the part of the basement he could see from the end of the hallway, he saw no one in the open room. There was a door into the unfinished part to his left, another door to the three-quarter bath to his left front, the walkout glass doors right front, and the door to the basement bedroom to his right.

A faint sound marked someone in the bathroom and the XD swung left automatically. Daniel crouched behind the end of his battered sofa, set the weapon comfortably on the armrest, and called out, “Come on out of there, you.” Not eloquent, but it got the message across.

A moment’s pause, then the door exploded from the inside. 12-gauge shotgun, a part of him said, and the shooter was hoping to catch me napping. Some kind of automatic, since he fired four rounds quick, bang-bang-bang-bang, and Daniel didn’t hear the distinct chack-chack of a pump.

Sweeping the room from his left to right, the shooter fired blind through the thin hollow-core door, spraying clouds of splinters with each shot. The sound deafened Daniel briefly, and the final blast struck the top of the sofa about a foot in front of him, sending pieces of cushion flying. Already fading back and moving left, he avoided the next one that never came, low in a duck walk.

Cursing himself for not retrieving his own shotgun from his bedroom, Daniel realized he couldn’t expect to penetrate two thicknesses of wall at the corner and do any damage with a pistol. He certainly wasn’t stepping in front of that door.

But local knowledge is always a huge advantage, and this was his own house. Opening the door to his left, he slid silently into the unfinished section of the basement, pushing the door almost shut behind. Now, immediately to his right stood a single thickness of drywall behind two-by-four studs. No insulation, and on the other side, that bathroom and the shooter.

From point-blank range Daniel unloaded seven rounds through the wall, walking them diagonally left to right and slanting from low to high, knee to chest level. The expanding loads punched through the thin gypsum, leaving thumb-sized holes as they went, and he heard a grunt and the thud of a body falling.

The serpent cheered.

Moving quickly, he took cover to his left behind the water heater and finished off the magazine, firing into the tiny bathroom at about calf level.

He then reloaded, waiting.

No sounds, but he smelled blood and worse. That was a good sign, in this case. It usually meant death.

The serpent rejoiced.

He glided silently up to look through one of the holes in the drywall. Bright red splash, a jumble of flesh and dark clothing, the stink. Standing back up, weapon held in close to his sternum, he kept it pointed forty-five degrees down, still in a shooter’s grip. None of that aiming skyward Hollywood crap you see on TV.

Moving carefully back through the portal, he took his left hand off the weapon and pushed at the shattered bathroom door. The shooter’s body blocked it, and as Daniel was fairly sure the man was down and out, he moved to brace himself to shove it open when he heard something behind him.

Clap. Clap.

The serpent coiled, wary.

A slow, sarcastic clap.

Crap.

-2-

Hoping the clapping meant the source held nothing in his hands, Daniel didn’t do anything sudden. Instead he turned around smoothly, weapon still ready but pointed low.

There stood a suit. Mid-twenties, about five ten, dark hair cut short, straight and expensive, the five-o’clock shadow curse of the swarthy on his face and chin. To Daniel he looked like Agency. You know, he thought, OGA, the Other Government Agency that everyone likes to talk about in those breathless hushed tones, like they think it’s so cool, like they’re in love with its very existence. They don’t even actually use the acronym: C.I.A. He realized it was this man’s cologne he’d smelled, not the dead shooter’s, though that had helped him anyway.

“Hello, suit,” Daniel said. “What the f– …what do you want?” He’d made a promise to try to curb his vulgarities after all the jams his Higher Power got him out of, and Daniel was a man that kept his promises, even if he’d missed a few of the Twelve Steps along the way.

Taking a breath, Daniel asked, “Why are you in my house, and why did you just make me kill a man?” He hung on to the tension between them, because he could feel the post-kill nausea trying to make itself known, and if he started on that he’d get the shakes and he’d want a drink and he really needed to stay away from that dark hole.

Pharms, he could control.

No, really.

But alcohol was a treacherous serpentine thing.

“Not a man,” the suit said, “but don’t worry about her. She’ll keep.”

Flippant. Cold son of a bitch. The kind that expends people like cartridges, like the one on the floor in there dead. Then Daniel did a double-take. She? Dammit, have I just killed a woman? I didn’t have much choice, right? Can’t think about that now. Deal with what’s in front of you.

“Let’s go upstairs,” the suit said jauntily.

Up they went, the intruder first, the XD’s front sight fixed on his spine, center mass, just out of reach if he suddenly turned and made a grab. They angled right at the top of the stairs, walked through the kitchen, and the suit sat down in the dining room. Daniel reached over and pulled the curtains shut, flipped on the light.

The suit took out a silver cigarette case, a matching lighter, and lit up. “Smoke?” He took a deep drag.