Beyond Suspicion

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Jack kept moving, rolling from his hiding place behind the couch toward Katrina. Yuri’s bullet had torn a hole through a sofa cushion. On his hands and knees he snaked his way past the ottoman and found Katrina on a blood-soaked rug. She was lying on her back, grimacing with pain.

“How bad is it?” she asked.

Jack tugged at her neckline to expose the wound. It was just below the collarbone. “Didn’t hit a major organ. Just gotta stop the bleeding.”

“Pressure,” she said.

He grabbed a pillow from the couch and pressed it to the wound. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted the cordless phone on the cocktail table. He grabbed it and hit talk. “Dead,” he said.

“I’m sure he cut the phone lines.”

“Do you have a cell phone?”

“Not on me. You?”

“In the freakin’ kitchen. It’s in the battery charger.”

A voice boomed from the other side of the swinging door. “How’s everybody doing out there?”

“Fantastic,” said Jack. “You really know how to throw a party.”

Katrina grabbed his elbow, shushing him. “Don’t answer him. I’ll talk. Keep this between me and him.”

“It’s not between you and him. He’s got my wife.”

Yuri said, “Everybody stays put. If I hear a door open, a window slide, anything that remotely sounds like someone running for help, I put a bullet in this pretty head. And don’t even think about using a cell phone.”

Katrina replied, “Whatever you say, Yuri.” Then she looked at Jack and whispered, “So long as I keep him talking, you’ll know where he is. Is there another way into that kitchen, other than through the swinging doors?”

“Off the hallway to the bedrooms.”

“Good. That’s your entrance. If I keep him talking, he’ll be distracted. How good are you with a gun?”

He pulled his Smith amp; Wesson from under his sweatshirt. “Good enough to have shot you before you shot me.”

“I wasn’t going to shoot you,” she said.

“I know. That’s why I didn’t pull it.”

“Pulling it is one thing. Can you use it?”

“I carried a gun as a prosecutor. I’ve taken tons of target practice.”

“Then we’re in business.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“There is none. If I’m right about this guy, he’s Georgian, part of the Kurganskaya. Elite hitmen. Even the Italian Mafia uses them. He’s not going to let anyone walk out of here alive. So, you up for it or not?”

“Yeah. I’m in.”

“Good. You’ll have the advantage with the.38. Yuri’s shooting a.22. Smaller slugs, a little more erratic from a distance. That’s why he only winged me. You’re actually better off not getting too close.”

“How close do you think I should get?”

“You’ll get one shot. That’s all. Get close enough to make it count.”

Jack felt butterflies in his stomach. “All right. Let’s go.”

“Hey, Yuri,” she shouted. “This is pretty funny, isn’t it? After eight months of collecting blood for you, here I am, bleeding to death on the floor.”

Jack waited for answer, but none came. At Katrina’s signal, he started his crawl across the living room toward the main hallway.

“It was a good plan, Yuri. I thought it was especially clever the way you set up all those dummy viatical corporations. One for Jessie Merrill in Florida. One for Jody Falder in Georgia. Tell me something, though. Is there another victim for every single one of those companies you created?”

Jack kept moving across the oak floor, elbows and knees. He was trying to stay focused on his mission, play out the attack in his mind. But it was hard to ignore the things Katrina was saying.

“Every last one of them was going to die anyway,” said Yuri.

“Except for Jessie Merrill.”

“You think I killed her?”

“Seems exactly like the kind of person you’d love to kill. A young and beautiful woman who played you for a fool.”

Jack stopped. Katrina’s voice was growing weaker in the distance. He was within two meters of the hallway entrance to the kitchen. He waited for Yuri’s reply to gauge his distance from the target.

“Fuck you, Katrina.”

Short and sweet, but it was enough for Jack to guesstimate that Yuri was on the far side of the kitchen, near the two-way swinging door that led to the dining room.

“Touchy subject for you?” she said.

“Cut the crap, Katrina. I know what you’re trying to do.”

Silence fell over the entire house. Jack was inches away from making the turn into the kitchen. He grasped his revolver with both hands, drew his body into a crouch. He was at the ready.

“Swyteck!” said Yuri. “Where are you?”

The question sent Jack’s heart racing.

“Answer me,” said Yuri. “Reveal your position right now.”

Jack braced himself against the wall. He had to make a move. Charge in? Roll and shoot? He wasn’t sure. He said a five-second prayer.

“I’m going to count to three,” said Yuri. “If I don’t hear your voice, that’s how long your wife has left on this planet. One.”

Jack took a deep breath.

“Two. Th-”

Jack dived through the opening and took aim with his.38. In the blur that was his entrance, he caught sight of the swinging door flying open at the other end of the kitchen. Katrina rushed Yuri, screaming wildly to unnerve him, and Cindy screamed back. Yuri fired a shot, but it came just as Cindy was breaking free from his grasp. The bullet sailed wildly across the kitchen and took out the window over the sink. Cindy dived to the floor, and for a split second Yuri was standing in the center of the kitchen without his human shield.

Jack kept rolling to make himself a moving target. Yuri fired again but hit the oven door. Jack returned the fire, his.38 clapping like thunder in comparison to Yuri’s silenced projectiles. It happened fast, but it seemed like slow motion. The recoil of the revolver. The shot ringing out. The flash of powder from the end of the barrel. The look on Yuri’s face that changed in an instant. In what felt like the very same moment in time, Yuri was staring at Jack through the penetrating eyes of an assassin, and then the eyes were gone. His head snapped back in a blinding crimson blur.

Yuri fell to floor, a lifeless thud, blood oozing from his shattered eye socket.

Jack was momentarily frozen, until he could comprehend what he’d seen. Then he ran to Cindy. She was crying, crouched in the corner beside the refrigerator. Jack held her. She was shaking in his arms.

“Are you okay?”

Tears ran down her face, but she nodded.

Katrina groaned from the other side of the room. Jack rose and saw her lying on the floor. He rushed to her side. “Hang on, Katrina. I’m going to get help.”

“I’ll be okay. I think.”

“Cindy, my cell phone’s in the charger. Call 911. Hurry!”

Jack checked Katrina’s wound once more. It was still bleeding, but he sensed there was still time. If they were quick about it.

“Cindy, did you hear me?”

She didn’t answer.

He rose and started toward the phone, then froze. Cindy was standing in the center of the kitchen, visibly shaken, yet managing to point Yuri’s gun straight at her husband.

“Cindy, what are you doing?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice quaking. “This craziness. I can’t take it anymore. It’s all your fault.”

“Cindy, just give me the gun, okay?”

“Stay away from me!”

He stopped in his tracks. She wiped tears from her eyes with the back of her sleeve, but she kept the gun pointed at his chest.

“Have you found your son yet?” she asked.

“What?”

“The son she gave you. She told me all about it herself.”

“When?”

“After you discovered that she’d scammed you. She called me.”

“For what?”

“She played that audiotape for me. The one of you two in bed.”

“You told me that it had come from the detectives.”

“It did. But by then I’d already heard it from the source.”

Jack winced, confused. She was starting to scare him. “Why did she play you the tape?”

“She wanted to tell me that she’d had your baby. And that you two were together again.”

“If she said that, she was lying.”

“Was she?”

Jack heard a gurgling noise behind him. Katrina was fading. “Cindy, give me the gun. We can work this out. This woman needs a doctor.”

Her voice grew louder, filled with emotion. “I don’t care what she needs, damn it! Can’t you just take ten seconds of your life and let it be about me?”

“She could die, can’t you see that?”

“She’s dying, you’re dying, we’re all dying. I’m sick of this, Jack. I swear, the only time I see love in your eyes is when I wake up from a nightmare in the middle of the night or hear a strange noise outside my window and need you to hold me and tell me everything’s going to be okay.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You know what I’m talking about. Isn’t that what you really love about me?”

“No.”

“Liar! You love it that I need you. That’s all you love. So you and your Jessie Merrill can just burn in hell together. I don’t need you anymore.”

Jack couldn’t speak. He tried to make eye contact, but it was as if she were looking right through him. She was crying, but it didn’t seem like tears of sorrow. Just an outpouring of some pent-up emotion he’d never seen before.

“Cindy,” he said in a soft, even tone. “What did you do to Jessie?”

Her expression went cold, but she said nothing.

“Cindy, talk to me.”

A calmness washed over her. Jack no longer saw tears, and her body seemed to have stopped shaking. He watched the barrel of the gun as it turned away from him.

“That’s it. Give me the gun.”

It kept moving, first to one side, then up. Farther up. She glanced at Yuri’s body on the floor, then spoke in an empty voice. “It’s like the man said: We all determine our own fate.”

Jack watched in horror as she took aim at her own temple.

“No!” he cried as he lunged toward her. He fell with his full weight against her, taking her down, grabbing for the gun, trying to avert one more senseless tragedy. Somewhere in the tumble he felt her hand jerk forward.

The next thing he heard was the sickening, muffled sound of one final bullet blasting from the silencer.