The Pandora Key

Also by Lynne Heitman

HARD LANDING

TARMAC

FIRST CLASS KILLING

An
Original
Publication of POCKET BOOKS

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Lynne Heitman

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 1-4165-2308-1

POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com

Prologue

MY ASSIGNMENT IS TO KILL THE HOSTAGES. I HAVE GROWN to like some of them over our ten days together, but my duty is clear. The army is gathering outside the airplane. It is time to execute the plan. We all know our places. We all go to our duties. I dig an extra clip out of the bag. I do not know how many rounds it will take.

I stop at the front of the airplane, in the section that we have reserved for ourselves to pray. Then I go back through the curtains, and when they look at me, they know. By the way I hold the Kalashnikov or by the way I stand or by the way I look at them. Something tells them I am there to finish it.

But I’ve never killed anyone before. I’ve dreamed of it. I lied about it to be part of this operation, but I have never done it before. I level the rifle. The first one gets down on the floor between the seats and curls into a ball. I point the barrel at his head and fire. The recoil jams my shoulder back. When the bullet hits, it stops him in the middle of a scream. His head ruptures.

The others run like frightened beasts. They climb over the backs of the seats. They stumble and fall and step on each other, but there is no place for them to go. I smell the fear. They should die like men, as we all will soon.

Outside, firing begins. At first it is like rain, a sprinkling against the outside of the airplane. But then the deluge. The first bomb goes off. The floor rises up, then drops from under me. A wave of pressure pushes me down. My ears hurt, and when I get to my knees, I can’t hear. One of them is coming. I find the rifle and shoot. He’s screaming, but I can’t hear, and he keeps coming. I shoot again, and he falls. When I try to stand, there is too much smoke. My eyes burn, but I can still see they are all coming. Their faces look like my son’s crayon drawings. I try to raise the rifle again, but they push me down and step on me as they go over.

Another bomb goes off. The seats are on fire. The air feels greasy, like kerosene. Because I can’t hear, everything feels slow. I crawl up the aisle. A man with blood on his face and his arms on fire runs toward me. He bumps into something and falls backward. On the floor in front of me, he twists and kicks and turns and screams until he is still. I pull myself into one of the seats. And I wait.

1

HARVEY BALTIMORE’S HOUSE WAS DYING. ONCE STATELY, the Tudor had become an embarrassment to its Brookline neighbors. Glossy black paint flaked off the shutters, the pocked shingled roof covered the house like a disease, and the other half of the duplex, which had long been a source of good, steady income for Harvey, had been vacant and closed off for almost six months. The dwelling, like its owner, seemed to be declining at an accelerating pace.

The doorbell was broken. I let myself in with my key. For someone as private as Harvey, giving me the key to his house had been a monumental concession, but it only made sense. He wasn’t exactly mobile anymore.

“It’s me,” I called out while I wiped my shoes on the welcome mat in his foyer. No response, as usual, but I knew what I would find. If it was a good day, he would be clean-shaven, reading his newspaper by the light of the sun slanting through open blinds. If it was a bad day, he’d be sitting at his computer in the dark, unshaven, playing Minesweeper. Either way, he’d be in his wheelchair, his body ravaged by the multiple sclerosis that had been stealing function from him in excruciating increments. I hoped for a good day. There hadn’t been enough of those lately.

“Harvey, your shutters are flaking. We need to get them—” I rounded the corner, walked into the office, and stopped.

Harvey was there, all right, and it must have been a good day—a very good day—because there he sat in his wheelchair, engaged in a passionate kiss with the woman on his lap. At least, until I’d barreled in, at which point they tore themselves away from each other to stare at me.

Too late to back out unnoticed. I was too embarrassed to go in any further. “I’m sorry…I’ll just…I didn’t…” have any idea what to say.

“Oh, my.” Harvey went every shade of red and some from the orange spectrum. Despite his confinement to the chair, he managed to do a lot of fluttering about, mostly with his hands. He encouraged the woman off her perch. She slipped off easily, stepping gingerly so as not to get entangled in the workings of the wheelchair. Of the three of us, she was the only one who didn’t look as if she wanted to curl up into a ball and roll out of there.

I took a step back. “I can just leave you two and, um…come back later.”

“No,” Harvey stammered. “Please stay. It is I who should apologize.”

“Why should we apologize?” The woman seemed more annoyed than embarrassed, as if I had just tracked mud into her clean house. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”

She was petite and fragile-looking, a good thing to be if your habit is to sit on the legs of wheelchair-bound men. She was also vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t imagine where I might have seen her before. She wore her chestnut hair cut in a short, shaggy bob. Her tight cotton slacks stopped just above her ankles, and her high-top basketball shoes were tied with thick white laces. She could have passed for a twelve-year-old boy except for her eyes. I took a closer look at those eyes, and I knew who she was.

“You’re Rachel.”

“Do I know you?”

Since Harvey couldn’t seem to find his voice, I did the honors. “I’m Alexandra Shanahan, Harvey’s business partner.”