Fury and the Power by John Farris Page A

his distance or maybe he stumbled on the red carpet trying to get to the Dalai Lama, then one of the LAPD Special Squad guys shot him through the head. The Veet kid was employed as a busboy in a hotel restaurant in—ready for this?—Las Vegas. Quit his job and took a bus to L.A. the same day the Dalai Lama arrived for his fund-raiser."
    Gruvver sat back in the booth and considered Ronyak's lack of expression.
    "I did a global on the M.O. before I came to work, couldn't sleep last night 'cause of the hair up my ass. Okay, the applause sign is flashing and I'm ready to take MY bow."
    Ronyak stood slowly, as if his lower back was paining him. He glared at Lewis Gruvver.
    "You are not going to say another damn word about this to anybody. Not now, not ever."
    "You're not curious? Three major religious leaders, icons, you could say, two of them dead with their throats bitten through after vicious attacks by, I'm reasonably sure, complete strangers to the victims?"
    Ronyak leaned over and tapped a forefinger on the table, his face congested, cheeks reddening.
    "Be a smart cop, Lew. But never a smart-ass. It's not our business. We don't need this ."
    "Matt. Have I done gone and scared the crap out of you?"
    "Man, you just let it go!"
    "I can let it go," Gruvver said. "But whatever it is, it ain't gonna go away."

Chapter 8
     
    COLDSTREAM BRIDGE, CALIFORNIA
    OCTOBER 11-12
     
    O n the first full day of her captivity, unusually warm and clear for coastal California north of Frisco, the Assassin took Betts Waring out behind the cottage of the two-hundred-acre farm he was leasing and showed her how the cervical collar that she wore around her neck would work should she decide to attempt an escape when he wasn't around.
    He placed an identical collar on the neck of a dummy. He had painted sunflower eyes and a full smiling mouth on the stuffed head, giving it that little touch of personality. From a distance of twenty-five feet, using a wireless handheld detonator, he blew stuffing into the low branches of some oak trees and scattered the birds for a few minutes.
    Betts, hands at her sides, flinched at the muffled explosion but watched the demonstration with narrowed eyes. Staying calm. Elevated blood pressure would strangle her in that tight collar.
    "A car driving by with the radio tuned to the wrong AM station could set this one off by accident," she said, carefully fingering the padded collar that held her chin rigidly high. Her mouth was almost too dry to allow for speech, but her voice didn't waver. "Or haven't you thought about that?"
    "Of course. My little road is gated and there are pitfalls if one doesn't know the way. The nearest state blacktop is three kilometers from the house, which does limit the possibility of accidental detonation." He paused, frowning. He hadn't put on any makeup this morning, not even a hairpiece. It was a grim business to look at his face for even a few seconds. Look him in the eyes, never. "But that was cunning of you, Betts. You've learned something you didn't know before. I wonder what other pertinent observations you've made so far?"
    She had planned to say as little as possible to him, but now, having seen him blast the head off Sunflower Man, keeping silent might indicate she had been intimidated.
    "Those are gulls over there, coasting above the hills. We had fog earlier. I can still smell the sea, so it's probably within a couple of miles. A lot of dried cow flop in the pasture we walked through, but I haven't heard any cows and the farm looks fallow, untenanted. The apple trees are overgrown and need a good pruning." Betts leaned back in order to look up at the sky. "We may be under a north—south flight path for commercial aviation. The plane that flew over us a couple of minutes ago was beneath FL20 and still climbing. So at a climb rate of about two thousand feet a minute for a heavy, it was only eight or ten minutes, say, from SF0." She caught his look. "A nephew of mine flies for