Iguana

It was 2:30 a.m.  Mattie was asleep, but Rick, his state of insomnia now going on the fifth day, was sitting up in bed, keeping vigil.  At first, he was in disbelief when he heard the tumbler of the deadbolt lock on the door to the penthouse suite click open.  In moments, he knew, the chain would be cut.  Someone was entering the premises.

“Mattie,” he whispered.  “Mattie. . . wake up.”

She turned to face him, still confused from sleep.

“Listen. . . wake up.  Someone is inside.”

Her expression changed instantly from confusion to horror.

“Quietly. . . go to the bathroom. . . and wait there,” said Rick.

She slid out of bed very quietly and tiptoed to the adjoining bathroom.  As she did, Rick tucked the pillows into a pile beneath the covers, not making a sound, then positioned himself behind the partially open bedroom door.  He listened as the intruder gained access to the penthouse, slowly and quietly shutting the front door.  Rick felt his heart beating in his throat as he waited for their assailant to nudge open the bedroom door and enter their chamber.  Standing there, he noticed a pair of bronze bookends on the top of a chest of drawers against the adjacent wall.  He tiptoed over and clutched one of the bookends.  As he did, the books shifted, but didn’t fall, and his heart jumped.  He slowly removed the bookend and again took his place behind the door.  At that instant, he could feel the door slowly opening, and the first thing he saw as the assailant entered the bedroom was the muzzle of a silencer.  As the man moved slowly past the doorway, approaching the pile of pillows on the bed, Rick sprang from behind the door and struck the attacker on the back of the head, knocking him forward onto the floor and his handgun into the corner of the room, upon which Mattie rushed from the bathroom and recovered the weapon.  Their intruder was unconscious.

“Mattie. . . get dressed.  We have to get out of here.”

As she began dressing, he ran to the kitchen, found some cords in a utility drawer and ran back to the bedroom, tied the assailant’s hands and feet and stuffed a pillowcase in his mouth.

“Hope he doesn’t have a cold,” said Rick.

While he dressed, Mattie gathered their papers and Rick’s cell phone, the one furnished by the CIA.  In minutes, they were out the door.  In the hallway, just across from the elevator, they found the agent on duty with a small bullet hole in his forehead and his brains splashed on the wall behind.  A smear of blood and matter ran from where his head had been to the floor where he lay slumped against the wall in a pool of blood.

“Mattie,” asked Rick, “where is the stairwell?”

“This way,” she said.

At that moment, Rick heard the elevator in transit.  He looked up and saw the numeral one light up, then two, then three.  Someone was coming up.  He reached inside the dead agent’s coat pocket and took his I.D. badge and his gun.  Rick removed the agent’s cell phone from his waist, then he reached around the dead man and took his wallet.  No wire.

“Let’s go,” he said.  “Maybe they’ll think he’s just a hired bodyguard.”

As he opened the door to the stairwell, he could hear the elevator doors opening.

“Where does this go?” he asked.

“There’s a back door,” replied Mattie.  “We can get to it without entering the lobby.”

They flew down twelve flights of stairs to the ground level, then down a hallway leading to the rear exit.  Footsteps were now audible several floors up.  When Rick and Mattie reached the rear door, they found it chained shut.