"I never understood.'" Gray mimicked her, his voice raised in a falsetto. "You bet you didn't. You never got me at all."
He chuckled, an ugly sound.
"All that shit about my daddy burning me and belting mefuck, yeah, he did, 'cause I was always shoplifting and setting fires and ripping off his cash. Okay, he wasn't no A-one parent. And my mama was a dumb ugly cow who never opened her mouth 'cept to stuff it with cheeseburgers and fries. They were a pair of low cards I drew, but fuck it all, I still don't blame them for the way I turned out. You're the one who's into the blame game. Me, I know my childhood sucked, and now I get to make other people's lives suck. Seems fair, don't it? What goes around, comes around. And now it's coming around to you, Doc. You and Meg."
Robin pulled Meg closer. "Don't do this, Justin, please."
"You don't tell me what to do, Doc-aroo. I'm the one running this show."
"Take me if you want, but not Meg"
"Shut up."
"Please, not Meg"
"I said, shut the fuck up!"
He struck her hard across the face, a ringing blow that sent her reeling backward into one of the old crates strewn on the floor. She fell on it, and the crate shattered, throwing up white whorls of dust.
In the passenger seat of his sedan, Hammond was on the dashboard radio.
"We're code two to the scene. Request Air Support at Central Avenue and Fourteenth. Have reason to believe the fugitive Justin Gray is in the vicinity. Tell ASTRO to look for a green late-model Volkswagen. Hold on." He turned to Lewinsky in the backseat. "How big a coverage area for the cell tower?"
"An urban sector's maybe one or two city blocks, that's all."
He spoke into the microphone again. "We're looking at a radius of one to two blocks."
"Roger that," the dispatcher said. "Air Fourteen en route, ETA two minutes."
"They'll beat us there," the driver said.
Hammond nodded. "But not by much."
Robin's head echoed with the punch. She tasted blood in her mouth. Her tongue seemed large and unwieldy.
She made an effort to rise, but fell down, coughing on dust and wood splinters.
Meg was screaming. Gray seized her by the hair and hauled her to the center of the room, where the two conveyor belts stood side by side under the skylight. He lifted Meg and flung her down on the nearest conveyor belt. The impact stunned her into silence. She lay on her back atop the rusted mechanism, the stars glowing down on her. She looked, Robin thought wearily, like a sacrifice on an altar.
"I been in stir a year without a taste of pussy," Gray said. "Got me a hard-on like a Louisville slugger, and it's all for you."
"Chief Hammond, Air Fourteen on tac one."
Hammond switched to the tactical frequency and heard the voice of the airship's observer.
"Air Fourteen. We have a visual on the Volkswagen. Parked in an alley in back of a large industrial site at Central and Pico. Second vehicle at the same locationone of ours, a slickback." Slickback was LAPD slang for a black-and-white police vehicle without roof lights. "No signs of occupancy in either car."
"A slickback?" Lewinsky said from the backseat. "Whose is it?"
It was easy enough to identify the car from the air. The last three digits of the shop number were stenciled on the roof, and the division number was similarly displayed on the trunk. But Hammond wasn't worried about the slickback at the moment.
"Forget the LAPD car for now, Air Fourteen. We're looking for a Caucasian male on foot. He's wearing a denim jacket and tan or brown pants." The carjack victim had given the description to the first patrol officers on the scene.
"Air Fourteen, roger. No visual on suspect. There's a means of ingress to the factory groundsan open gate."
"Gray could be inside the building," Banner said, master of the obvious.
Hammond turned to the driver. "Bring us around to the back alley. We're going in." He switched from the tac frequency to the main comm channel. "This is Hammond, requesting Central Area patrol units as backup."
The dispatcher rogered him.
"We wait for the backup, right?" Banner asked nervously.
"No, we don't." As the car swung off the freeway onto Central Avenue, Hammond drew the pistol from his belt holster. It had never been fired on the job. "Lock and load, gentlemen."
While Robin watched, Gray thrust the gun into his waistband, then climbed onto the conveyor belt. He straddled Meg, who lay unmoving, frozen by shock.
"Don't act like you never had none before," Gray said. "I told your mommy you ain't no virgin. Your cherry's been popped good. Am I right?"
From Meg, a whimper. "Yes."
Gray glanced across the room, meeting Robin's eyes with a smile of triumph. "Told you so. Your baby girl's a whore. Well, I know how to treat a whore." He unzipped his pants. "You're gonna like this, sweet thing."
Meg moaned. She still couldn't move.
But Robin could.
Her pain and shock had receded. Only anger and adrenaline remained.
Gray leaned over Meg, a jackal on a carcass. He wasn't looking in Robin's direction.
He didn't see her get to her feet, teeth gritted against a swirl of light-headedness.
She picked up a plank from the smashed carton. She advanced on Gray as his shoulders moved in the starlight.
"You want it, don't you, bitch? All you young cunts want what I got. It may be a little big for youI'm what you call supersizedbut I guarantee it'll fit just fine."
Robin lashed out with the plank. She caught Gray on the side of the head, and there was blood and a rip of flesh, and she realized there had been a nail in the plank.
He was howling as he swung off the conveyor belt, his face bleeding, penis hanging out of his fly.
She hit him again. He stumbled away.
"Meg, run!"
Shaken out of her paralysis, Meg scrambled off the conveyor belt and made a move for the exit. Gray darted in front of her to block her escape.
"There are other rooms in back," Robin shouted. "Hide there and don't come out no matter what."
She didn't wait to see if Meg complied. She ran for Gray and swung the board again.
He seized the plank by the edges, ripped it out of her hands, and threw it aside.
And he laughed.
The laugh told Robin that all this time he'd been playing games with her.
He liked games. He'd let her think she had a chance. But that was all over now.
"You're dead," he told her, his hand reaching into his waistband for the gun.
The chopper's Nightsun searchlight prowled the factory grounds, illuminating the vast expanse of the parking lot, as Hammond addressed his troopsBanner, Lewinsky, his driver, and four patrol officers from the crash site.
"All right, people, I want us going in prepared for anything. Gray's in there. He seems to have someone with him." He noticed Lewinsky on his rover. "Something up, Lieutenant?"
"Slickback's been ID'd, Chief," Lewinsky said. "It was signed out of Newton Area by Detective Tomlinson."
"Tomlinson? What the hell is he doing here?"
"Nobody seems to know."
Banner, looking more anxious than ever, drifted close to Hammond. "Chief," he said, his voice low, "you sure we don't wait for backup? Or for SWAT, maybe?"
"With the possibility of one or more civilians and a fellow officer inside?"
"I'm a media guy. I used to work Traffic. I didn't sign up for this."
"You're signed up now, Phil." Hammond raised his voice to address the group. "Move out."
Robin saw the gun in Gray's hand. At this range he couldn't miss.
She turned and ran. There was no place to hide in the empty room, no time to get to the hallway where other rooms might provide concealment. There was only the open door to the cellar. She threw herself onto the landing.
Behind her, the gun boomed.
Was she hit? She didn't think so.
On hands and knees she crossed the landing. The flashlight, still resting there, spun and rolled against the door, shining into the main room, lighting up Gray as he bounded over the conveyor belt and sprinted toward her.
She picked up the flashlight and pitched it at him, a feeble gesture. He laughed again. She reached the stairs and tumbled down, colliding with something soft and fleshy, which was Detective Tomlinson, dead, his face shot away, and in his hand was his gun.
She pried it out of his fingers, and Gray burst through the door, and she raised the gun in both hands and fired.
Her finger worked the trigger again and again, muzzle flashes flickering in the cellar. She had never fired a gun in her life, had never even handled one, and she had no idea if she was hitting anything or not.
She pulled the trigger until the gun was empty, and then over the furious clamor in her ears she heard voices.
"LAPD, drop your weapon!"
The police were here. Better late than never.
She set down the empty gun. Slowly she pushed herself upright and climbed the stairs.
The wavering beams of several flashlights had found Gray on the landing. He lay curled in a fetal pose, groaning softly. Blood crisscrossed his body in a red skein.
As she reached the landing, the flashlights discovered her.
"It's me," she said weakly. "Robin Cameron."
Her own name sounded unreal, as if it belonged to some other person, or to a person she used to be.
The police didn't respond for a moment, giving her time to think that these officers might be part of the conspiracy too. If they were, then all her efforts had been wasted, and she and Meg were dead.
Then one of the menDeputy Chief Hammond, she realizedcame forward. "Are you all right?"
"I'm fine."
The statement struck her as absurd under the circumstances, yet somehow it was true.
"Call an RA," Hammond snapped to the man next to him, the one named Lewinsky, who'd been hostile to Wolper. "Call twoone for Dr. Cameron, one for him." His curt gesture indicated Gray. "What happened here, Doctor?"
She ignored the question. "I need to find Meg," Robin said.
"Is she here?"
"I sent her"she waved toward the offices and hallways"sent her to hide."
"Banner," Hammond said.
"I'm on it, Chief." The man named Banner left the room, following the glow of his flashlight down the hall.
Robin stepped past Gray and the two officers kneeling beside him on the landing. They seemed to be checking his vitals. As a doctor, she was in the best position to offer medical assistance, but she had no strength for it and, at the moment, no concern whether Justin Gray lived or died.
"What happened?" Hammond asked again.
"How did you find me?"
"Traced your phone call."
So hitting redial had worked. She stooped and retrieved her purse from the floor, then ended the call, breaking the connection.
"Doctor?" That was Hammond again.
"I shot him," she said, finally answering his question. "I shot Justin Gray."
"I can see that. Where's the gun you used?"
"In the cellar. Along with a dead man, Detective Tomlinson."
Hammond was bewildered. "You shot him too?"
"Gray did."
"What was Tomlinson doing here?"
"He came to kill Meg."
"This isn't making sense, Doctor."
"It will. I can't explain it all now. Wolper was part of it"
"Wolper?"
"And Tomlinson and probably others."
"What possible connection could Tomlinson or Wolper have with Gray?"
"No connection. That's why they used him. He was the fall guy." She looked at the bleeding man. "He likes to play games, you know. This time, somebody tried playing a game on him."
Hammond shook his head. "I don't understand."
"It will all make sense. Later."
He seemed to accept this. She knew she should say more, but she was tired, very tired amp;
Her cell phone rang. She wondered who it could be, and if she should even answer. Out of habit she fished the phone out of her purse and took the call. "Yes?"
"Dr. Cameron? This is Gaines." The criminalist. She'd forgotten about him. "Farber got through to the ITA administrator. We traced those e-mails to a specific terminal. Gabe is a police officer, I'm afraid."
Tomlinson, she thought. Or Brand.
"He works in the office of Deputy Chief Hammond. A lieutenant, name of Banner."
Robin stared at the phone, and then it had fallen from her hand, and she was running for the hallway, pausing only to grab the flashlight from the landing. She aimed the beam at the shoe prints stamped on the dust-coated floor. Two sets of tracks. Meg'sand Banner's.
Hammond and the other cops sprinted behind her, yelling questions she ignored.
This part of the factory had housed the administrative offices. She passed rows of doorless entry ways. No skylight in here, but each office had a narrow window that let in ambient light from outside. Maybe Meg had found a way out through one of those windows. Maybe Banner hadn't found her.
But she knew this was an idle hope. The windows were too small to allow escape. Even if she had gotten out, Banner would follow.
He had to kill Meg. She could identify him as her kidnapper. He didn't know about the e-mail trace, didn't know he'd already been caught.
To save himself, he would kill Meg and make it look as if Gray had found her before tangling with Robin. Robin's testimony would contradict this version of events, but no one would listen to her. They would say that her memory had been altered by stress and trauma.
She could never prove otherwise. Memory, as she knew too well, was a tricky thing.
The trail curved into an intersecting corridor, ending at an office straight ahead. Robin ran to it, not caring that she was unarmed and unprotected.
In the office she found Meg huddled in a corner, staring. And Bannersprawled on the floor, half-conscious, awash in his own blood. Imbedded in his neck was something slender and shiny.
A syringe.
"Little whore," Banner wheezed.
Robin slipped past him and knelt by her daughter. "Better watch yourself, Lieutenant. I shot the last man who called her that."
She hugged Meg and stroked her hair, while Hammond called for another ambulance.