Desperate Measures by David R. Morrell Read Free Book Online Page A

now. But what if the dogs are trained to attack?
    This isn't a top secret military installation. It's a Scarsdale estate. Relax. And anyway, so what if the dogs are trained to attack? Do you think being killed by a couple of Dobermans would be any worse than shooting yourself with a .45? Yes.
    What standards you have.
    Chilled by the rain, Pittman moved forward. At first he was tempted to approach the mansion through the cover of the trees. But then he decided there wasn't any need-the night and the gloomy weather provided him with sufficient cover. Following the murky driveway, he came around a shadowy curve and discovered that he was closer to the mansion than he expected.
    Next to a sheltering fir tree, he studied his destination. The building was high, wide, made of brick, with numerous gables and chimneys. There were several lights in windows on the ground floor, less on the second story. From this angle, he could see a five-stall garage on the left.
    The garage had a sundeck on top, with two sets of French doors leading off the deck into a second-story room that was lit, although Pittman couldn't see what was in there. Mostly what attracted his attention was the private ambulance, parked, its lights off, apparently empty, in front of the stone steps that led up to the mansion's large front door.
    Now what? Pittman thought.
    He shrugged. With eight days to live, what difference did it make? In an odd way, he felt liberated. After all, what did he have to lose? Knowing when he was going to die gave him a feeling of immunity.
    He stepped from the fir tree and concentrated to maintain his balance on wet, slippery grass as he crept down a dark slope toward the mansion. Moving cautiously toward the lights of the mansion, taking advantage of shrubs, a fountain, a gazebo to give him cover, he came closer to the illuminated windows. The drenched grass had soaked his shoes and socks, his feet, but he was too involved in studying the to care. Curtains had been drawn, forcing him to skirt the driveway where it ran parallel to the front of the mansion. He felt exposed by the drizzle-shrouded glare of arc lights as he darted toward bushes beneath the front windows.
    Moisture dripped from the branches onto his overcoat. Again in shadows, he crouched tensely, moved through an opening in the bushes on the left side of the front doors, then warily straightened, able to see through a gap in the curtains at one window. He saw a portion of a luxuriously appointed oak-paneled living room. The room didn't seem occupied. Quietly he shifted toward the next window, moving closer to the front door.
    The next window's curtains were open. He showed as little of his head as possible while he peered in. Immediately he realized that this window was part of the same living room that he'd just seen through the other window. But why would curtains in one window be closed, while the other curtains were not? He eased down out of sight, remembered the ambulance behind him in front of the mansion, and suspected that someone must have been waiting anxiously for the ambulance to arrive. When it had, that person had hurried from the room, too preoccupied to bother closing the curtains.
    But where had that person gone? A detail that Pittman had seen in the room now acquired significance. On a carved mahogany table in front of a fireplace, there had been several teacups and coffee mugs. Okay, not one person. Several. But where ... ?
    Pittman glanced to his right toward the mansion's front steps. They were wide, made of stone. A light blazed above impressive double doors and revealed a closed-circuit camera aimed toward the steps and the area in front of the entrance. If there were other closed-circuit cameras, Pittman hadn't seen them, but he had no intention of revealing himself to this one. The best way to proceed, he decided, was to double back, to go left instead of right, and circle the mansion in the reverse direction from the one in which he'd intended to