Cutting Edge

TWELVE

The Chimera’s master bedroom. Wearing a silk robe dyed the shaded grays of twilight by the handloom weavers of Andhra Pradesh, Harlan DeVane sat at his computer in the depths of the African night and appraised the second e-mail to his enemy. He wanted to carefully reread the words he had written and view the animation his technicians had embedded with graphic image files, assuring himself that each component enriched the other, that the entire product met his every criterion.

In his intense, unmoving concentration, DeVane’s tightened lips were the same noncolor as the rest of his features. He almost could have been a waxwork figure, showing no outward sign of his satisfaction with the message’s wording and form.

Yet, satisfied he was.

Here was an example of manipulative power wielded with brilliance. Here was real wallop. How often was a hoodwink conceived to smack the eyes with its falsity… make one aware he was being toyed with?

It brought a symmetry to things that DeVane did not believe he could have manufactured, but could only have wrested from existing circumstance.

Pain did indeed cut many different ways; the child that was loved could bring about the father’s fall as surely as the child shunned and hated.

Locked onto this thought, fascinated by its many ironies, DeVane fired his ultimatum into electronic space.

Palo Alto. Morning. A downcast brow of clouds over the hills threatened another day of chill rain and mist.

In the Gordian home, Megan Breen had been running on coffee and nervous energy for hours and found her caffeine level in increasingly frequent need of a recharge. She had spent the greater part of the night doing what she could to comfort and support Ashley, and the rest of it conferring with the Sword ops who’d turned the living room into an ad-hoc base of operations. Inside, their surveillance techware occupied every available surface. Outside, their vehicles had crowded the entire drive. The thirty-acre estate had been secured by armed patrols to ensure Ashley Gordian was as safe from physical harm as anybody on earth… but Megan knew her heart could not be protected in similar fashion, and that very deeply worried her.

The e-mail arrived at the precise tick of eight o’clock. Ash had fallen off into a doze that not even total exhaustion would sustain for too long. Megan was in the kitchen dumping a soggy coffee filter into the waste bin with one hand and scooping fresh grinds into the maker’s basket with another.

One of the ops — Lehane — thrust his head into the entry.

“Ms. Breen,” he said. “Something’s jumped into your queue. We think it could be—”

Megan didn’t hear the rest as she ran past him into the living room.

The subject line of the e-mail read:

Aria di Bravura: A Song of Love and Sacrifice

Megan dropped into a chair, started to reach for the computer mouse, and then realized she’d carried the heaping plastic coffee spoon from the kitchen.

“Will somebody take this damned thing from me?” She passed it off to one of the men without turning her eyes from the display. “Thanks.”

The op stood with his hand out and glanced downward with mild surprise.

She had let go of the coffee spoon before he’d managed to reach for it, spilling a small heap of dark roast on top of his shoe.

Roger Gordian watched the e-mail open on the screen of the notebook computer he’d set up in his guest suite at Thomas Sheffield’s place.

The image that filled most of the display was of a large upraised hand of fire, its glowing orange fingers spread wide. Gradually materializing across its open palm in black text was this message:

The black text remained in place for thirty seconds and then coalesced into a rotating sphere that rapidly underwent another smooth transformation against the fiery palm, changing colors, reshaping itself into the UpLink logo: an Earth globe surrounded by intersecting satellite bandwidth lines.

Another half minute passed. The hand clenched into a fist, morphed into an red-orange fireball, and brightened. Then it suddenly plunged to the bottom of the screen like a falling comet, leaving behind an empty white void.

Gordian turned from the screen and looked over at Pete Nimec in the chair beside him.

“What’s this about?” Gordian said. His face was ashen. “Say I complied with the declaration to pull up stakes, how could anyone think I’d be able to go about convincing our investors to do the same thing? It’s inconceivable. You’re talking about fortunes. There are thousands of our employees alone who have their life savings attached to our stock. Tens of thousands. They’d be wiped out. I’m not even sure what they’d be expected to do with their shares.” He paused a moment, running a hand through his thin hair. “But I don’t know why I think I can apply sane reasoning to these demands. Not one of them is grounded in reality. There’s no way they can be met… not if I had months available.”

Nimec took a breath.

“Nobody expects you to meet them,” he said. “The whole thing’s outrageous. It’s meant to put you through your paces.”

Gordian was shaking his head. “But if that’s the case—”

Gordian fell silent. Nimec waited. They exchanged glances.

“If that’s the case, Pete… and this is all about taunting me… causing me heartache… then what’s going to happen to my daughter?” Gordian stared at Nimec. “What are the people who took Julia planning to do to her?”

Nimec hesitated, dismissing every hollow word of encouragement that came to mind. Gord deserved better from him.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t know.”

His name was Fred Gilbert, and he was vocally irate about someone ringing his telephone off the hook at seven o’clock in the morning. According to what he’d already told Glenn three or four times during his lengthy rebuke, the fact that it was a business call only worsened his unhappiness.

“This is an outrageous imposition,” he said. “Or don’t we agree a man has a right to choose his own schedule?”

“Of course, sir,” Glenn said at his end of the line. “And I apologize for having disrupted your routine—”

“My sleep.”

“Yes, sir. Your sleep—”

“Of which I require eight full hours,” Gilbert said. “You took my contact information off the club’s home page, is that correct?”

“Yes,” Glenn said. That much of his story, at least, had been true. “Mr. Gilbert, I’ve tried to explain—”

“If the times I’m available weren’t posted on the site, you might have some excuse. But they’re quite clear for anyone to read.”

“Understood, Mr. Gilbert. Again, though, I did mention—”

“I know. I have listened. You are here in California on overnight business, flying out to Baltimore at ten o’clock, and need to leave for the airport in an hour,” Gilbert said. “It is still no justification for discourtesy. Rules cannot be ignored simply because they may be inconvenient. Whether you are in town for a day, a month, or a decade, respect and discipline must be observed.” A pause. “Canines no less than humans learn by example, and I suggest you foster these qualities in yourself if you mean to own a Schutzhund trained dog.”

Glenn sat across the kitchen table from Ricci looking wearily frustrated. Having gone the entire night without shutting his eyes except to blink the crust from them, it was hard for him to commiserate with Gilbert. In the long hours since their arrival at Ricci’s apartment, the two men had worked steadily to upload the digital photos of forensic evidence and notes from the Parkville clinic to a desktop computer, sort through what they’d learned, and decide how to move forward with it. Both had centered on the items that first caught Ricci’s attention at the clinic — a numbered and labeled vial containing strands of black fur, and a cross-indexed handwritten entry on Moore’s notepad that read:

Showing Glenn the notes, Ricci had pointed to the phrase “attack dog,” gotten an oddly distant expression on his face, and shaken his head.

“That’s close, but not right,” he had said. “It’d be a Schutzhund. An animal he could totally control.”

“He?”

Ricci had glanced at Glenn, looking almost surprised by the question.

“Whoever took Julia,” he’d said and left it at that. As if no further explanation were needed. “We’ve got to find out who’d sell those dogs in this area.”

And by six A.M. a relatively swift Internet search had furnished an abundance of material about the classification in general, and some very specific information on the North Bay Schutzhund Club, of which Gilbert was founder, president, and breed warden.

Now Glenn held the receiver away from his mouth, ballooned his cheeks, and exhaled to release some of his tension.

“Sir, you can trust I’ll take your advice,” he said after a moment. “I definitely recognize my mistake…”

“I would hope so.”

“But since the harm’s been done, and you’re already out of bed, I’m hoping we can turn that mistake… inexcusable as it is… into something productive—”

“Anagkazo,” Gilbert said abruptly.

“Excuse me?”

“You told me you’d seen an individual walking a black German shepherd from the window of a car.”

Glenn remembered the hastily improvised line he’d fed him. “Yes, that’s right, a taxicab…”

“Told me it was a longhair.”

“Right.”

“Told me you wish to look into acquiring such a dog to guard home and family while you travel on business. Which is commendable.”

“Right… ah, and thanks…”

“I try to recognize positive traits in all species,” Gilbert said with no hint of sarcasm whatsoever. “At any rate, if you’d taken the extra time on your computer, you would have found the Schutzhund USA registry’s online genetic database. It lists DNA-based evaluations of each and every certified dog’s pedigree, physical conformation, and susceptibility to hip dysplasia and other health problems going back five or more generations. It also would have shown you that pure black longhairs are quite scarce. Just a handful of breeders sell them in this country. Virtually all have been imported from Europe or sired by imported breeding stock—”

Glenn wanted to get back to what Gilbert had said at the outset of his lecture.

“I don’t meant to interrupt, sir, but that word you used a minute ago…”

“Word?”

“Started with an ‘A,’ I think… ana-something-or-other…”

“Anagkazo.”

“Right, right…”

“That’s a name,” Gilbert said testily. “John Anagkazo. Good respectful fellow up in the hills. Our homepage has a link to his Web site. If the shepherd is indeed Schutzhund qualified and was purchased in the state of California, you can be guaranteed his farm is where it came from.”

About eighty miles west of San Jose, the Anagkazo ranch sat on multiple acres of rolling grassy field laid with training tracks, hurdles, agility and obstacle course equipment of various configurations, and a large open pen area for the dogs out back of the main house, a restored wood-frame that might have been a century old.

Ricci and Glenn found the breeder waiting at his door when they drove up at nine o’clock. As they exited their car, Ricci turned on his cellular and saw a half dozen new voice messages for him. The log showed four with Thibodeau’s office number. The two most recent ones had come from a phone with Caller ID blocking — Breen at Gordian’s house, he would have bet. Ricci wasn’t prepared to return any of them. The Parkville Vet Clinic didn’t open till ten, but he figured the cops outside would have awakened by now. Or if they hadn’t, they’d have been found by their fellow police checking up to see why they hadn’t responded to routine radio checks. Erickson would know the clinic had been broken into, recognize it was a slick job, smell right away it was tied to the kidnapping. But Ricci had left nothing out of place, and that would throw some question marks into his head. Anything Erickson thought couldn’t be more than be a guess. And whoever made Julia disappear would probably top his suspect list. Would UpLink be on it? Not as an organization. Ricci thought he might rate on his own, though. Maybe high enough for Erickson to conduct some inquiries before eliminating him… even if that other detective, Brewer, was too afraid of getting jammed to admit he’d given him a peek at that crime scene diagram. Erickson nosing around UpLink could be trouble, and Ricci couldn’t afford to worry about it until later.

He turned off the phone, snapped it back into his belt clip, and a moment later joined Glenn at the door.

“Hi, I’m John Anagkazo.” The breeder smiled through a thick beard, putting out his hand for them to shake. “I saw your car from way down the road… I’m guessing you must be Misters Ricci and Glenn. With Uplink International, is it?”

Glenn nodded and showed his Sword ID.

“Corporate security, Mr. Anagkazo,” he said.

“Sure, sure. You told me over the phone. I hear super things about you folks.” Anagkazo looked curious. “C’mon in… and call me John, please. No need to wrestle with the second name.”

Ricci was looking past him through the door at the head of an enormous, large-boned German shepherd.

“Long as your friend won’t mind,” he said, nodding at the dog.

Anagkazo smiled.

“Bach’s fine,” he said. “Won’t bother anybody who doesn’t bother me.”

They followed him into a living room with a strong Southwestern feel — earth-toned geometric patterns on the rugs and upholstery, hand-crafted solid-wood furniture. The shepherd trailed behind them, waited for Anagkazo to lower himself into his chair, and stretched out beside him, nuzzling a leather chew toy on the floor.

“It must’ve been quite a ride for you out of San Jose,” Anagkazo said. “I can put up some fresh coffee…”

“Thanks, we’re okay,” Ricci said. “I’d kind of like to get right to why we came.”

Anagkazo shrugged. He waited.

“We’ve been trying to get some information about black longhaired shepherds,” Ricci said. “From what we hear, you’re the only local person who breeds them. And gives them Schutzhund training.”

Anagkazo nodded.

“At every level,” he said, “including specialized training. I’ve been at it a while, and about sixty percent of my business nowadays is with police and fire departments all around the country… I’m very proud of that.”

And the pride looked real. As did his friendly, helpful demeanor. Ricci had studied his face and body language for any changes and seen none indicating he might be on the defensive.

“So, what sort of questions have you got?” Anagkazo said. “I need to tell you right off there’s a wait on long-coated sables.”

“They’re that popular?” Glenn said.

Anagkazo shrugged.

“It isn’t really about popularity for me.” He reached down over the armrest of his chair and scratched his dog’s neck. “Black-and-reds like Bach here are very well established lines in this country, and we’ve got a wide pool of sires and dams. But I just introduced the sables a few years ago — four generations into it now — and I don’t want to risk overbreeding my stock. That’s how you pass along congenital diseases, temperament problems, a whole bunch of weaknesses you’d rather see go away.” A pause. “A dog has to be at least a year and a half old to qualify for basic Schutzhund classification. There’s a litter of blacks due in January, plus two sixteen-month-olds that are almost ready for placement and have full deposits on them. Which is too bad—”

Ricci broke in. “You sell any lately?”

“That’s just what I was about mention,” Anagkazo said. He was still scratching his shepherd. “If you’re interested in blacks I’d have to say this is crummy timing. The deposit on the pair of dogs came a few days ago from a big-time movie director who’s got a South Hampton estate in New York. And I sold my only other three beauties a couple weeks back to a photographer who’s staying right over on the Peninsula… well, actually, drove out and delivered them to his cabin, way off the beaten path in Big Sur country. Three dogs. Some guys who work for him had prepaid last month. I guess while he was getting settled into the place.”

Ricci looked at him.

“He have a name?”

“Estes,” Anagkazo said. “Nothing confidential. He’s new in the country, I think… from Europe.”

Ricci kept looking at him.

“Where in Europe?”

“Didn’t say. Or I don’t remember him saying, anyway. But I got the sense he’s one of those people who’s lived everywhere. Money to spend, you know. Has an accent you can’t place… sort of a worldly mix, reminded me of how Yul Brynner, the actor, used to sound. It’s why he could play the part of a pharaoh, the king of Siam, or a Mexican bandit, and it always seemed believable.”

Ricci felt something unnameable rear inside him. Felt its teeth.

“The photographer,” he said. His eyes were on the breeder’s face. “Describe him to me.”

Anagkazo straightened a little in his chair. The curiosity he’d first shown at the door had become laced with a certain unease.

“Square chinned. Tall. Strong-looking… a real hard-body type.” He moved his hand up from his shepherd’s neck to his armrest. “Has this fella done anything wrong?”

Ricci’s jaw muscles worked. It was as though, suddenly, his brain had locked around whatever words he might have given in answer, perhaps even his ability to articulate any response at all.

Glenn glanced his way, saw his fixed expression, and turned toward Anagkazo.

“John,” he said. “You’d better tell us exactly where we can find him.”

Thibodeau had spent the morning at his desk answering phone calls, but as each hour passed he had grown increasingly convinced the one call he’d been hoping for wouldn’t come.

When his latest jump at the receiver proved him wrong, he immediately found himself wondering whether to be glad or sorry.

“Ricci. Where’re you now—?”

“Never mind,” Ricci said. “All you need to worry about’s what I tell you.”

“I been leaving messages on your voice mail, waiting to hear from you for hours,” Thibodeau chafed. “Same goes for Megan—”

“Save it and listen.”

Thibodeau reddened. “We got Erickson poking around, trouble piled on top ‘a trouble. And you act like keepin’ in touch be something gonna stunter you—”

“You want to find Julia Gordian and the murdering scum you like to call the Wildcat, you better shut up and listen.”

Thibodeau fell silent, breathing hard. After Erickson had phoned him that morning to ask questions about a break-in at the animal clinic, he’d immediately known Ricci was in it up to his neck… known and only wanted some sort of accounting before he could hang that miserable neck from a rope. But he’d taken care not to alert the detective. Even in his anger, he’d wondered if Ricci might have found something to go on.

Julia, he thought. The Wildcat… le Chaut Sauvage.

Thibodeau would not in his wildest stretch of imagination have believed he would hear them mentioned in the same sentence.

“Go on,” he said. He was almost panting now. “Can’t waste time.”

“I’m headed to Big Sur. It’ll take me maybe an hour to get up there, and I’ll need support. Ed Seybold from my old team. Newell and Perry if you can get hold of them. Maybe a half a dozen other men, but no more… have Seybold pick the rest.”

Thibodeau swallowed. “Big Sur cover a lot of ground, you gonna narrow it down—?”

“Just make sure those men are pulled together, I’ll be in touch with you,” Ricci interrupted.

And then the line went dead in Thibodeau’s hand.

Siegfried Kuhl was pensive.

Looking out through his terrace doors into the rain, watching it spill down the precipitous wall of the cliff in windblown whirls and ripples, his mind had returned to his abduction of the robin who was now bound to a chair across the room from him, his mind bringing him back to the moment Lido had been attacked by the greyhound.

The bite had done little to injure the Schutzhund, its thick coat preventing the other dog’s teeth from sinking too deeply into its flesh. And Kuhl had been quick to finish things with his weapon. Yet he had wondered ever since if the true harm might have been to his plans, occurring the moment the animals made contact.

The dead flesh and bones of the dog he had shot — might it not hold clues that could eventually lay a path to him? He had been unable to dismiss the thought that there might be blood, fur, or other traceable physical evidence that could identify the shepherd. It was an uncommon creature, after all. And if the evidence were direct enough, and the breeder Anagkazo spoke to those in search of Gordian’s daughter…

If he spoke to them before Kuhl’s men were able to take care of him, the time left until he needed to head out to the fallback might very well be limited to hours, if not minutes. And though the storm would make travel there difficult, he had ordered Anton and Ciras out to fill the Explorer with basic supplies — water, protein bars, first aid — so that he might vacate the cabin as soon as possible.

After all Kuhl’s preparation, it staggered him to think the success of his task might be threatened by a simple miscalculation of how the greyhound would react to his forced entry of the rescue center.

Kuhl turned from the terrace to his captured robin. He looked into her eyes over the cloth gag knotted around her mouth. That particular restraint had been unnecessary except as a precaution, he mused. Realizing she was in a place where cries for help would be of no use, she had held a silence Kuhl found admirable. She had showed no frailty, done no pleading save for the lives of the woman and infant at the rescue center, and the dog that attempted to protect her.

Even now, Kuhl thought, her steady gaze did not present him with any sign of weakness.

He moved away from her, went to the desk where he had sat long nights at his computer, and looked inside its top drawer. Waiting there was the tool steel combat knife he would use when the moment to dispose of her finally came.

Her head pulled back from behind without warning, a deep cut across the throat…

In his admiration, Kuhl would give Julia Gordian as sudden and painless a death as his expert hand could render.

It was, he thought, the very least she deserved.

The clouds had reasserted themselves throughout the morning to form a massive gray band that stretched along the coastline from Half Moon Bay southward to Point Conception and was widest from the Santa Lucia Mountains on east across the Ventana wilderness and Los Padres National Forest. By midday, rain was falling heavily again, the charcoal gray sky cat-clawed with lightning, thunder rumbling like great millstones in its turbulent lower and middle altitudes.

Ricci and Glenn watched two men exit the cabin and stride toward a white Ford Explorer parked only a few straight yards from where they were crouched side by side under cover of the trees. One of the men carried a portage pack, his companion a couple of nylon zip duffels.

Ricci’s eyes briefly went to Glenn.

“I’m betting that’s survival gear,” he whispered.

Glenn nodded.

“Looks to be,” he said.

Water spilling from the porous roof of leaves above them, they observed the pair in silence. In what had seemed almost a reenactment of their previous night’s work at the animal hospital, they had left their car about a half mile back and then climbed the rest of the way up the hillside on foot. The thick frock of woodland on the slope offered vital concealment and also made for some tough going — steep grades, impassable thickets, streams swollen by the unrelenting rains, and patches of soggy ground with unsafe footing had forced several detours. But they’d pushed forward and were mostly able to stay within eyeshot of the paved road, sticking close whenever possible. After about an hour’s hike, they had finally seen one of the huge limestone gateposts described by Anagkazo off to their left, picked up the dirt route that led to the crest of the bluff, and then stolen alongside it to their present spot.

Now they continued to watch as the two figures from the cabin strode around back of the SUV, keyed open its hatch, raised it, loaded the bags inside, and then pulled the cargo shade over them.

Ricci unholstered his sound-suppressed Five-Seven from his belt.

“You set?” he said.

Glenn took a breath and gave him another nod. He had a leather slapper flat against his palm, preferring its directness to the DMSO spray.

They shuffled over several feet to put themselves behind the Explorer, then waited a moment. Ricci pointed to the man on the left, pointed to himself, and got a final affirmative nod from Glenn. He held up three fingers and started to sign the count.

His third finger ticked down and they sprang.

Though large and muscular, Glenn was clear of the dripping brush and on top of Mr. Right in a flicker. He struck the back of his head with the sap, his blow pounding onto the base of the skull, and the man buckled in a heap.

Ricci had simultaneously rushed out behind Mr. Left, locked an arm around his throat, and put the bore of his gun against his temple. The guy snapped back his head, trying to butt him hard under the chin despite the choke-hold and pressure of the nine mil — guts, good reflexes. Ricci slipped the move, spun him around by his shoulder, and brought a knee up into his middle below the diaphragm.

Mr. Left sagged back against the Explorer, the wind knocked out of him.

This time Ricci got the nine right into his face, pressed its barrel to the side of his nose, right about at the nub of the tear gland. Quickly patting the guy down, he found a Sig.380 in a concealed shoulder holster and a card wallet in the back pocket of his slacks.

Ricci tucked the Sig under his belt and flipped open the wallet’s ID window.

“Barry Hughes,” he said, glancing at the driver’s license. “That who you are?”

As Mr. Right started to nod against the upward pressure of his gun, Ricci tossed the wallet into a puddle and drove a fist into his cheek. Something gave at the hinge of the jaw.

“Give me your real name,” Ricci said.

The guy was silent, blood overspilling his lower lip.

“Your name.” Ricci stared into his face, pushing his Five-Seven deeper into the corner of his eye. He could see the skin below the socket crinkle under the end of its barrel. “Let me hear it or I’ll kill you.”

The guy looked at him without answering for perhaps three more seconds.

“Anton, you fucker,” he said at last, front teeth smeared red, his speech already distorted from the fractured jaw. It came out sounding like Antunnn yfuker.

Ricci nodded. At the periphery of his vision, he saw Glenn unlock the Explorer’s passenger door with the key he’d pulled from its hatch, reach in to give the ignition a quarter turn, then lower the window and cuff the other guy’s wrists around the vertical bar of its frame.

Grabbing his man by the shirt collar now, Ricci pulled him off the flank of the vehicle with a sudden wrench.

“Anton, I know your mouth hurts, but you’ll need to talk to us about a few things before giving it a rest,” he said.

There was a door at the side of the cabin that offered admittance to the kitchen and, directly beyond it, the living room.

Ricci had Anton lead the way to the door at gunpoint, one hand clamped over his shoulder, the other holding the Five-Seven to his ear behind the loose, misshapen swell of his jawbone. Behind them, Glenn had the stock of his VVRS cradled against his upper arm as he held it forward at the ready.

“Open the door,” Ricci said. He nudged Anton with the gun. “No surprises.”

Anton turned the knob, pulled. The rain was a constant susurrus that muffled the sound of its opening. Listening carefully, however, Ricci could hear a faint rustling in the brush to his right.

Okay, he thought.

Standing at an angle to the door, hidden from within behind the outer wall of the house, Ricci flung a glance around Anton through the small unoccupied kitchen. Past the living-room archway, three men were at a table playing cards. A fourth seated on a sofa to the extreme right seemed to be dozing there, arms folded behind his head, his legs outstretched and crossed at the ankles. The sables were lying at rest on the carpet between them. One of the dogs raised itself a little at the sound of the opening door, recognized Anton’s familiar presence across the length of the two rooms, then lowered its shaggy head back onto the floor.

Ricci turned slightly, motioned with his chin, and side-stepped.

A burly hand came around Anton’s bloodied mouth from behind, clapped over it, and pulled him back into the rain. Ricci heard the hiss of released aerosol to his left, then a shifting of foliage as Anton was ditched out of sight.

Thibodeau emerged from the wet vegetation, relieved of the unconscious man, slipping a DMSO canister into his belt holder. The rest of the entry team was in position on either side of the door.

Ricci looked at Thibodeau’s bearded face for the barest instant, then turned toward the open door again. Anton had spilled plenty outside the Explorer, and had seemed scared enough to have been telling the truth when he said the Killer was upstairs — which would mean the dogs would be no threat down here. They would do nothing belligerent without his personal command.

“I’m going in,” he whispered and ran into the cabin without a backward look.

Ricci’s estimate of Anton’s honesty under the gun proved right on. The flunky had told him the short spiral staircase would be in the living room, past the archway to his immediate left, and there it was, exactly where it was supposed to be.

His Five-Seven out in his hand, he crossed the kitchen in a dash. Ahead of him, the Killer’s men were springing to their feet, but then Ricci swung toward the stairs, and bounded up onto them, and suddenly the commotion and movement was behind and below him. He took the steps several at time, vaulting up them, knowing he had seconds at best to get to the bedroom. There were shouts, exchanges of gunfire, more shouts, all distant echoes outside the narrow, winding, ascending shaft of his awareness. Behind, below, outside, somewhere in another world. Ricci cared only about getting up to the second floor, and the taste in his mouth, the taste of his want.

And now he was at the upstairs landing and off it into a short hall. He paused a beat. How long since he’d entered the cabin? Five seconds? Ten? Maybe he’d have five more. Tops, five. Four, three…

There were a couple of wide doors along the hallway to his right, adjacent to each other. Another narrower one to his left — a closet. That second door on the right, Anton had told him it was the master bedroom, was where the Killer had her, where the Killer would be…

Ricci made his choice, lunged forward, stopped for half a heartbeat, kicked his foot out against the first door at the point where the latch met the hasp. It flung open, crashed back against the wall, and he burst into the room, his Five-Seven in a two-handed police grip—

His back to the open doors of a terrace overlooking the seaward plunge of the bluff, the Killer stood across the room by a plain wooden chair.

She was in it. Gagged. Trussed. Hands bound behind her with rope, bound to the chair.

Above the gag, on her face, an expression of terror without surrender.

Ricci reached into himself for her name, pulled it through the atavistic howl of rage filling his mind.

Julia.

She. Was. Julia.

The Killer was holding a combat knife to her throat.

“Let her go,” Ricci said. His eyes on the Killer’s eyes. The Five-Seven thrust out in front of him. “Let her go now.”

The Killer did not move.

The blade in his grip, its honed edge against her throat, he did not move.

Ricci unwrapped the fingers of one hand from the gun, reached back, felt for the door, pushed it shut. Somewhere behind it, on the other side, the shouts and gunfire were fading. There were footsteps coming rapidly up the stairs.

The Killer kept staring at Ricci in silence. He did not move the knife from Julia’s throat.

The footsteps had reached the door now. Behind it, an urgent shout:

“Ricci!” Glenn’s voice. “Ricci you in there?”

Ricci didn’t answer.

“Ricci—”

“Stay out,” Ricci said. “Tell everybody to back off.”

Through the door, Glenn said, “What’s happening? Is Julia—?”

“She’s okay,” Ricci said. “Thibodeau and the others will be right behind you on those stairs. Just keep everyone down the hall. Don’t ask questions.”

Ricci looked at the Killer.

“Let her go,” he repeated a third time. “It’s finished.”

The Killer did not move his knife.

“She’s piecework to you. Nothing. Just another job,” Ricci said. His gun remained level with the Killer’s heart. “You do her, I do you, what’s the point? But there’s still something in this room you want. Something you’ve wanted since Khazakhstan. Since Ontario. And I’m giving you a chance to have it. I’m promising you the chance.”

The Killer watched Ricci’s face.

Studied it for another long, long moment.

Then he dropped his knife hand from the soft white flesh of Julia’s throat, went behind the chair, cut the ropes around her wrists with one quick slice, crouched, severed her ankle bindings, and straightened. Only the gag remained uncut.

Ricci nodded slowly.

“There’s been no circulation in her legs,” he said. “Step away from the chair — two steps to your right — so I can help her up.”

The Killer stepped back.

Still covering him with the gun, Ricci moved toward the chair, slipped an arm around Julia, and eased her to a standing position, not letting her stumble, holding her erect with his own strength, gradually feeling her legs take over. Above the gag, her face remained composed.

“You can make it on your own now,” Ricci said to her. Then he tilted his head back toward the door, raised his voice. “Glenn… you hear me?”

From outside the door: “Yeah. Hearing you fine. Sounds like they’ve got things under control downstairs.”

“Good,” Ricci said. “I’m sending Julia out. Stay away, don’t come near the door. Don’t let anybody else get close to it, either. No matter what, got me?”

“Ricci—”

“Got me?”

A pause.

“Yeah,” Glenn said, then. “Yeah, man. I do.”

Ricci backed toward the door, his gun on the Killer, his free hand on Julia, steadying her, guiding her along with him. He reached behind him again, opened the door just wide enough for her to pass through and nodded for her to leave.

She hesitated, looking at him.

“Go,” he said. “It’ll be all right.”

Julia held her gaze on him for another moment. Then she nodded and went through the opening.

Ricci slammed the door shut behind her.

“We’re almost ready,” he said. His weapon pointed at the Killer. “Better slide that chair across to me.”

It was pushed forward. Ricci swept it around his body and leaned it against the door, wedging its back under the doorknob. Then he set his gun down on a small table he’d seen out the corner of his left eye.

Outside the door, he could hear Thibodeau’s voice shouting up from downstairs, then Glenn answering him, telling him Ricci had gotten Julia out, that she was free of any threat. There were some more words exchanged between them, followed by the tread of heavy ascending footsteps.

Ricci saw something like a smile on the Killer’s face as he dropped his knife to the floor, and then pushed it aside with his foot.

“Now,” the Killer said, “we take our chances.”

Ricci nodded.

“Now,” he said.

Kuhl and Ricci advanced on each other, sidling for position as they moved into the center of the room.

His fists clenched, his sinewy arms raised to protect his head, Ricci bounced a little on his knees to loosen them up. His opponent had a good three inches on him, a longer reach. Probably twenty or thirty more pounds of muscle slabbed over his broad frame. He would have to get in close and tight, rely on speed to overcome those advantages.

Kuhl shifted now, feinted toward him. Ricci didn’t buy it. His hands still blocking, he wove around him, found an opening under the massive arms, came in low with a right uppercut meant for the chin.

Faster than he looked, Kuhl parried the blow sidearm, tried grasping hold of Ricci’s outthrust wrist to pull him off his feet. But Ricci slipped the grab, got back away from his reach, and then rounded again, setting himself to throw another punch across Kuhl’s body.

This time Kuhl was even more prepared, his left foot snapping out at the moment before contact, getting between Ricci’s legs to kick the inside of his opposite shin and throw him off balance. Before Ricci could recover, a right hook came smashing hard against his cheek.

Ricci went staggering, the side of his face exploding with pain, blood filling his mouth, his vision momentarily dimming. And then Kuhl was coming in on him again, hitting him with a series of powerful jabs, his fists repeatedly, brutally pounding Ricci’s face and neck.

Ricci felt gravity pulling him down, dragging at his legs and head, and managed to resist it barely in time to duck an overhand right that seemed to shoot straight for his eyes out of a grainy nowhere. He sucked in a breath to fill his chest with air, inhaled again, again, and then shuffled a little to get his heart pumping and dispel the motes of swirling nothingness from his vision.

Kuhl was not about to give him that opportunity. He launched forward, his fingers pointed outward, going for Ricci’s eyes, trying to blind him, gouge his eyes from their sockets with the tips of those stabbing fingers. Ricci shifted back, bobbed down under the hand, swallowed more air, got more of the blackness out of his face, and then came up under the Killer’s throat, came up fast, jamming his cocked right elbow into it with all the strength he could muster, connecting with it right below the knob of his Adam’s apple.

Kuhl grunted, swayed a little. A small, moist sound escaped his throat. Ricci pressed him, knowing this might be his only break, needing to make the most of it. Chin low, feet planted wide, he bored into Kuhl, pistoning his fists into Kuhl’s stomach and sides, pounding him with lefts, rights, jabs, pressing, pressing, his knuckles hammering him with one blow after the next.

Then Ricci felt the Killer loosen up, or maybe slip, he wasn’t sure, didn’t care, just knew he had him where he wanted him, and rammed his kneecap up between his legs, digging it into his groin.

Kuhl went down to the floor, kneeling, sagging forward, attempting to brace himself from going flat on his face with his outspread palms. But Ricci stayed on top of him, kicking his face, arms, legs, and body, making him bleed, opening wounds all over him, watching the redness spurt from his torn, lacerated flesh.

Wanting to bring him down as low as he possibly could.

And then, suddenly, coming up in the Killer’s fist, a bright flash of steel.

The combat knife.

He’d gotten the knife off the floor.

It flicked up, and then out, as Kuhl successfully thrust the blade in Ricci’s direction, jabbing its point into the back of his right leg.

Ricci felt its hot/cold penetration deep in his thigh muscle, swung a final kick at the Killer’s hand with his opposite foot, managing to land it between his wrist and elbow.

Kuhl’s fingers opened, dropping away from the knife handle. Lurching forward, his head bowed, blood and saliva pouring from his mouth, the Killer propped himself on his knee, tried to thrust himself to his feet, failed, and started to topple forward.

Ricci caught him by the front of the shirt on the way down.

“Here, murderer,” he said, the knife still sticking out of his thigh. “Here’s a little help for you.”

He hauled Kuhl up onto his rubbery legs, simultaneously turning him toward the terrace, forcing him backward, standing him up against the glass doors, using his own weight to prop Kuhl’s limp, weakened body against the doors as he reached out over his shoulder, slid one of them partially open by its handle, and again pushed him backward — through the opening now, into the wind and rain, back and back and back across the terrace to the guardrail.

The rain swirling around them, lashing them, washing their blood down onto the terrace floor so it mingled together in flowing, guttering cascades that went spilling over the lip of the terrace into the drop, Ricci held the Killer up and looked into his face, shaking him hard, his fists around the bunched wet fabric of his shirt, holding him, holding him there against the iron guardrail above the vertiginous, storm-swept plunge of the canyon and staring into his eyes for one last, long moment of time.

“You son of a bitch,” he said. “You son of a bitch, we did this to each other.”

And pushed him over into the abyss.

Thibodeau had heard the crashing in the room on the cabin’s second floor and wondered what in the name of everything holy was going on.

Upstairs now, working his way down the hall past Derek Glenn, Julia being hustled out of the cabin behind him, it was the room’s sudden dead silence that had gotten his mind racing everywhere at once.

Thibodeau tried to push in the door, found it blocked, and ordered the men behind him to put the ram to it.

Moving through the splintered doorframe into the room, he noticed two things that made his eyes grow wide.

The first was Ricci sitting on the floor, rain blowing over him through an open terrace door. He had propped himself back against the wall, a wide pool of blood under his right leg, a slick reddened knife on the floor beside him.

The second thing Thibodeau noticed was that he was alone.

Thibodeau put away his questions for the moment, rushed across the room, and crouched over him.

“You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, gonna need something to stop the flow,” he said. Then he saw that Ricci had gotten open the tac pouch on his belt and was struggling to fish something from inside it. “What’re you looking for in there? I can help you get it out…”

Ricci looked at him, hesitated a beat.

“Wound-closure gel,” he said, nodding for him to reach inside.