Stripped

THIRTY

I get to see you twice in one week,” Jay Walling said, as Serena got out of her rental car outside the retirement home near downtown Reno. He was wearing his black fedora at a cocky angle. “How blessed I am.”

“Stuff it, Jay,” Serena said pleasantly.

She zipped up her leather jacket. It was cold in the city, with a stiff wind off the mountains and snow flurries in the air. A fall heat wave was firing up the temperatures in Las Vegas, but up here it felt like winter. The sky overhead was a somber charcoal, and the mountains looked angry.

“His name’s William Borden,” Walling said. “Alice Ford’s brother.”

Once they knew about Blake’s connection to Reno, it hadn’t taken them long to find what they had been missing from the beginning-something to tie the murder of Alice Ford at her Reno ranch to the deaths in Las Vegas. They discovered that Alice ’s brother had spent thirty years as executive director of a nonprofit organization that delivered family services in the northern half of the state. That included arranging confidential adoptions for knocked-up showgirls like Amira.

“Did you find out any more about the agency?” Serena asked.

“They’re saintly, as far as the folks in Carson City are concerned. Modest budget, lots of small annual gifts, no significant complaints. They do good work.”

“Was Borden running the agency when Amira Luz had her baby?”

Walling nodded. “He took over in 1960. Ran it until he retired. He’s terminal now, with a heart condition. Moved into this place last year.”

Serena studied the three-story senior facility, a concrete box in dirty white, and felt herself getting depressed. They weren’t far from the huge old homes that looked down on the rushing waters of the Truckee River, but they might as well have been in another universe. It got worse when they went inside. The nurses tried hard, decorating the walls with children’s art and wearing wide smiles, but it was still a place where used-up people went to die. They passed a diabetic man with amputated limbs. A woman trembling in the grip of severe Parkinson’s. People with empty stares, their minds gone. Serena felt a sense of claustrophobia.

They found William Borden in the lounge on the second floor. There was a television in one corner, and a dozen people were on sofas and in wheelchairs around it, watching a rerun of Friends. A nurse pointed out Borden for them. He was off by himself in an armchair on the far side of the room, a book in his lap.

They introduced themselves and pulled over chairs to sit in front of him. Serena took off her coat. The room was a furnace.

“I’m very sorry about your sister,” Serena told him. She noted that the book in his hands was titled Families Making Sense of Death. She wondered how anyone ever did make sense of it. Particularly violent death. Borden’s eyes were far away.

“I feel terrible guilt,” Borden replied. He had a professorial voice, self-reflective and somewhat pompous. He was a small man, with a gray beard and silver hair badly in need of a cut. He wore light blue pajamas and slippers. “I guess that was this man’s intention all along. To inflict guilt and pain. I haven’t seen Al yet. I wonder if he’ll even visit me now, since I took his wife away from him.”

“You didn’t do that, Mr. Borden,” Walling pointed out.

Borden shrugged “Didn’t I?”

“We’d like to see if you can identify the man we think may have killed your sister” Serena said. She began to hand him a copy of the police artist’s sketch, but Borden waved it away.

“No need. I know who it is. When Mr. Walling called me, I knew exactly who it had to be.” Despite the warmth in the room and a wool blanket over his legs, Borden shivered.

“He calls himself Blake Wilde,” Serena said.

Borden shook his head. “That name doesn’t mean anything to me, but I’m sure he’s changed it many times over the years. When I knew him, he was Michael Burton. That was more than twenty years ago.”

“I really would like you to look at the sketch,” Serena said.

Borden sighed. He took it and stared at it with obvious discomfort. Finally, he closed his eyes and nodded. “He was only sixteen when I last saw him, but it’s definitely him. Those eyes. The rest of his face is older, but those eyes are just as they were.” He heard a titter of laughter from the crowd gathered around the television set. He frowned. “This is what it comes down to, you know, this place. Gather the dying like cattle and wait for them to peel off one by one. It’s ironic. I spent my whole career trying to better the lives of children. I never found time to get married and have kids myself. Instead, I wind up here with a decaying heart, no one to visit me except my sister. Now she’s gone. Thanks to the mistake I made. One terrible mistake in thirty years.”

“Was Blake-or Michael-the son of Amira Luz?” Serena asked.

“I really don’t know. I never did. I never met the mother.”

“Tell us what happened,” Walling suggested gently.

“A man came to me,” Borden explained. “This was spring of 1967. It was after hours. He had a baby with him, very young, no more than a few days old. He told me that the mother was unable to care for him and asked if I could find a home for the boy.”

“Do you know who the man was?”

Borden shook his head, “He didn’t give a name. He was big, neck like a redwood tree. Intimidating.”

Serena thought it sounded like Leo Rucci, although there were plenty of musclemen working for the casinos in those days. “You took a baby, just like that? No questions asked?”

“Things like that happened all the time back then. Girls in Vegas had relationships with high rollers and got pregnant. They wanted it to go away quietly. No papers. No inheritance problems. Every month it seemed there was another girl, another baby. Everyone has such nostalgia for the Rat Pack times, but that was mostly if you were rich and white. Nobody wanted to look at what was behind the curtain. Virulent racism. Women abused. Children thrown away.”

“So you took the baby?” Serena asked.

Borden nodded.

Walling leaned in and whispered, “Not that I don’t think you’re a fine citizen, Mr. Borden, but did any money change hands?”

Borden looked up at the ceiling. “Yes, yes, there was money, too. These people always paid handsomely. But I assure you, not a dime of it went into my pocket. It all went into the agency. It pulled us through some difficult times.”

“What about the family?” Serena asked. “Didn’t they ask questions?”

“Everything was anonymous back then. To them, there was nothing unusual. It’s not like today, where many birth mothers stay in touch with their children long after they’ve been adopted.”

Walling smoothed his fedora as he held it in his hands. “I’m a little confused, Mr. Borden. If you didn’t know where the baby came from, and the family didn’t know either, how did this man figure out that Amira Luz was his mother? And why did he start this nasty little game by murdering your sister?”

Borden looked pained. He took a few deep breaths, and Serena noticed that they didn’t come easily. “How he found out about Amira, I don’t know. The vendetta-well, that began a long time ago.”

“Explain,” Walling said crisply.

“I told you I made a mistake. An awful mistake. I don’t mean accepting the baby or taking the money. If I had it to do over again today, I would do the very same thing. My mission was protecting children.”

“Then what?” Walling asked.

Serena looked into Borden’s eyes, and she began to realize what had really happened. She had been there, too. She felt the warmth in the room begin to smother her. The word hung between them, waiting to be spoken.

Abuse.

“My mistake was in the family I chose,” Borden said.

Walling saw it now, too. “What did they do to the boy?”

“You have to understand,” Borden said. Serena thought he was trying to rationalize the decision to himself. “Placing children with adoptive parents is not an exact science. We make our best judgment based on interviews. Occasionally, there are problems. I confess, I was young and overconfident in those days. I have a doctorate in child psychology. I thought I could size up an adoptive family and tell you in a few minutes whether they were suited or not. I didn’t know then all the things I didn’t know.”

“The Burton family wasn’t suited,” Serena said.

Borden shook his head. “The husband, maybe. He was a decent man, hardworking, lower middle class. They had been married for five years. Desperate for a child. His wife, Bonnie, she was very eager. I thought they would do fine as parents. I simply missed the signs. Based on what I know now, I’m sure Bonnie herself had an abusive parent. She picked up right where they left off. Although, if the boy was telling me the truth, Bonnie was singularly cruel.”

“Don’t you do follow-up visits?” Walling asked.

“Of course. Everything looked fine. You have to understand, Mr. Walling, I’m not talking about physical abuse. Beatings. Violence. I’m talking about sexual abuse. Bonnie Burton was intimate with her adopted son from a very young age.”

Serena felt as if the ceiling were getting lower, as if it would begin pressing her into the floor. She had a flashback of her own mother and Blue Dog, over her on the bed. Her body became bathed in sweat.

“It wasn’t just sex,” Borden continued. “She terrorized the boy in order to dominate him. She had complete control over his psyche. When he resisted, she would do unspeakable things.”

“Such as?” Walling asked.

Serena really didn’t want to hear the details.

“The boy told me that Bonnie would sometimes lock him in the bathroom, naked, in the dark. Then she would release-things-under the door.”

“Things?”

“Cockroaches mostly.”

“Shit,” Serena said involuntarily. “You didn’t know any of this at the time? The husband didn’t know?”

“No, I didn’t know a thing. Our contact with the family ends at an early age, and the husband-if he knew, he didn’t stop it. I hope he didn’t know.”

“How did you find out?” Serena asked.

Borden’s face twitched. The crowd in front of the television laughed again. “It wasn’t until years later. The boy broke into my home while I was sleeping. He tied me up. I had no idea who he was at first. I thought he was going to rob me. Then he sat down by the bed, after I was tied up, and explained who he was. He wanted to find his mother.”

“So he was obsessed with her even then,” Serena said.

“Oh, yes. In his mind, his birth mother was a victim, like he was. Through the abuse, he had built an imaginary bond with her. He told me that she came to him and whispered to him sometimes. Told him everything would be fine. Told him to find her.”

It’s okay, baby, Serena thought, and felt the room spin again. She was angry at herself, letting her own past creep into the present. It was infecting her.

“He told you about the abuse while you were tied up?” Walling asked.

Borden nodded. “In detail. If you’re wondering whether he made it up, I assure you, he didn’t. I’ve interviewed thousands of children. I know lies and fantasies, and this wasn’t either of them. Whatever he’s done since, whoever he’s become, the boy suffered indescribable torture in that house.”

“What was he like?” Serena asked. “Was he violent?”

“Violent, yes,” Borden replied, “but it wasn’t an uncontrolled violence. He wasn’t angry or confrontational. He was simply calm and cruel. I don’t even think it was deliberate cruelty. He had dealt with suffering by shutting himself off from pain and decoupling his emotions from what was happening around him. He was-I know this sounds strange-very focused. Very professional. For his age, he was quite mature. Violence was just a tool to get what he wanted.”

“And what he wanted was his real mother,” Serena said. She thought about Blake as a boy and realized she understood how he had reacted. He had become a kind of Barbed Wire, as she had. Frozen himself. Gone inside.

“Exactly. Unfortunately for me, I couldn’t give her to him.”

Waiting’s eyes narrowed. “What did he do to you?”

Borden unbuttoned his pajama top and calmly pulled aside the fabric. His wizened chest bore the zipperlike scar of open-heart surgery. There were other scars, too, dozens of them across his chest, circular disfigurements like pencil erasers. “He started asking me questions about the adoption, what records were kept, where he could find them. I told him lies at first, that we didn’t have records from back then, that records had been lost in a move. He knew I was lying. He was smoking a cigarette while he questioned me, and with each wrong answer, he used the end of the cigarette to brand me. I can’t even describe the agony of it. He didn’t take any pleasure in hurting me, though. It was clinical. Inflicting pain to get what he wanted. Answers.”

“You told him the truth?” Serena asked.

“Very quickly. It took a long time for him to believe that there were no records on his adoption, that I didn’t know anything about his birth mother. I described the man who brought the baby as best as I could remember, but sixteen years later, that wasn’t going to help him. I told him what I had always suspected, that it smelled like the mob, but a sixteen-year-old runaway in Nevada wasn’t going to crack the wall of silence among the casino bosses.”

“So you don’t think he found out about Amira back then?” Serena asked.

“I don’t see how. I still don’t know how he found out I didn’t know myself until you people told me.”

“Well, let’s assume he found out somehow. Why do you think he’s doing this? What’s his plan?”

Borden stared down at the sketch in his hand. He didn’t say anything for a long time, and Serena realized that a tear had slipped out of his eye. He wiped it away. She wondered if it was for himself or for his sister or for the boy he had accidentally sentenced to a tormented life. Maybe all three.

“Part of it is certainly vengeance. Not just on his behalf but on his mother’s. He’s getting justice for her.”

“But why family members?” Walling asked. “Why not just off the people he thinks played a role in Amira’s death?”

“In his mind, it hurts more to lose a family member,” Borden said. “That’s his own pain. It’s something he can relate to. He wants the people who took away his mother to know what it’s like to lose your family. Like he did. Like Amira did, too.”

“From what we hear, Amira was happy to be rid of the kid,” Serena said.

“Maybe so, but he doesn’t know that. I’m sure he wouldn’t believe it anyway.”

“You didn’t kill Amira,” Walling pointed out “Why start with you?”

Borden shook his head. “It’s not just the people who killed her. It’s everyone who betrayed her. In his mind, I was the first. I split up mother and child. That was obvious when he first came to me. He blamed me for taking him-and for placing him with the Burtons, too.”

“We should talk to the Burtons,” Serena said to Walling. A part of her hated the idea of coming face to face with another abusive mother, and a part of her wanted to lash out at the woman.

“That will be difficult,” Borden said, interrupting them. “When the boy came to see me that night, he was running away, leaving the city. Before he left, he burned down the Burtons ’ home. With them in it.”

THIRTY-ONE

Blake remembered vividly the first time he learned the truth about Amira.

It was an accident. A miracle, some people might call it. There were a million reasons why he should never have known, but he was there, and the magazine was there, and he felt the truth shudder through him like acid burning in his veins. Life hangs on a slender thread.

Several months ago, he had been in the waiting room of a dentist in Cancún, whose specialty was not root canals or cavities but connecting American tourists with hits of cocaine. The dentist had made the serious mistake of skimming cash from people higher up the supply chain, people who didn’t tolerate theft. Blake’s job was simple. Separate the dentist from two of his incisors.

While he waited for the man’s last patient to leave, Blake found that the dentist had another passion. Gambling. That was probably why he needed to take an extra slice off the top. His waiting room was filled with magazines from Las Vegas, Mississippi, and Monte Carlo, including a recent issue of LV. It happened to be the issue with Rex Terrell’s article about Amira Luz and the Sheherezade.

A slender thread.

He opened the magazine, and there, staring out from a forty-year-old photograph, was his mother. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in his mind. To him, looking at Amira was like looking in the mirror and seeing his own eyes. He didn’t need anyone to tell him. He didn’t need DNA. He knew. The connection between them seemed to leap off the page and into his bones.

When he read the article, the pieces fell into place, confirming what he saw in the photo. The missing time in her life, when Amira was supposedly dancing in Paris, was the same stretch of months in which Blake had been born. But you weren’t in Paris, were you? You were in Reno, a lost girl having a baby.

Even the mob connection was there, just as the man from the adoption agency had warned him.

Boni Fisso.

Right there in the office, his mother called him back home to Nevada, where he had once vowed never to set foot again. She cried out for justice.

Blake left the Cancún dentist on the floor, passed out from pain, his face bathing in the puddle of blood that streamed from his mouth. He washed the teeth and kept them in his pocket as good luck charms. Reminders of the day his old quest ended and his new quest began. He was already developing the list of people who needed to pay for their sins. Sins against Amira and her son.

He slipped back into the United States across the Mexican border in Texas. It wasn’t hard. He had spent most of his life finding ways across borders, in countries like Colombia, Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Iraq. He had adopted dozens of identities, all of which came naturally to him, because he felt he had no true identity of his own. His own past stopped in Reno, when he had tied up his adoptive parents and doused them and the house in gasoline. Then, outside, he lit the match and watched the house of horrors erupt explosively into flame, and heard their last pitiful screams as the fire streaked up the stairs to find them, like a bloodhound on a strong scent. He took a deep breath, smelling the air as their flesh cooked, and then he ran.

A new life. Almost twenty-five years of running.

He had been shattered when the search for his mother turned into a dead end. The man from the adoption agency had begged him, in tears, his chest scalded, to believe that Blake had been a Mafia baby who came from nowhere. Ultimately Blake did believe it. A part of him even liked the mystery that came with it. It felt appropriate, being a nowhere man, someone literally with no past. The desire for the truth never went away, though, just like his mother never went away. Inside, in his head, she still talked to him. Guided him. There was still an umbilical cord that connected them and never went away.

Blake didn’t linger in the U.S. He was sixteen but could pass for early twenties. When Reagan invaded Grenada, he went down there with a few other mercenaries from Louisiana who smelled money. He found that there were always people ready to pay for someone to do a job. He didn’t need an identity, because no one wanted him to have one. He was smart, ruthless, and anonymous. That was all they asked, and they paid well.

From Grenada he went to Nicaragua, then to Africa. He circled the globe, moving in the shadows. For most of the past decade, he had been in the Middle East, where the risks were infinitely higher, but so were the rewards. He enjoyed the challenge, but eventually he tired of working with fanatics and suffering the desert heat. He relocated to Mexico, hooked up with the cartels when he needed cash, and found himself enjoying the gulf breezes and bronzed women that came to the coast.

He thought of himself as semiretired. There was plenty of money in an offshore bank. He only took jobs from time to time, and usually only jobs that kept him on the coast. For someone who had always been homeless, he felt at home in the sun and by the water. A parade of anonymous young women, some tourists, some locals, kept his sex drive fully satisfied. He bought a house. He taught himself to cook and fish, and he drank Corona and played poker with dockworkers and waiters on Wednesday nights.

But the empty black corner of his soul stayed dark. The light never shined there. Things moved invisibly, rustling and clicking. And always, from the darkness, he heard her voice. His mother, whispering to him and telling him of unfinished business. He realized he had become lazy and content. He was in danger of losing his edge, and he couldn’t afford that, not yet. After a summer not working, drinking too much and fucking a different woman every night, he stood on the beach outside his home and realized he wasn’t ready to retire. Something egged him on, and later he realized it was a hand somewhere, guiding him. Unfinished business.

A few months later, he found himself in the dentist’s office, staring at his mother’s face. If he had stopped working, he never would have found her. When he read the article, and felt his rage growing, he knew that he had been led to that place and that moment. It was meant to be. He was going home.

In Las Vegas, Blake found a cheap apartment in a sorry neighborhood on the wrong side of a crumbling stone wall that separated the lower class from well-funded Cashman Field. He could have afforded better, but he wanted a hideaway where the person next door never remembered your face, and no one talked to the cops.

There was a code in the mean streets. Keep your eyes to yourself. Mind your own business.

He devoured everything he could find about Amira Luz. He spent hours reading about her. He surfed the Web and found a pirated film on eBay with a grainy record of one of Amira’s performances in Flame. Blake reran the film over and over, watching transfixed as his mother stripped off her clothes in front of the leering crowd. She seduced him, along with everyone else. He memorized every detail of the performance and even began to recognize other people lurking in the showroom and other dancers onstage. It was like watching the magazine story come alive.

Helena Troy. There was a look she gave Amira at one point, a nasty glimmer that came and went. Sheer jealousy and hatred were written on her face.

Moose Dargon. Drunk onstage between the dances. His eyebrows furling and unfurling like black sails. Making nasty jokes. When God made Amira, he didn’t rest on the seventh day. He jerked off.

Walker Lane. Just the top of his head, taller than the others around him in the front row, but Blake could feel him panting when Amira came onstage. Lust was like that. You could see it in how a man cocked his head.

Leo Rucci. Hovering stage right, like a wolf. Blake could feel his hunger, too, in the way he eyed the girls. A man with a neck like a redwood tree. He had been the one to strip Blake out of Amira’s arms.

He began to feel as if he knew them all. As if he could crawl through the screen and find himself in the showroom, smelling perfume, brilliantine, and smoke. As if he could mingle with them, wearing a tux that made him stand a little straighter and strut a little cooler than the rest. As if he could swoop Amira off the stage and drive with her into the desert in a Coronet convertible, her raven hair flying in the wind. As if the whole world were a black-and-white movie.

The more he buried himself in the past, the easier it was to map out the game in the present. There was a bonus, too. David Kamen was in town, the marksman from Kabul who had his fingers in every black market in the Afghan theater. Blake had done plenty of wet work for Kamen, and the man owed him. Soon, Blake had a job that gave him access to the very people he wanted to reach out and touch.

Piece by piece, it all fell into place.

The night before he went to Reno, he sat in the dark, watching the film of Flame again. He kept the dentist’s teeth, his lucky charms, in a box on top of the television, but he took them out and juggled them in his hand as he watched. He was restless and anxious to get started. As he watched the film, he thought about himself, a baby, already in the vicious hands of Bonnie Burton while Amira was onstage. Blake didn’t feel any anger now. The next day, he would begin to even the scales.

He knew he wouldn’t sleep that night. His nerves were on edge, and he needed to calm them, to deaden himself for what lay ahead. The long drive to Reno. The few seconds of violence at Alice Ford’s home. He left his apartment and went out for a drink and a smoke at a club he had already visited several times before. The Limelight.

It was hard to believe, weeks later, that the game was almost over.

He sat in his car, a nondescript brown sedan, in a parking lot one block north of a popular strip club near the Stratosphere. It was night, but neon lit up the street. He could see the other car, the convertible, in his rearview mirror, parked behind the club. Ninety minutes had passed, and Blake figured it wouldn’t be long before the man would reemerge. He kept a close eye on the customers who came and went.

His window was open. He was smoking. Every few minutes a hooker drifted by, leaned her tits into the car, and tried to pick him up. Blake just blew smoke in her face and stared at her until she backed away, nervous and scared. He wondered if any of them recognized him from the sketch on television. In the shadows of the car, he doubted it. He also didn’t think any of the girls would be rushing to find a cop.

At eleven thirty, the man came out of the club. He was impossible to miss. Young and fat, his belly hanging over his gray slacks. A white shirt and a bright tie loosened so far it dripped between his legs. He was tall, dwarfing a tiny blond girl who clung to his arm. Her assets were squeezed into a pink form-fitting dress. Both of them walked as if they were drunk, but that didn’t stop them from climbing into the convertible.

Blake saw a bodyguard, who had been holding up the wall of the club while the man was inside, take a gander up and down the street. He was inexperienced and stupid and didn’t even pause to study the sedan. Blake could have walked up to the convertible with a crossbow and this guy would have kept chewing his gum.

Blake pulled out of the lot and into the Strip traffic in the right lane. Behind him, he saw the fat man and the blonde peel out in the convertible. The bodyguard climbed into an SUV, but he was slow. Blake let the convertible roar past him, then accelerated and kept them in sight. A minute later, the bodyguard’s truck flew past him, too. Blake stayed a few car lengths back.

They drove past wedding chapels, doughnut shops, bail bondsmen, and psychics who read palms and tarot cards. Traffic was heavy. Hot, dry air blew in through the window as Blake followed the convertible. He figured they were heading for one of the casinos on Fremont Street.

Blake had a wireless Bluetooth device hooked to his ear. He punched in a number on his cell phone, and a few seconds later, he heard a gruff voice answering through the earpiece.

“Yeah?”

“Good evening, Leo,” Blake said.

“Who the fuck is this?”

“This is Blake Wilde. Do you know who I am?”

There was a long stretch of silence.

“Okay, yeah, Boni told me about you,” Leo Rucci said. “So did the cops. You’re the guy who thinks he can bring his mama back to life by running down little boys. So what? I should be scared of you?”

“Yes, you should, Leo.”

“Well, you don’t scare me, you little prick. Why don’t you come over to my house right now and talk to me face to face? You won’t, because you know you won’t walk out of here alive.”

“I just want to know if it was you,” Blake said. He accelerated, closing the distance to the convertible. He passed a limousine and slid back into the right lane. The convertible with the fat man and the blonde was on his left.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“You were Boni’s right-hand man in the Sheherezade. I want to know if you were the one who actually killed Amira.”

Rucci laughed. “Some dipstick fan bashed her skull in. Let it go”

“We both know that isn’t what happened,” Blake said.

“Yeah? How do you know that? You were shitting your diapers when it went down,”

“Just tell me if it was you, Leo. If it was you, then this is between us. You and me. No one else.”

“I don’t owe you nothing, fuckhead.”

“Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it” Blake took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m driving beside a white convertible,” he added, eyeing the car next to him. “License plate YA8 371. That’s what your son Gino drives, isn’t it?”

There was silence again, longer and more deadly.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Leo whispered.

The convertible with the fat man and the blonde stopped at a red light just ahead. Blake pulled next to it in the right lane and rolled down his driver’s side window. “Pay attention, Leo,” Blake said into the phone.

Leo’s voice screamed in his ear. “You fucker! Don’t you do this, you fucker!”

The blonde was cuddling up against Gino Rucci’s side. Blake figured her hand was in his lap. In his sideview mirror, he saw the bodyguard in the car behind, lazy and unconcerned.

“Hey, baby,” Blake called out to the blonde. “How much?”

She wheeled around. “Shut up, you creep!”

“Come on, baby, I said, How much?” Blake repeated. “How much is fatso paying you for a hand job? Can’t be worth more than five bucks.”

Sideview mirror. The bodyguard was paying attention now. He was opening the driver’s side door. Blake saw Gino’s beefy arm push the blonde back into the seat. Gino leaned forward, his face black with rage.

“That’s a pretty sorry excuse for a hooker,” Blake told him. “Is she the best you can do, you loser?”

Gino’s cheeks pulsed red. Blood vessels popped like fireworks. “I hope you enjoyed your last walk, creep,” he hissed. “’Cause you ain’t ever going to walk again.”

“You listening, Leo?” Blake murmured into the phone.

Leo screamed, “Amira was a whore! She was a fucking cunt!”

The bodyguard shouldered his way out of his car. Gino was getting up, too, his huge torso lifting off the seat like a hot air balloon. The blonde cowered with her head buried in the leather cushion.

“Want to say good-bye, Leo?” Blake said.

“I will fucking destroy you!”

A cell phone began ringing in Gino’s convertible. Blake knew it was Leo on another line, trying to reach his son. He casually picked up the SIG-Sauer from between his legs and pointed it out the window. “Listen up, Leo,” he said.

The bodyguard’s hand began diving into his jacket. Gino got the same stupid look on his face that MJ had when he opened his eyes. Blake pulled the trigger twice, firing two neat rounds into Gino’s skull. Flicking his arm back, he fired again, catching the bodyguard in the throat. Both men collapsed. Through the earpiece, Leo let fly with a guttural scream. The blonde joined in.

“Say hi to Boni for me,” Blake said, as he accelerated calmly through the green light. “Tell him he’s next.”

THIRTY-TWO

Sara Evans again. Restless.

When Stride fished his cell phone out of his pocket, he saw a 218 area code on the caller ID. He had spent his whole life in that area code, which included most of northern Minnesota. He answered the phone and heard a familiar voice say, “How’s it going, boss?”

“Mags!” Stride exclaimed. “God, it’s good to hear your voice. I miss you.”

“Same here.”

Maggie Bei had been his partner for more than a decade. She was a Chinese girl the size of a Kewpie doll, but with the best brain he had ever encountered on the force. Shortly before Stride left for Las Vegas, Maggie had announced that she was pregnant and was giving up her shield. It helped make it easier for Stride to leave.

“What’s the weather like up there?” Stride asked. Only a Minnesotan could appreciate that every conversation had to begin with a review of the weather.

“Sucks. Rain. Cold. How about there?”

“Heat wave,” Stride said. “We had a couple weeks in the seventies, and now it’s in the upper nineties again. I thought we were done with that after August.”

“You gone Vegas on me yet, boss?” Maggie asked. “Silk shirts? Shades? Bubbly drinks with little umbrellas?”

“Yeah. I’m coloring my hair, too. Got it slicked back.”

“Right, and I’m blond now. Got implants.”

Stride had to pull his Bronco over to the curb and park. He was laughing too hard. “I really do miss you, Mags.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Maggie paused, then added, “Listen, I’ve got some news. Not good, I’m afraid.”

Stride sobered up immediately. “What is it?”

“I lost the baby.”

He heard the crack in her voice. “Oh, no. I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah. It was actually like three weeks ago, but I didn’t have the guts to call and tell you.”

“Shit, Mags, you should have told me right away.”

Maggie sighed. “Nothing you could have done.”

“Are you okay?” He shook his head in disgust. That was the kind of stupid question reporters asked victims on the evening news.

“So-so. Doc says it’s real common, we can try again, blah blah blah. That doesn’t make it any easier. Eric’s taking it hard. He says he’s not so sure he wants kids now. Like God’s trying to tell us something.”

“That’s crazy.”

“I know.” She hesitated. “I’m wondering about going back on the force. I didn’t really want to leave, you know. It was Eric’s idea.”

“Is that what you want?” Stride asked.

“I don’t know. It’s not the same without you.”

Stride didn’t know what to say to that, so he kept quiet. He didn’t know where Maggie was going. Once upon a time, there had been history between them. Maggie had been in love with him for several years, and she had made a play for him shortly after Cindy died. It didn’t work out. She didn’t hold a grudge, not even when Serena entered the picture, but Stride always wondered if the emotions were entirely dead. Even after Maggie married Eric, there were hints sometimes that she would have gone over the edge if Stride had ever given her a reason.

“But I suppose you’re happy in Sin City,” Maggie continued.

“Oh, yeah. I fit right in here. You’d expect that.”

She ignored the sarcasm. “What’s it like being a working stiff again and not the big boss?”

“I just do what you always did. Complain about the lieutenant.”

“Nice. Good one. How’s Serena?”

“Okay.” He knew his voice sounded like lead.

Maggie took a long time to reply. He could never fool her. “You guys having problems?”

“I don’t know what we’re having,” he admitted.

“Serena’s got ghosts, boss. You knew that going in.”

“This isn’t a ghost.” He took a deep breath and told her about Serena and Claire-and about his secret fear, which he had barely expressed to himself, that this would all end in him losing her.

“She says she still loves you?” Maggie asked.

“She says that.”

“What about you? How do you feel?”

Stride thought about the old joke. Ask a Minnesotan how he feels on the day his dog dies, his wife leaves him, and he loses his job. “Fine,” he said.

“Real funny.”

“I love her, Mags. You know that.”

“So what’s the problem? Hell, boss, this could be your ticket to a threesome.”

Stride laughed. “Sure.” He added, “Okay, the thought of it did cross my dirty mind. But come on. Me?”

“It’s a lot stranger world than you know,” she replied, in a voice that didn’t sound like Maggie at all.

“Don’t tell me that you would get into anything like that.”

“Let’s not go there, boss,” she retorted.

He felt as if he were walking in quicksand and decided to change the subject. “So what about you? Are you going back?”

“I haven’t decided. It’s too soon after the baby, you know?”

“I know.” He was so accustomed to thinking of Maggie as a rock that it was difficult to hear pain radiating from her. “I really am sorry, Mags.”

“Thanks. You know, there was another reason I called.”

“Oh?”

“K-2 asked me to do it. He was too chicken to call himself.”

Deputy Chief Kyle Kinnick was Stride’s old boss in Duluth. “What does he want?” Stride asked, feeling a tingling in his chest.

“The search for a new lieutenant in the Detective Bureau washed out,” Maggie said. “He wanted me to feel you out. See if you might be interested in coming back.”

Libraries,” Amanda said. “I think that’s our best bet.”

She stood by the open window in Sawhill’s office. There was barely a whisper of a breeze. A portable fan whined on his desk, directing its air at the lieutenant’s face. Part of the downtown area had lost power earlier in the afternoon, and though the station had a backup generator, it didn’t extend to air-conditioning. The office was stifling.

“This guy had to find out about Amira somewhere,” she went on. “We’re talking about Vegas forty years ago. Sure, he could surf the Web, but wouldn’t he go to the library, too? That’s where he’d find old newspapers, old magazines, anything like that. It may be one way he built his list of targets.”

“Check it out,” Sawhill said. He had a glow of sweat on his face, but his tie was tightly knotted at his neck. His one concession to the heat was removing his black suit coat. “We’ve got this guy’s description all over the papers and television, but we can’t find him. And he still manages to gun down Gino Rucci and his bodyguard right on the Strip. Explain that to me.”

“We know he can disguise himself,” Stride said. “If he doesn’t want to be recognized, he won’t be, but we’ve got uniforms and casino security people on the lookout for him. Witnesses last night pegged him in a brown sedan, but no one got a plate. We’ve added that to the profile.”

“Are we getting calls to the hotline?”

“Lots, but nothing you could call a break,” Stride said.

“What else do we know about this guy?” Sawhill asked.

“He’s pretty much an unperson,” Serena replied. “He was called Michael Burton in Reno until he was sixteen. Jay Walling dug up some school records, but nothing that will help us here. After he torched his parents, he fell off the grid. There’s no record of who he became or where he went.”

“I checked with the military,” Stride added. “I was able to contact two other men from David Kamen’s unit in Afghanistan. One of them remembered Wilde and confirmed Kamen’s story that the guy was essentially a mercenary, but he didn’t know anything that would help us find him.”

“We haven’t gone public with the connection to Amira,” Serena said. “Maybe we should.”

Amanda watched the political wheels turning in Sawhill’s mind. “How would that help us?” he asked.

“Wilde might have talked to someone about Amira or the Sheherezade. They might remember him or know something about him.”

Sawhill shook his head. “Not strong enough. The casino connection would generate a lot of headlines, but I don’t think it will help us catch this guy. It’ll just be a distraction.”

In other words, people might start asking Boni Fisso some embarrassing questions, Amanda thought. “Someone’s going to make the connection soon,” she said. “Either it will leak, or some writer like Rex Terrell will put it together.”

“Let them worry about that, and we’ll worry about catching this guy before he kills someone else.” Sawhill pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wiped his brow. “What are we doing to prevent another hit?”

Serena glanced over her shoulder at Cordy. “Did you get the list?”

Cordy nodded. “Uh-huh. We got another ten people who worked at the Sheherezade back then and had jobs that had something to do with Amira and her show. Dancers, choreographers, the kind of folks this Wilde thing might decide to have a grudge against, you know? We’ve told them to make sure their relatives keep an eye out.”

“But Wilde seems to be moving up the food chain,” Stride said.

“Meaning?” Sawhill asked.

“Meaning Boni,” Stride said. “Wilde wouldn’t let us know what he looks like if he wasn’t in the last stages of his game. He wants Boni to know he’s coming after him.”

“Why announce his intentions?”

Stride shrugged. “Pride. Ego. Confidence. He wants Boni to squirm.”

Sawhill rocked back in his seat and frowned. “Except he’s not likely to tackle Boni directly, is he? In every other case, he’s gone after a relative. His daughter-Claire-she’s got to be at the top of our list, doesn’t she?”

“No question about it,” Stride said.

Sawhill leaned forward, jabbing a finger at Serena. “You know her, don’t you? I want you to take charge of her protection. I want you all over her, Detective.”

“I’m not a babysitter, sir,” Serena said.

“No, you’re a detective trying to save a life,” Sawhill retorted. “Do you have a problem here?” He didn’t wait for an answer but added immediately, “I want you to oversee security for Claire Belfort. Under no circumstances are we going to let Wilde get near her. You got that? I want you with her now, and I want you glued to her side until we catch this guy. Have her stay at your place.”

“Understood,” Serena said. She looked like she was wilting in the heat. Amanda was surprised. She had always thought of Serena as cool and unflappable.

Amanda’s cell phone vibrated. She quickly excused herself, left the office, and ducked into an empty cubicle. “Gillen.”

“It’s Leo Rucci.”

Amanda sat down. Even the seat felt warm, as if the heat wave had worked its way inside the cushions. “I’m sorry about your son,” she said.

“Save it. I’m not looking for sympathy.” Gino’s death hadn’t softened Rucci at all.

“I’d like to talk to you about the murder,” Amanda said. “Maybe you can help us find this guy before he kills anyone else.”

“I got nothing to say to you. I’m not talking about the past, okay? And what happened to Gino is between me and this Wilde fuckhead. I don’t need any help. I just wanted to tell you that if you want to catch this guy, you better do it quick.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah,” Rucci growled. “Because I’m coming after him, too.”

THIRTY-THREE

Blake blew out a lungful of acrid cigarette smoke that billowed in a cloud around his face. Picking up his drink, he took a hit of salt from the rim and a sweet-sour sip of margarita. In reality, he despised the lime drinks that all the tourists sipped in Cancún-he preferred beer or scotch-but a red-headed lawyer from the bankruptcy attorneys’ convention in town, with shades, a name tag, and a margarita, didn’t attract special attention. He was just another shyster soaking up the blues and hoping to get lucky by flirting with the twenty-something waitress.

He sat at a circular table in the last row of the Limelight showroom. Other people squeezed around him, clinking ice, talking too loudly, coughing, and passing gas. It was hard to see faces with the lights low and bodies shifting in their seats, blocking his view, but he had already pegged the security before the show began. Two bulky detectives squirmed at a table in front of the stage, painfully obvious in suits and ties. A Hispanic cop, a smooth piece of work with slicked black hair and a permanent leer, hovered in the back, constantly scanning the crowd. He was almost close enough to touch. On the east and west walls, standing, were two of the boys from Premium Security. Blake knew them. Enormous, probably part gorilla. Walnut-sized brains. He had actually waved at one, and the man just stared dully back, not penetrating the disguise. Blake couldn’t help but laugh.

Claire was onstage. It was her second show, and midnight had already come and gone. He didn’t usually care about music, but he enjoyed her voice. She had a throaty country drawl, and there was something sad about the way she sang that made him remember the suffering he had experienced as a boy. He rarely visited that room in his soul, but Claire’s voice made it seem like a good thing to do, as if she could march you inside and make you believe that loss was what made you alive, that yearning for something could be more beautiful than having it

Not that he really believed it

He thought about his adopted mother. Bonnie Burton. She could still make his flesh crawl two decades later. It was crazy back then, how he had loved her and wanted to please her. He had actually hated his adopted father more, because he was the one who let it all happen and did nothing to stop her. Blake even enjoyed cuckolding him at first, when he began having intercourse with Bonnie. He could still feel her hands. It infuriated him that when he thought of her, he sometimes got an erection. That she still controlled him like that. She used to tell him that he was her best lover, that she would never hurt him, that her body belonged to him. Her body with its drooping breasts and doughnut-shaped middle.

Once, she told him what a good idea it would be if he killed his father and the two of them could be alone. His father, who knew what went on in the bedroom, who didn’t care or was too scared to do a damn thing.

He said yes, that would be a good idea, and didn’t add that the best idea of all was to kill them both. A month later, he stood in the dark yard and watched the fire consume them.

He thought about the boy in the Summerlin street. Peter Hale. That was a lesson for him-that he wasn’t the rock he imagined himself to be, that the fury could come back and temporarily blind him. He had watched the boy throwing the ball against the garage door. Hypnotic, the ball going back and forth, bang bang, over and over. It wouldn’t be hard to smile at the kid, go inside, slit Linda Hale’s throat and go back to the car. Maybe toss the ball a couple of times with the boy. Then he thought about leaving this kid with no mother, and he realized he couldn’t do that. He sat there, paralyzed. Bang bang, back and forth. Happy kid. A kid who had everything Blake never had, for no reason at all, who didn’t have any Bonnie in his life, who hadn’t had his real mother stripped away and killed by Las Vegas. The anger rose up like a dust devil, spinning out of the sand. Insane jealousy. Disgust. It grabbed him so hard he thought he would break the steering wheel in half. That was when, without any more hesitation, he put the car in gear and slammed the accelerator down, gunning for the boy, wanting to erase him, wanting to see him disappear into nothingness under his tires.

Sometimes nothingness was a blessing.

In the Limelight showroom, Blake blinked. He had been gone for too long, not concentrating. The memories did that to him. He blamed it on the seduction of Claire’s voice, which was somehow both lazy and still as sharp as a razor blade on his wrist.

Focus, he thought to himself.

Amira.

Blake had to move quickly. He had been to Claire’s show several times, and he knew there were three songs left in her second set. He had to go now or risk getting caught in the sweaty mass of fans elbowing their way for the exits. In a few minutes, he could use the chaos of the crowd to spring Claire loose from the blanket of security protecting her.

He knew how to do that. With Claire’s help.

When she finished her next song, a searing cover of Mindy Smith’s “One Moment More,” Blake stood up during the applause and picked his way through the tables to the nearest door. He wore a sport coat, shirt and tie, jeans, and dress shoes. Back in the casino, he stubbed out his cigarette at one of the slot machines and proceeded to the glass doors that led to the parking lot. He surveyed the small lot quickly. The Boulder Strip was on his left, and a two-way middle lane in the lot led to a series of rows where the cars parked diagonally. His own brown sedan was in the rear, where he could jump the divider and head straight to the highway.

A plainclothes cop was leaning on the hood of a red Caprice Classic near the middle lane, eyeing the people who came and went from the casino. Blake felt their eyes meet and experienced a moment’s uneasiness, wondering if the man recognized him. With a friendly nod, Blake sauntered past him, heading for his sedan. He didn’t look back, but he listened carefully for the sound of footsteps following him. None did.

He got in his car and took out his cell phone. He waited ten minutes until he saw people flowing out of the casino, exiting the showroom, then dialed a number. Claire answered immediately. Even when she was talking, not singing, he loved her voice.

“This is Detective Jonathan Stride,” he told her. “I work with Serena.”

He could hear her breathing and imagined her still flushed from the show. “I see,” she said calmly.

“We need to get you out of there right away, Claire.”

“Where’s Serena?” she asked. “I thought the two of you were coming to pick me up.”

Blake frowned. He didn’t have much time and had to think quickly. “Serena’s tied up. We don’t think we should wait. I’m outside in the casino parking lot now. It’s a red Caprice Classic in the second row. The sooner you can get here, the better.”

“Is that safe?”

“We’ll have people watching your every move.” He added, “Candidly, if this guy is here, we want to flush him out, not scare him away.”

“In other words, you want to put me on a hook and let me wriggle like a worm?” she asked.

Blake smiled. “Something like that”

Claire waited a few beats before replying. “Okay. If that’s how you guys want to play it I’ll see you in five minutes.”

Stride pulled into the crowded porte cochere in front of the Limelight. He drove past the convoy of cabs and parked at an angle on the sidewalk.

“The show’s out,” he said.

They got out of the Bronco. Stride used his shield to wave off a valet, and they marched inside, pushing past people who were on their way into the hot night air.

“Are you sure about this?” Serena asked him.

Stride knew what she meant. Sawhill had suggested that Claire stay with them while they hunted Blake. He thought: Sure about letting Claire into their home? Sure about letting her seduce his girlfriend in front of his face? No, he wasn’t sure.

“We need to babysit her,” Stride said. “Sawhill’s right. It’ll be easiest to do it at our place.”

“I didn’t think she’d agree,” Serena said. “She’s pretty independent.”

“It must be your charm,” Stride told her, and watched Serena flush.

The showroom was almost empty. Waitresses were gathering half-empty wineglasses and wet napkins from the tables. Serena flagged down Cordy, who was onstage near the performers’ door. He was talking up a member of Claire’s band, a two-tone blonde with a nose ring and a tattoo of an eagle on her upper arm.

“Is Claire in back?” Serena called.

“You got it, mama.”

They clambered up onstage. “Any sign of Blake?” she asked.

Cordy shook his head. “Nada.”

“No one’s been in or out through this door except the band?” Stride asked.

“You got it. I also put guys on the casino door and the emergency exit, checking anyone who tries to get back there. They gave us a staff list. Nobody gets in unless they’re on the list and they got a photo ID to back it up.”

Stride nodded. He and Serena exited through the stage door, winding up on a small landing, and then took a few steps down to a dingy corridor. On his left, he could hear the clatter of china from the kitchen. Serena led him the other way, to a wooden door near the emergency exit. Taped to the door were a crudely cut paper star and a black-and-white publicity still of Claire. Stride had never seen her before, and he was a little disturbed to realize how attractive she was. Like Serena, she was weak-in-the-knees gorgeous, with teasing lips that were all about sex, and haunted eyes that made you want to take care of her.

Serena knocked on the door. “Claire!”

There was no answer. Serena knocked again, louder. “She could be in the shower,” she said, but Stride had a bad feeling. He tried the door handle. It was locked. He thumped heavily with his fist

“Shit,” he murmured.

He crouched down on his hands and knees and put the side of his head on the floor, so he could look through the crack under the door. He didn’t see what he was afraid he would find-a body-but the dressing room looked empty and dark.

“I’ll check the casino,” Stride said.

Serena nodded. “I’ll do the other side. She may have gone out for a smoke.”

Stride took off back down the hallway. He heard Serena bolt through the crash door behind him. He nimbly dodged a cocktail waitress who was emerging with a tray of drinks, then ducked briefly inside the warm, humid kitchen to make sure that Claire wasn’t there. He continued through double doors at the end of the hallway into the pinging noise of the casino.

A house security man barely looked at him. Stride felt sick He grabbed the man’s shoulder.

“Did Claire come through here?” he demanded.

“Who?”

“Claire Belfort The woman we’re all trying to keep alive.”

The man shrugged. “Oh, her. The singer. Yeah, she came through here a minute ago.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah, just her.”

“And you didn’t try to stop her?” Stride retorted.

“Hey, no one said to stop anyone going out. I’m just here to make sure some guy doesn’t get in. Besides, she said she was meeting someone from Metro.”

Stride began to sweat. “Who?”

“Some guy named Stride.”

Stride cursed and reached for his gun. “Which way did she go?’

The guard pointed at the glass doors to the parking lot. “Through there.”

Stride hid his gun under his sport coat and ran for the doors, attracting annoyed glances from the gamblers. There was still a crowd of people from the show clustered around the doors, spilling into the parking lot. Safety in numbers, Stride thought. Murder, chaos, an easy escape.

He struggled past people to get to the door, feeling each second stretch out. He knew that seconds were all he had, the difference between life and death. In the glass, his reflection mocked him. He couldn’t see outside and see what was happening.

Blake eased the body of the policeman into the back-seat of the Caprice Classic. He wiped his knife on the man’s pants and put it back in his pocket. He closed the car door and gave a broad smile to a couple getting into an SUV next to him.

“Few too many,” he said, making a drinking motion with his hand.

They nodded, uninterested.

He strolled to the front of the car and watched the people emerging from the casino door. Women in clinging killer dresses. Men lighting up cigars and tugging at their collars in the sweaty weather. The couples strolled, in no hurry, holding hands, kissing, laughing. No one paid any attention to him.

He kept his eyes on the door. Two minutes later, he saw her. Claire glided outside, her hair flying as the wind caught it. She stopped on the sidewalk, looking around with her blue eyes. She wore a long-sleeved red silk blouse and jeans, with high heels. Her skin glowed fresh under the light.

She saw him standing by the car. He nodded at her, and she took a minute to size him up. Then she stepped off the curb, walking toward him. He stripped off his sunglasses and smiled. Their eyes met.

She stopped, hesitating, still too far away.

“It’s me,” he called.

She began walking again, but slowly.

Blake saw a flurry of motion over her shoulder, a man fighting to get through the casino door, and he scowled as he saw who it was. Stride. The real Stride. The detective had his hand inside his coat, hiding a gun. Blake began reaching for his gun, too.

“Come on,” he urged Claire.

She stopped again and followed his eyes. She looked over her shoulder and saw Stride. When she turned back again, she was frozen, paralyzed. Her eyes traveled up and down Blake’s body and came to rest on his hands.

Shock and fear filled her face.

Blake looked down at his hands and saw what she saw. Blood.

Stride finally burst from the crowd onto the sidewalk. She couldn’t be far away. He studied each face as snippets of conversation floated past him.

What a voice.

She made me cry. When’s the last time that happened?

Hot. God, she’s hot.

He didn’t know Claire and hoped he’d recognize her from the photograph on the door. Did she even still look like that? Stride took a few steps onto the asphalt. He thought about calling her name but didn’t want to draw attention to her.

A blonde brushed past him. He spun her around, then apologized when he saw it wasn’t Claire.

“Jerk,” she hissed at him. He didn’t care.

Where was she? His eyes traveled back across the crowd. Claire. Blake. He knew they were both here.

She was meeting someone from Metro. A guy named Stride.

He heard another fragment of conversation on his left, a low whisper.

Is that her?

Who?

The singer.

Stride followed their eyes. He saw her then, turning toward him, and his first impression was of strawberry blond hair catching the neon light, and then blue eyes reaching out to him. He felt a huge relief, but it only lasted a moment. Over her shoulder, he glimpsed a man with red hair, in a shirt and tie. His mind processed the man’s face and didn’t perceive a threat, but as he turned his attention to Claire, his head snapped back automatically.

It wasn’t the face. It was the eyes.

The eyes that had stared at him from the sketch.

The man smiled at him. He knew. His hand was reaching into his jacket.

Stride ran straight at them. “Claire! Get down!”

She froze for an instant, torn between the two men, then ducked behind a parked car and rolled away. Stride drew his gun into plain sight and squatted in firing stance, both hands on the barrel, but he was too slow. Blake moved like a ghost. The man dropped to the ground, spun to his left, and came back up with his own gun ready to fire. All Stride could do was leap to the asphalt, feeling his clothes tear and his shoulder burn on the pavement. A rain of bullets streaked past him and into the casino window, shattering it into popcorn shards.

Bedlam erupted around him. People dropped to the ground, and others ran for the street. Screams wailed through the parking lot.

“Police!” Stride shouted. “Everyone take cover and stay down!”

He stole a glance at the lot and saw bodies scrambling between the cars. Blake had vanished. He crab-walked to the first row in the lot, where Claire was sitting by the rear tire of a truck, her arms wrapped around her knees, her eyes staring vacantly at the ground. He came up and put a hand over hers.

“I’m Stride,” he said. “Don’t move. Stay right here.”

“There was blood,” she murmured.

“What?”

“On his hands.”

Stride swore. He risked a glance through the windows of the truck and didn’t see anyone. The people in the lot had disappeared, as if they had been lifted off the planet, some hiding in the rows of cars, others heading for the Boulder Strip. There was still a sea of potential hostages.

“Stay here,” he told her again.

He slipped between the cars and darted across the open row without drawing fire. He recognized the red Caprice in front of him as a Metro undercover vehicle, and he rose up high enough to look inside. A body was slumped in back, half off the seat onto the floor of the car. Stride pulled the door open, and blood dripped out, puddling on the ground and staining his pants. He grabbed the man’s wrist, feeling for a pulse, but there was nothing.

Stride backed away. He heard footsteps behind him, running for the opposite side of the lot. When he twisted around, he caught a glimpse of Serena, just as another series of gunshots exploded from the rear of the lot. He watched her dive behind the cars and saw sparks as the bullets bounced on metal.

“Serena!” he screamed.

There was an excruciating pause. “I’m okay, I’m okay!” she shouted back.

Stride felt his heart start beating again. He ran to the next car in the row and rose up behind the hood in firing position. He spotted Blake three rows away and got off two shots before the man ducked under cover. His bullets took out the windshield of a Cadillac.

Sawhill would chew out his ass for that.

He moved again, using a minivan for cover. When he tried to cross the next row, Blake spotted him, and another flood of bullets chased him across the open space of pavement. Just as he reached safety, he felt a stinging pain in his chest and looked down to see a two-inch tear in his shirt that was oozing red. He tore his shirt open and concluded that he hadn’t been shot, just cut by a metal fragment ricocheted off one of the cars. Even so, it hurt like hell.

He heard the muffled chiming of his cell phone in his pocket. He retrieved it and heard Serena’s voice. She was whispering.

“Are you all right?”

“Slightly damaged, but nothing serious,” Stride said.

“Backup’s on its way. We should have ten cars here in two minutes. If we can keep him pinned down, we can surround him.”

“We’ve also got a shitload of civilians.” Stride listened to the silence and didn’t like it. “Can you get over to Claire?”

“I think so.”

“Do it I’ll cover you. Then stay with her. I don’t want this guy doubling back on us.”

Stride scooted to the end of the Grand Am he was crouching behind. He came up in firing position, wincing as the skin on his chest tore further. He balanced his elbows on the trunk of the car. Behind him, he heard Serena running across the middle lane, and he saw a flash of movement a few rows ahead of him. He couldn’t tell if it was Blake, so he fired high in the air. The person went down again.

Serena shouted, “Clear!”

Stride ran, dodging between the cars, his body bent over as he sped through three rows. Blake couldn’t be far away.

Blake was low on ammunition, and he could hear sirens in the distance. Lots of sirens. In another minute, the Limelight would be overrun with police, and even though he knew he could escape in the confusion, it would be ugly and violent.

He saw the female detective, Serena, bolt for the opposite side of the lot, where Claire was hiding. Stride gave her cover. Blake didn’t have a shot, and he knew tonight’s plan was a bust. Claire was out of reach.

Time to fold.

He heard running footfalls and knew Stride was making his move, creeping closer.

Blake silently slipped back into the last row, where his brown sedan was waiting. He came upon a couple huddled by the side of a Toyota RAV4. The woman, overweight with curly black hair, stared at him and his gun with terrified eyes and buried her face in her husband’s chest. The man put on a brave face, staring angrily back. He had a round face and a double chin.

“Not a sound,” Blake hissed. He extended his arm and pointed his SIG-Sauer into the man’s face.

The sirens were almost on top of them. The first police car fishtailed as it swerved into the parking lot. The people who had been hiding in the rows began running for the protection of the squad car.

Stride jumped when he heard another explosion, then realized it wasn’t a gunshot but a car backfiring. Two rows ahead, at the far back of the lot, a car engine roared to life. His heart lurched-he knew what it was.

He started to run again and saw a brown sedan leap the shallow landscaping that divided the lot from the Boulder Strip. He squatted, preparing to fire and aim for the car’s tires. Then he realized that the car’s dome light was on, and he could see two silhouettes inside. He couldn’t risk taking the shot.

“He’s got a hostage!”

The sedan headed north at extreme speed. Stride gave up on cover and sprinted for the highway. He waved his arms, flagging down three of the police cars converging on the casino, and pointed them toward the sedan. Its taillights were already disappearing as it weaved around the other traffic on the road.

The chase began.

Stride jogged back to the other end of the parking lot. Cordy was there, along with half a dozen uniformed officers and another two police cars that had blocked the exits. They were taking names and phone numbers from the people still lingering in the lot, but Stride knew the scene was blown. Most of the people had melted away.

He asked about Serena, and Cordy jerked his thumb inside. The two women were back in the casino, well away from the shattered window, with several armed police officers standing watch around them. Claire had both arms around Serena and her head on Serena’s shoulder.

He came up to them. Serena pointed at his chest. “You need a doctor.”

“It’s nothing. A Band-Aid, that’s all.”

“What about your legs?”

Stride studied the splashes of red on his pants and frowned. “Not my blood.”

“Blake?” Serena asked.

Claire looked up, expectant, waiting for his answer. “Did you get him?”

Stride shook his head.

Wearing a baseball cap, a Running Rebels T-shirt, and gym shorts, Blake strolled out of the Limelight parking lot No one tried to stop him. His other clothes were stuffed into the backseat of a Mustang convertible. He waited for the traffic to clear before crossing the highway and scanning the streets for a cab.

He could still vaguely hear the distant sirens. They’d be catching the brown sedan soon, running it off the road. He hoped the round-faced man and his overweight wife would be smart enough to keep their hands in the air and not draw fire.

It had been easy-hand the man his keys, tell him to drive as fast as he could and not stop for at least ten minutes. He also told them there was a bomb in the trunk that he could detonate by cell phone if they stopped early for the police. Complete nonsense, but people will believe anything when there’s a gun in their face and someone is giving them a chance to stay alive.

So off they went.

He could have driven the sedan himself, but he put the odds of surviving the chase at no better than fifty-fifty.

Not good enough. He still had work to do.

THIRTY-FOUR

Stride lay naked on their bed. The ceiling fan spun above him, circulating the stifling air that crept in through the open window. It was three in the morning. They had finally come home from the crime scene at the Limelight to find the power out in their town home. The bedroom was pitch black and hot as he lay there, eyes open, seeing nothing.

He was in pain. His whole body hurt. It was bone pain, the worst kind, deep and achy, not like muscles that could be stretched and massaged. Everywhere he had tumbled and rolled on the pavement, he felt it now. There was a time, in his twenties, when he didn’t pay a price for that kind of punishment to his body. No longer.

The abrasions on his skin stung. The cut on his chest was bandaged, but there were others, scrapes and burns, that he hadn’t discovered until he stripped off his clothes and found places where the slightest touch made him wince. He forced himself to take a shower. The hot, pounding water felt like knives, but it made him feel better to wash away the dirt and then to stretch out in bed.

He heard the bedroom door open and close softly as Serena came in. She crossed to the open window and stood there, looking out. She was a tall, lovely silhouette.

“Claire?” he asked.

“Sleeping. I gave her an Ambien.”

She came and sat down on the bed.

“I was afraid you were going to get yourself killed out there,” she told him.

“Right now, I wish I had.”

He felt her fingertips moving, tracing circles on his chest.

“Do you hurt?” she asked.

“All over.”

“Let’s see if I can make it better.”

Her hands put gentle pressure on his skin, pushing, looking for the erotic nerve ends that let him feel her there.

“Claire’s in love with you,” he said. “It’s obvious.”

“I know that.”

Claire had made no effort to hide it. It was there in how she looked at Serena, how she hung on her on the ride home.

“What about you?” he asked.

Serena touched a sensitive spot, and he sucked in his breath in pain. “Oops,” she said.

“You did that on purpose.”

“Then don’t ask me silly questions like that.” She cupped her hand over the skin as the pain faded, then began again, touching him.

“I’ve been keeping something from you, Jonny, but not about Claire.”

He made a low sound, questioning her. It didn’t matter what she told him now, not while she was doing this.

“Deidre and I were lovers,” Serena said quietly. “Back when I was a teenager. I’m sorry, I should have told you before.”

She picked up one hand and rubbed along his fingers with her thumb, then sucked each fingertip into her mouth. A moment later, he heard the drawer of her nightstand open. She retrieved something from inside.

“A lot of men find it exciting,” she said. “Two women together.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“What do you think?” he said.

She didn’t need to ask. She could feel the effect she was having on him.

He had always suspected there was more to the relationship between her and Deidre than she had let on. He wished he had pushed her harder. It was such an important piece in the puzzle that was Serena.

Her hands came back to his body, on his legs this time, massaging the muscles on his thighs. She ran them up onto his stomach and then down all the way to his toes.

“My shrink would say it’s transference,” Serena said. “I’m guilty about Deidre, so I’m attracted to Claire.”

“What do you say?”

“She’s hot, and she turns me on.” Serena laughed.

She pulled back, and he heard a strange plastic sound, like a cap being popped, and then he quivered as a stream of cool liquid dripped down his shaft. Her hands were back, both of them, and suddenly he was slippery, and her hands rubbed up and down as if gliding over soapy skin.

“It’s your fault,” she told him. “You turned me into a damn sex addict”

He tried to speak, but he wasn’t sure he knew how anymore. His body seemed to lift off the bed. The pain evaporated.

“Feel better?” she asked, and he knew without seeing her that she was grinning.

When the spasms began coursing through his body, he found himself holding his breath, and the lack of oxygen spun images into his head. Cindy, his first wife, in bed, making love. Maggie, his partner. Amanda. Serena. He thought about being homeless and about being, at that instant, disconnected from his body, rising above it, looking down into the darkness.

He wasn’t sure how long had passed before she went into the bathroom and then came back with a warm, damp towel that she used to clean him off. She slid into bed next to him and was asleep almost immediately, her head lying on his arm, her breath blowing on his face. He thought he would sleep, too, but he didn’t. His mind was too full of her, and of Minnesota, and of what it meant to be home. Long minutes later, he finally felt himself slipping away, but he thought, or maybe he dreamed, that he heard Claire’s footsteps in the hall, and he wondered if she had been there the whole time, listening to them.

THIRTY-FIVE

Sawhill put down the phone. His face was purple. The lieutenant who kept an iron lock on his emotions was losing control, and Stride thought the man was ready to stroke out right there in front of them.

“That was Governor Durand,” Sawhill said, his voice pinched. “He’s wondering why this perpetrator is still alive, when one of my detectives had him in his gun sights last night. He’s wondering why it took half a dozen squad cars to surround a honeymoon couple from Nebraska while a serial killer was able to walk away from a crime scene where he murdered a police officer without so much as someone asking for identification.”

Stride was reminded of why he hated politicians. “No offense to die governor, but he wasn’t there. This guy is shrewd. He used a ruse to draw Claire out into the open, and he had all of us in a situation where we needed to be concerned about citizen casualties. It’s not like we could fire randomly.”

“Yes, yes, I’ve read the report. He outdueled you, Stride. You had the drop on him, and he turned it back on you.”

“That’s true enough,” Stride admitted. “He’s a trained mercenary.”

“Well, I’m sorry if we have a more sophisticated criminal than you’re used to dealing with in Minnesota,” Sawhill shot back. He reached for the stress ball on his desk and began squeezing it furiously. “But I expect my detectives to be better trained than the people they’re trying to collar. All you managed to do was shoot up an Escalade, which, by the way, happened to be owned by a senior vice president at Harrah’s who is a good friend of my father. My rule of thumb is, if you’ve got the shot, you take the shot, and you make the shot”

Stride wondered if Sawhill had read that in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Detectives. “Agreed,” he said.

“Then the perp pulls a simple switch and manages to fool all of you,” Sawhill continued. “This couple owns a Subway franchise in Lincoln Falls, and we nearly blew the husband’s head off, because you told a team of squad cars the man was a serial killer who had just killed a cop.”

“It was the perp’s car,” Stride said, but he was loath to make excuses. He knew he had screwed up.

“And once again he proved he was smarter than the people I’ve got trying to catch him. Tell me at least we got something from the car.”

Stride shook his head. “Fingerprints, but we already had those. He bought the car for cash three months ago. Fake name and address. There’s not a scrap of paper inside to suggest where he might be living. We’re doing a forensic examination to see if there’s dirt or other trace evidence that might give us a clue, but that’s going to take time.”

“We don’t have time,” Sawhill said. “Is Claire under wraps?”

Stride nodded. “Serena’s babysitting her:”

“So what do we do to find this guy?”

Amanda, who had been quietly watching the Ping-Pong game between Stride and Sawhill, spoke up. “We could set a trap. Put Claire back in the game in a setting we control.”

Sawhill snorted “We do not use Boni Fisso’s daughter as bait. Period, end of discussion. Serena’s on top of her, and the perp doesn’t know where she is. Let’s keep it that way.”

“We’ve been checking libraries all over the city,” Amanda added. “Nothing so fat”

“Half the force is working on this, and they’re hot to catch him,” Stride said. “He killed a cop, and he killed a kid. Everybody wants him.”

“So do I. So does the governor. This is bad news for the city. What do we think this guy is going to try next?”

“I think he’s going to go after Claire again,” Stride said. “We need to catch him before he does. We’ve also redoubled security around other people who might be on his hit list, but the fact that he tried for Claire last night makes me think he’s at the end of his list.”

“Do you think he might go after Boni directly?” Sawhill asked.

Amanda nodded. “It’s not his pattern, but he might.”

“Boni’s not an easy target,” Stride said. “But the Sheherezade comes down next week. That’s the link to Amira.”

“Great. Just great. The implosion is going to be televised nationally, you know.”

“Maybe he’ll take out Boni at the ceremony,” Stride said. “Good for ratings. Tourism will climb.”

Sawhill leaned forward. “Is this a joke to you?”

“You don’t need to tell me how this place works,” Stride said. “In six months, we’ll have a daily bus tour of the murder sites and a new ad campaign. ‘We’ve Put Sin Back in Sin City.’”

“You’ve been here a few months, Detective. I’ve lived here nearly my whole life. My father has devoted decades of his life to this town. This is our home. You serve this city, so treat it with respect.”

Amanda stood up and dragged Stride’s arm until he was standing, too. She nodded to Sawhill. “We’re both tired, sir. Don’t worry, we take this perp very seriously.”

She began pulling Stride out of the office. Sawhill stood up and laid his hands flat on his desk. “See that you do,” he called after them. He and Stride exchanged icy glares, and then Amanda had them back in the corridor, with the door closed behind her.

Amanda leaned back against the wall and wiped her brow. The air-conditioning was back on, and the office air was frigid, but she was sweating. She gave Stride a smile and a low whistle. “That wasn’t too tactful.”

“I know. Sorry. I didn’t mean to put you in the middle of it.”

“This is a corporate town,” Amanda pointed out. “Image matters to these guys.”

Stride shook his head. “Money matters.”

“You’re not going to change the city, Stride.”

He nodded. “I know.” Before he could stop himself, he added, “I’m not sure I’m going to stay.”

Amanda looked shocked. “What?”

“They want me back in Minnesota,” he explained. “I’m thinking seriously about it”

“What about Serena?” she asked.

Stride didn’t say anything. That was the question, he knew. The one on which his life hung. What about Serena?

“Nothing’s set in stone,” Stride told her. “Let’s catch Blake Wilde first”

THIRTY-SIX

Amanda pulled into the parking lot of the downtown library and got out of the car, the heat searing her lungs. It was late afternoon, when the October weather in Las Vegas should be perfect, but the sun still felt like an oven cranked to the broiler setting.

She had been stewing about the idea of Stride leaving since he told her. There was no reason to be angry at him, but she was angry anyway. For once, she had a partner she could work with, and suddenly she might lose him. She hated the idea of starting all over again with someone new. Anyone she got would probably be like Cordy, making jokes behind her back, ogling her tits, looking for ways to drive her out. It made her wonder again what she was doing here, and whether she and Bobby would both be better off if she followed Stride’s lead. Get out. Head for San Francisco. Leave the city and all its craziness behind.

She was in no mood for games. Her patience was worn down, like a T-shirt washed so many times you could see through it. When she looked across Las Vegas Boulevard, she saw the car again. A steel gray Lexus SUV. She had seen it twice before that afternoon and had already run the plates. She knew who was driving.

Amanda crossed the street. The car windows were smoked, so she couldn’t see inside. She rapped her knuckles on the driver’s window and waited.

The window rolled down. She felt a blast of cold air.

“Hello, Leo,” she said, trying not to boil over. “You following me?”

Leo Rucci was wearing sunglasses. The red veins in his neck bulged like barbells. “It’s a free country, ain’t it?”

“Sure is. Where any shithole hood like you can become a millionaire. God bless America.”

“Hey-”

“Don’t play games with me, Leo. I’m having a really bad day. Now get out of here, and don’t let me see you behind me again, or I’m going to haul your ass downtown.”

“For what?”

“For obstruction of justice and being really annoying to a police officer.”

“I can help you,” Leo said. “My way’s a lot quicker than some monkey trial. You get a lead on this guy, you call me. I take care of the rest.”

“Go back to the golf course, Leo. Let us worry about Blake.”

Amanda turned on her heel and stalked back across the street to the library. She heard Rucci’s car start up and roar away. Inside, she made her way to the reference desk.

“I’m looking for Monica Ramsey,” she said.

The librarian pointed at a tall woman in her fifties who was refiling microfiche boxes from a cart. Amanda approached her.

“Ms. Ramsey? I’m Amanda Gillen. You left a message on my voice mail?”

Monica had owlish glasses and long black hair tied in a ponytail. She was built like a walking stick and wore flimsy plastic gloves on her hands. “Oh, yes. You’re the detective. You’re looking for that man.”

“That’s right,” Amanda said, feeling a tiny glimmer of hope after hours of frustration. “Have you seen him?”

“Well, I think so, yes, although it was a number of weeks ago. I don’t see what help I can be.”

“You’d be surprised. Please tell me about it.”

“Oh, of course. Let’s sit down.”

They sat at the corner of a long reference table near the bookshelves. Monica peeled off her gloves. “I always wear these, you know, when dealing with fiche. The film is so delicate and so old.” She tapped her finger on the sketch that Amanda placed between them. “This man, he was so rough at handling the fiche. I had to ask him to be careful.”

“You’re sure this is the man?”

“Oh, yes. Those eyes are quite unforgettable.”

“No offense, but can I ask why you didn’t call me earlier?”

“I’m so sorry. We’ve been away. A Caribbean cruise. I just got back to the library today.”

’Tell me what you remember about the man,” Amanda said.

“Well, again, this was quite a while ago. Midsummer, I think. July? Maybe August. He came in on successive days, three or four days in a row, looking up all sorts of material related to Las Vegas in the 1960s. I pulled fiche, magazines, books. He wanted it all.”

“Did he tell you specifically what he was looking for?”

“Well, he had me run a Lexis search on one of the old casinos. The Sheherezade, I think. Yes, that’s right, because he was also reading about Boni Fisso, and as you can imagine, we have quite a lot of material about him.”

“Did he say why he wanted this information?”

“Oh, no. He really didn’t say much at all. Not a very talkative type. We get lots of requests for archival information, so it wasn’t at all unusual.”

“Did he ask you to research any other individuals? People besides Boni Fisso?”

“Not that I recall.”

“Monica, I really need your help here. We need to find this man right away. I’m going to ask you to think back, think real hard, and remember anything distinctive about him. What he wore, what he said, what he carried, what he did. Anything that might give us a clue about who he is and where we can find him.”

Monica sat up very straight in her chair, and her neck looked elongated. The librarian’s tongue slipped out to wet her lips. Amanda was reminded of a giraffe at the zoo, reaching to get a leaf from a distant tree branch.

“He had a blue backpack with him,” she said. “That was where he carried his materials. I really don’t remember how he was dressed. Jeans, maybe? Otherwise, there wasn’t anything special about him. I’m very sorry.”

Amanda was disappointed. “How about a car? Did you see him come or go, or see what direction he might have headed?”

Monica shook her head.

“Have you seen him since then?”

“No, he never came back, not when I was here.”

Amanda stood up. “I appreciate your time, Monica. Thanks very much for calling me. If you remember anything else, please let me know.”

“Of course I will.”

As Amanda turned to leave, she heard Monica giggling. She reversed her course. “What is it?”

Monica blushed. “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s very silly. I was just thinking, if you want to catch this man, you should stake out doughnut shops.” She laughed again.

Amanda looked at her, wondering if this was a stupid police joke. “Why?”

“Well, I remember now, the man was obsessed with Krispy Kreme doughnuts. I caught him eating a doughnut at the fiche machine, and I had to tell him that he couldn’t eat in the library. I told him I couldn’t resist those things either, and he said they were addictive.”

Amanda felt her heart race. “Thanks again, Monica.”

Son of a bitch, she thought Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Claire sat with one leg tucked beneath her and the other leg dangling from Serena’s sofa. She cradled a warm mug of coffee in both hands. Her hair was loose and uncombed, and she wore a roomy, extralong T-shirt that stretched to the middle of her thighs. She had bare feet, with nails painted red.

She glanced at the wall clock that tick-tocked behind them, counting away the minutes. “It’s late,” she murmured. “Past eleven. Where’s your lover?”

Serena looked up from the computer on her lap, although she could barely concentrate on the screen. Her eyes were tired.

“He’s still out trying to find Blake,” Serena said.

“You resent it, don’t you? Being here with me.”

“No, I don’t resent being with you. Sitting around just isn’t my style. I want to be where the action is.”

“That’s right,” Claire said with a grin. “You’re tough, aren’t you?”

“That’s me.”

In fact, it had driven her crazy, being shut up in the town home all day. She had made calls, hunted down leads on the Internet, and gone back through her notes to find something she had missed, but none of it was the same as being on the street. She felt isolated, cut off from the investigation.

“He’s attractive, your man. I see what you see in him.”

“Thanks.”

“He loves you. It’s there when he looks at you.”

Serena remembered that Jonny had said the same thing about Claire the previous night. “I love him,” she said.

“I’ve been with men, too, you know,” Claire said.

“Meaning?”

“It’s not like I don’t understand the attraction.”

Claire unfurled her legs and climbed off the sofa. She padded to the white wall and examined the desert photographs hung there. “Did you take these?”

She looked back, and Serena nodded.

“They’re striking. You have an eye for the land. That’s what they can’t teach, you know. The eye. A lot of people understand the mechanics, but they can’t see the picture.”

“You’re pretty calm about it,” Serena told her.

“About what?”

“About almost getting killed.”

Claire shrugged. “I wasn’t calm last night. But I feel safe with you.”

“I could take you to Boni’s place. It’s like a fortress there.”

“That’s not safe. That’s a prison.”

“He wants to make up with you,” Serena said. “He was glad you called him.”

“Oh, are you a family therapist now?”

“No, but I know what it’s like to be an adult without parents. There are a lot of times when I wish things were different.”

Claire continued to stare at the photographs on the wall, but Serena thought she had touched a sensitive spot. “I wish things were different, too, Serena. But they’re not.”

“He says he doesn’t care that you’re gay.”

“Catholics never care if you’re gay, as long as you’re celibate,” Claire said.

Serena watched Claire smile and realized it was false. She thought Claire might cry.

“It has nothing to do with your being gay, does it?” Serena asked. “The split between you and Boni.”

“No.”

“What is it, then?”

Claire shook her head. “It was a long time ago. I don’t want to go back there.”

She could hear it in Claire’s tone. The secret was profoundly horrible, whatever it was. “I’ve got monsters like that, too.”

“I know you do. That’s why we click. We both have pasts we’re trying to run from.”

“Did you get therapy?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Claire sighed. “Please, Serena. Let’s drop it. I couldn’t talk about it then. I can’t talk about it now. Not to anyone. Not when my father’s name is Boni Fisso.”

Serena let the silence stretch out while Claire stared blankly at the photographs. She could see raw pain in her face.

“Boni says you’ve got millions in the bank,” Serena said.

Claire smiled, a real one this time. “Are you after me for my money now?”

“I was just curious.”

“When I left, I wanted to be independent. I am. Boni didn’t give me a stake. I built it myself. So yes, I’ve got a lot of money. I’m Boni’s daughter; genes count for something. Plus all that time I spent in business school.”

“But you’re happy living in a small apartment? Singing your songs?”

“I’ve learned a lot being on my own,” Claire said. “I’m free, and no one owns me. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t have any ambition. There’s a part of me that still longs to be in charge of the hotels and run them my way.”

“You still could be.”

Claire shook her head. “Not if it means going back to my father.”

“How would you run them?” Serena asked. “If you had the keys to the kingdom.”

“Me? I’m tired of all the bigness. Big shows. Big names. I think people want intimacy. They don’t want to get lost in a crowd. They want to see singers, not shows. Talent, not names. And glamour, like in the old days. The huge resorts have glitz but not much character.”

“You could start your own place.”

Claire was wistful. “Maybe someday. It would be nice to show Boni that I can do it without him. And that you don’t have to sell your soul to the devil to be successful.”

Serena heard bitterness creep back into her voice. “You want to tell me what he did to you?”

“It wasn’t him,” Claire said. “It was someone else. But Boni let it happen. The business came first, like it always does.” She looked as if she were about to say more, but she clapped her arms around her body and shivered. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Okay.”

“It’s in the past. I don’t worry about it. I like to sing and drink and talk about life and make passionate love.”

“I like two out of the four,” Serena said, laughing.

“Which two?”

“Well, we know I don’t drink.”

Claire laughed, too. She came over to where Serena was sitting and knelt by the side of the easy chair. She leaned forward, her bare arms on the cushion. “I’m going to bed,” she said.

“Okay.”

“How about you?”

Serena didn’t want to look into Claire’s eyes, but there seemed to be no other place in the room to stare. The blue eyes teased her. “Is that an invitation?” Serena asked. As if it were a joke.

“Yes.”

“I don’t think Jonny would be too happy to come home and find us in bed together.”

“You might be surprised.”

“I’m sorry, Claire. If things were different, you know? But they’re not.”

“I understand.”

Claire used one fingertip to glide along Serena’s forearm with a silky touch. Serena was so on edge that she almost jumped.

“Are you going to catch Blake tonight?” Claire asked.

“If not tonight, then soon. Half the police in the city are looking for him. The valley isn’t so big. We’ll get him.”

Serena wanted to believe it.

“Don’t kill him,” Claire murmured.

She spoke so softly that Serena wasn’t sure she had heard her right. “What?”

“Don’t kill him, I said.”

“Why not?” Serena asked. “Why do you care?”

Claire looked down. Some of her blond hair fell across her face. “You really don’t know, do you? It’s so obvious to me.”

“What is?”

“Look at me,” she said, looking up, holding Serena’s stare again.

Serena did. “So?”

“Blake is my brother.”

“What?”

“I knew it as soon as I saw him,” Claire said. “I can’t believe you don’t see it Those eyes. There may be a lot of Amira in him, but that’s not all. It’s more than that. It’s Boni, too. Boni’s his father.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

Ten minutes to midnight, Amanda thought.

She could have been home with Bobby. Making love to him the way she liked best, on their sides, face to face, rubbing together. Warm and safe under the blankets. Or they could have been in the Spyder right now, on the desert highway to California, leaving Las Vegas behind forever at a hundred miles an hour through the black night of Deatii Valley. A new life.

But no.

She sat alone in a Krispy Kreme doughnut shop a few blocks from downtown. Her coffee was getting cold, and she looked up every now and then, hypnotized, as rows of glistening doughnuts streamed along the conveyor belt, getting drenched in icing. There was a steady stream of late-night patrons in and out She was one of just a handful of people who waited inside, her back to the door, a newspaper in her hands, a half-eaten doughnut on a napkin in front of her. She had nursed it for an hour.

All right, it was actually her fourth.

The reality was that adrenaline was pumping through her veins, along with me sugar. It had taken her several hours to find this place, going from shop to shop in the city, before the little Asian man behind the counter here took the sketch and nodded vigorously.

“Yeah, sure, he come here. Day, night, couple times a day like. Always the same. Half a dozen original and Sprite.”

“You’re sure?” Amanda asked. “This guy changes his appearance a lot.”

“Oh yeah, he look different. Sometimes blond, sometimes beard, sometimes no beard, sometimes old, sometimes young. Order always the same, though. Half dozen original and Sprite. That him.”

“You didn’t think it was odd, him looking different all the time?”

The Asian man shrugged. “This Vegas.”

That was enough for Amanda.

She was waiting for Blake. The manager said he hadn’t been in yet tonight, so there was a good chance he’d arrive for a late-night fix. She sat so he couldn’t see her face, and she had a baseball cap on her head, with its brim pulled down. She didn’t know if he knew her face, but she had to assume he did. She wanted him in the store, in a confined space, not out on the street where he could run.

It was the most dangerous thing she had ever done, and she tried not to think about that. She radioed in that she was taking a break for an hour and then switched off her walkietalkie. She was all alone.

She knew she should have called for backup. That was procedure. They could have surrounded the place and mounted a stakeout, but Amanda wasn’t sure they’d let her inside the store, and that was where she wanted to be. She also thought Blake was savvy enough to spot a stakeout from six blocks away, and he would disappear and never come back to the store again. They only had one chance to get it right. Her, by herself

She could have called Stride, but he’d want to follow procedure. Never in a million years would he expose her to that danger alone. Or he’d want to be there with her, and she knew that Blake would spot him.

A part of her wanted to prove herself. Bring Blake in herself and then extend her middle finger as she walked out the door.

She put down her newspaper and picked up her coffee. Cold. She thought about getting a warmer-up, but she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. The Asian manager buzzed behind the counter, busily attending to the doughnuts. She had told him to be cool, not to betray any reaction, not to look at her when Blake came in. She hoped he could do it. She hadn’t told him that the man in the sketch was wanted for multiple homicides.

Almost midnight.

The bell on the door signaled another customer. She took a bite of doughnut and picked up her paper. She didn’t glance at whoever passed by, just listened to heavy footsteps and knew it was a man. Whoever it was beat a steady path to the counter.

Amanda heard the Asian manager. “Hey, boss.” Then he added, “Same as usual, huh? Half dozen original and Sprite?”

Mistake. She hoped Blake didn’t recognize the tip-off.

Amanda put down the paper and reached for her coffee at the same time, with the barest glance at the counter. The man wasn’t looking at her. She saw blond hair. The height wasright, and so was the lean and strong physique.

She watched the manager use a straw to pick hot doughnuts off the assembly line and put them in a box. He didn’t look at her. He filled the box, then opened the refrigerator and pulled out a plastic bottle of soda.

“Here you go, boss.”

“Thanks,” the man said.

Was that the voice she had heard through the static on Stride’s cell phone?

He was paying now. She had to be ready when he turned around, with her gun already in her hand, pointed, set to fire. He’s lightning fast, Stride had told her. She thought about Sawhill: If you’ve got the shot, take the shot, and make the shot

Amanda reached behind her, taking the butt of her Glock in her grip, wishing there were no sweat on her palm. She silently extracted it and kept it in her lap under the table.

Her eyes never left Blake. If it was Blake.

“You got eleven cents?”

“No.”

“Okay, boss.”

The little Asian man counted out change. He extended a palm to the man at the counter.

Time began to freeze.

The man reached for his change, but then he slid his arm past the register, took the Asian man by the throat, and in an instant yanked him up bodily by the neck and catapulted him over the counter. Coins sprinkled across the floor. Amanda’s mouth fell open in shock. She bolted back in her seat, the chair tumbling behind her. She sprang up, swinging her gun.

“Police! Don’t move!”

She took aim, but Blake already had the Asian man suspended in front of him. Blake’s pistol was at the man’s head. The manager’s eyes bulged with fright, and he wet himself, urine dripping from his pant leg as Blake held him in the air.

Amanda and Blake stared at each other. He had a beard again. Fuller cheekbones. Glasses. But it was him. His lips curled into a smile.

“Very nice, Detective,” he said. “I wondered if my doughnut addiction would get me into trouble eventually. But they are so good, aren’t they?”

“Put the gun down, and let him go. The building is surrounded, Blake. You’re not going anywhere. Let’s end this thing without more violence, okay?”

Blake shook his head. “There’s no one out there, Amanda.”

He knew her name. It was scary.

“We held back until you showed up. As soon as you came in, I gave them the signal on the radio. There’s no way out.”

Blake nodded. “Excellent. Signal on the radio. That’s a nice touch, Amanda. But I’ve spent years working with military personnel trained far better than any police force. There was no one in the area. It’s just you and me. I’ve been watching you drink your coffee and make your way through five doughnuts for the past hour.”

“It was four doughnuts,” Amanda said. “Put the gun down.”

“Don’t follow me, and you stay alive,” Blake said. “So does this nice man here.”

He began backing down the corridor that led to the restrooms and the crash door that led outside. Amanda had checked out the exit earlier. It led to a vacant lot, strewn with glass, backing up near Eighth Street.

Amanda followed cautiously, keeping her gun trained on him. She wished she had called for backup now. She knew there was no one on the other side of the door, and if Blake got away, he would disappear through the downtown streets. Slip through their fingers sagain.

Take the shot Make the shot.

She couldn’t. She didn’t have it. And she couldn’t risk that Blake would get off a shot first and kill the manager.

Blake was almost to the door. “The two of us are leaving now. Don’t make me kill him. Stay where you are.”

“Go through that door and they’ll split your head open like a watermelon, Blake.” Bravado. Lies. They both knew it.

She was six feet away from him. Blake’s back was at the crash door. He waited there, hesitating, and she wasn’t sure why. Did he believe her? Was he wondering if there really was a SWAT team poised out back?

The bell on the front door clanged again. A new customer entered the shop. Amanda flinched, and Blake threw the Asian manager at her, his body wildly flying through the air and tumbling both of them to the ground like bowling pins. As Amanda fell, she heard the crash door bang as Blake spun through and vanished. She cursed, disentangled herself from the manager, and scrambled back to her feet.

She charged down the corridor.

At the door, she froze.

Was Blake running or waiting?

Amanda raised her gun and kicked the door open, watching it hurtle around to the opposite wall of the building.

When the door swung open, banging against the wall, Blake knew she was smart.

He recoiled and almost fired. His finger twitched on the trigger, instinct taking over, and he realized at the last instant that she wasn’t coming through the door. She wanted him to fire, betraying his position.

His bullet, then her bullet, and he would be dead. A nice ruse.

He knew enough to respect his enemy.

He didn’t fire. She didn’t know where he was. Now, he knew, she had to choose.

Damn. He didn’t fire.

Left or right, she thought.

She had to make a choice. Either he was on the left side of the door or the right. Or he was running, getting away, and each second she hesitated gave him more time to escape.

She would roll through, pivot, and fire. Make the right choice and it was even odds for both of them, gun to gun, man to… woman.

Make the wrong choice, and she was dead. Simple as that. Left or right.

Left was the only direction that made sense. The door opened left. On the right, he was exposed. To the left, the door gave him cover, blocked her view for a crucial millisecond, gave him an advantage. She had the edge if he was on the right-and he knew it.

Unless he could see into her head and anticipate what she was thinking and realize that being on the right gave him the edge if she went to the left first, offering him her back. A gamble. A risk. Vegas.

She couldn’t overthink. She was up against a tactician. He’d give himself the maximum odds for survival. That meant he was waiting for her on the left.

Or running.

She needed to move.

Amanda thought about Bobby. She could taste his last kiss.

Then she kicked the door a second time, and as the light spilled out, she dove and rolled onto the pavement and came up in a crouch to her left with her gun aimed. She had just enough time for the image to reach her brain, to see the empty stretch of wall behind the door, to realize her mistake. She reacted instantly. Didn’t fire. Began to twist, turn, duck, shift.

Fast Blindingly fast. But not fast enough.

He waited for her on the right, his gun poised. She had to go left, because all her training told her to go left, and cops were creatures of training. There was no surprise, no pleasure, no sadness, when she did. In every fight there was a winner and a loser, and it was no disgrace to lose with dignity.

She was very fast. He was impressed.

Most cops would have frozen, hesitated, but she turned seamlessly, recovering from her mistake and spinning back the other way. If she had gone right, she might well have gotten the first shot.

But no.

Blake pulled the trigger.

It was such a short moment, but it felt so long.

Amanda was on a precipice, a slim tower of rock. Around her were other peaks, a chessboard of granite kings, many of them grand, cloud-swept mountains climbing into the sky. She stood on the edge and looked down, but there was no bottom to the world, no emerald earth, just mist. She knew she could fly.

When she glanced behind her, Bobby was there, tears streaming down his face, and she didn’t understand how he could be so sad when there was such joy to be had here.

Amanda smiled at him and blew him a kiss. Then, with her arms spread wide, she stepped into the air.

THIRTY-NINE

Blake ran. The night gave him cover. He sprinted through the empty lot, feeling broken glass crunch and scatter under his feet. When he reached Eighth Street, he headed northeast, toward the downscale neighborhood surrounding the overpass for Highway 95. He slowed to a walk as he crossed Stewart Avenue, then ran again when he was beyond the glare of lights from the street.

He abandoned his car, which was parked three blocks in the opposite direction, but it was stolen, and he could readily steal another. His apartment was only half a mile away, and it was safer now to get there on foot.

There were a handful of strangers around him. It was after midnight, and they were mostly ducking the law themselves, selling drugs or using drugs. They glanced in his direction as he ran, to make sure there were no cops in hot pursuit, but otherwise they didn’t care about him. The deeper he penetrated into the neighborhood, the fewer people he saw, until he was alone. He walked again.

He saw the concrete overpass ahead. The houses around him were sunk into decay, with collapsing fences, cracked pink stucco, and gates hanging open. A few dusty cars were parked haphazardly in the yards. He passed a couple of old shopping carts on the sidewalk, their wheels stripped off.

Sirens erupted in the surrounding streets. Blake ducked back into the shadows near one of the houses. He eyed the traffic behind him and saw the flashing red lights of a patrol car as it streaked toward the cafe. Word was out It wouldn’t be long now, just a few minutes, before the neighborhood was engulfed by police trying to lay out a net around the area.

He walked faster. When he passed a house with laundry hung out on a sagging clothesline, he slipped inside the fence and grabbed a jean shirt off the line and shrugged it over his white T-shirt. A baseball cap was lying in the dirt, and he put it on. He began peeling at the false beard on his face. He kept a small bottle of spirit gum remover in his jeans for emergencies, and he tried quickly to get as much of the hair and glue off his face as he could. It wasn’t perfect, but at least at first glance, he was again a man without a beard.

Blake thought about strategy. He had always expected the police to get close to him eventually, but he had been hoping for a couple more days and a little more breathing room to put his plans in motion. He didn’t have that now. He had to move immediately. Tonight.

That was when he realized the crush of police searching for him in the dirty streets could actually work to his advantage.

He only needed a few hours.

Blake made his way under the overpass. The freeway traffic roared overhead, creating a thunder in his ears and a constant vibration that rumbled under his feet. His eyes darted around the concrete superstructure, on the hunt for muggers or gangs. It was easy to get trapped here, with no way out to the sides and an easy path to block in front and behind, but he didn’t see anyone except a young hooker, sitting with her back to one of the pillars.

He didn’t know why she was there. There was no business to be had in this area. Then he saw she was smoking a cigarette and taking an occasional snort of cocaine from a wrinkled piece of tinfoil. Blake stopped and looked at her, his mind grinding and coming up with a plan. She was young, trying to look twenty-one, but he suspected she was no more than fifteen. She wore knee-high boots and a fake leather jacket and had poorly applied lipstick and platinum blond hair that was almost white. She saw him watching her and gave him a drugged smile. When she spread her legs, he saw that she was naked underneath her skirt. She reached down with two fingers and spread her pink lips.

’Twenty bucks, baby,” she murmured.

Blake reached down, grabbed her by her blond hair, and yanked her to her feet. Her cigarette fell smoldering to the pavement.

“Hey!” she screamed. “Fuckhead, that hurts!”

He slapped her hard. “Shut up.”

She took a look in his eyes and tried to run, but he had a lock on her shoulder and spun her back around. Her face filled with fear, and she touched her red cheek tenderly. Her voice became like a kid’s again, weak and scared. “Don’t hurt me.”

“I’m not going to. Shut up and listen. I’ve got two hundred bucks. It’s yours if you spend the night with me.”

The expression on her face changed. Greed took over. She smiled a fake seductive smile at him. “Two hundred bucks? Sure, baby, you got it. But look, I don’t do ass, okay? I do everything else, but not that.”

Blake took her elbow and pushed her to walk beside him. “Fine. Come on, my place is a few blocks away.”

“Your place?”

“My apartment.”

The girl struggled to keep up with him in her highheeled boots. She looked nervous at the idea of going to his apartment.

“Three hundred bucks,” Blake said, pulling her faster.

“Three hundred! Yeah, okay, yeah.”

He led her from the overpass and continued along Eighth Street to where it ended at Ninth Street and turned north. His eyes were constantly moving. He could hear sirens everywhere now. Police cars were beginning to fan out around him.

“Lot of cops tonight,” the girl said.

Blake saw a flash of yellow on the street ahead of them. He knew what it was-one of a corps of policemen in neoncolored shirts who patrolled the area on bicycles.

He turned to the young prostitute. “Kiss me.”

Before she could react, he leaned down and pressed his lips firmly against hers. She responded hungrily and put her arms around his back. She smelled of litde-girl perfume, and her lips tasted like smoke. Her breathing was rapid, and he could feel her pulse racing in her throat, accelerated by the drugs.

Behind him, he heard the cop on the bicycle slow, watching them.

Don’t stop, Blake thought. He didn’t need another dead body and a screaming, hysterical hooker on his hands.

“Hey, buddy,” the cop called.

Blake pulled his mouth free from the girl and turned just far enough toward the street that he could see the cop with only a shadow of his profile showing. He hoped the cop couldn’t see the traces of spirit gum clinging to his face. “What’s up?” Blake replied.

“Look, buddy, we both know what she is. All I can say is, make sure you use a condom, all right?”

The girl wrenched away from Blake’s arms. “Hey!” she shouted.

The cop laughed.

Blake grabbed her waist and picked her up and began carrying her away up Ninth Street. The girl shouted an obscenity and spit in the cop’s direction.

“A feisty one,” the cop called. “Just remember what I said ”

“Thanks, officer, I’m very sorry” Blake replied without looking back.

He exhaled in relief when he heard the bike squeaking as the cop rode away. He put the girl down and locked her jaw in his fist.” You say another word before we get to my place, and the deal’s off. If we see another cop, you act like my girlfriend, and you shut the fuck up. Got it?”

“Did you hear what he said?” the girl retorted. “Acted like I had some kind of disease.”

“You probably do.”

The girl reared her hand back to slap him, but he snatched her wrist and twisted it until she grimaced in pain. “Not a word,” Blake repeated. He tugged her along beside him.

He was pleased that she stayed quiet now. Her lower lip jutted out as if she were pouting. They crossed Bonanza and passed Metro’s Downtown Command building. It was the middle of die night, but there were cops coming and going past the palm trees that lined the entrance. He felt the girl tense, and he whispered to her, “Don’t worry about it Just keep walking.”

It was like hiding in plain sight. He wondered what Jonathan Stride would think when he discovered that Blake had been living only blocks from his headquarters. True to form, no one looked at him or the girl as they sauntered past the building and continued to the end of Ninth Street. They reached a narrow alley bordered by a graffiti-strewn stone wall. On their left was a boneyard of abandoned casino signs, the place where the city’s old neon went to rust and die. He pulled her into the alley, which was dark and deserted, and she looked up at him, afraid again. She began twisting to get away, but he held her tight in his grip.

The area was a honeycomb of dead-end streets. He saw the occasional glow of cigarettes in the black spaces between decrepit houses. There were other signs of life. Coughs. Mutters of conversation. People who didn’t want to be found. He stayed in the middle of the alley, and the girl clung close to him now.

Four blocks down, he turned onto his street. He stopped, watching it carefully, listening, smelling. There was no stakeout here yet, and he hadn’t expected one, but it paid to be careful. He made his way to the twostory chocolate brown apartment complex, which was halfway to becoming a wreck. He saw clothes hanging over the balconies. A motorcycle was parked near one of the doors. A sorry palm tree drooped near the sidewalk.

“Come on,” he told her.

Blake pulled her inside the building, and they went up the stairs to die second floor. His apartment was at the rear. He stopped in the corridor again and listened. A television was on in the first apartment, and he heard the canned laughter of a sitcom. A couple was having sex in another apartment, and he heard exaggerated moaning.

“Hey, I think I know her,” the girl said brightly.

“Shut up, let’s go.”

He took note of the tells he had left on the door of his apartment-a thread on the hinges, a hair stuck near the floor. They were undisturbed. No one had been inside. He opened the door and pushed the girl inside ahead of him. With the door closed, he flipped the light switch.

“The bedroom’s in there,” he said, pointing to a doorway on the right. “Go in and take your clothes off.”

“What about my money?” the girl asked. Blake sighed, dug in his wallet, and peeled off eight fifty-dollar bills. The girl’s eyes lit up. “Four hundred bucks? Cool! You’re great! I’ll ride you as long as you can keep it up, you know?”

“Get inside, strip, and wait for me.”

“You don’t need to wear a condom, really, I don’t got anything.”

Blake waved his hand toward the bedroom, and the girl rushed inside, clutching the money in her hand.

He studied the apartment, assessing what he needed. He already had his gun, which he reloaded quickly, and his knife and a stolen cellular phone. He grabbed a new roll of duct tape to replace the roll he had left behind in the stolen car. He looked around to see if there was evidence he needed to destroy but decided it didn’t matter now.

He wouldn’t be coming back.

Blake picked up the plastic case he had taken from a gumball machine. Two human teeth rattled around inside it. He juggled them, looked at their spiked roots, and thought about Amira again. He had come a long way since the day he first saw her in the magazine and finally put a beautiful face to the voice he had heard in his mind his whole life.

He could see her there, on the roof of the Sheherezade. Her naked body in the cool water of the pool. He imagined her desperate screams for help that went unanswered.

He was ready to answer them now.

There was just one last thing to do.

Blake went into the bedroom. The girl was stretched out on the bed, her nude body squirming on the rumpled sheets. Her breasts barely swelled from her chest, and her nipples looked like mosquito bites. She flapped her spread-open legs.

“You ready, baby?”

Blake sat down on the bed beside her. She gave him a big teen grin, and then he clapped his hand over her mouth and stuck the barrel of his gun onto the skin of her forehead between her terrified eyes.

FORTY

Stride closed his eyes and wanted to scream.

The call had come in. Officer down. The store owner who phoned it in had fingered Blake as the shooter, and Stride and a dozen other cars had responded to the scene within minutes. It wasn’t until he arrived at the shop that he learned the identity of the officer who had been shot.

Amanda.

He wanted to throw up. The pain made him feel as if someone had taken a serrated knife to his stomach and hacked his way up his rib cage until he found Stride’s heart.

Stride had lost cops before in the line of duty, sometimes good friends, but never a partner. In the short time they had been together, Amanda had developed a special hold on him, as if she were filling the void that Maggie had left in Minnesota. He didn’t understand her sexuality, but he didn’t care. She was smart. Funny. An underdog. Stride liked underdogs. He felt more for the prostitutes and cocktail waitresses in this city than for the casino bosses in their five-thousand-dollar suits or the drunk tourists and convention rats looking for an easy score.

Amanda.

He felt depression crash down through his brain. He leaned against the wall of the shop and watched all his losses replay in his head like a sad movie.

If he had been faster than Blake. If he had taken the shot in the parking lot at the Limelight.

That had been his problem all his life. He couldn’t let go of guilt. His regrets clung to him forever and gathered into a stony shell.

He hadn’t been fast enough to see her. The paramedics were already shutting the ambulance door when he streaked up to the curb. Their faces told the story. Ashen and tight. Fighting time, fighting death, and losing both fights. She wasn’t expected to survive the ride to the hospital.

He found himself angry at Amanda for being there. It was brilliant, tracking Blake via the doughnut shops. The little things always brought down the smartest criminals, even if it was something simple like a sweet tooth for Krispy Kremes. Stride wished he had thought of that himself, and he half wondered if that had been the point of leaving the receipt behind from Reno. A taunt. A clue. To see if they’d pick up on it. Why didn’t you call for backup, Amanda? ‘It was such a basic lesson, all die way back to the academy. Never march into a high-risk situation alone, never be a hero.

But Stride knew why. She knew Blake was smart, that he would have spotted them long before they saw him coming. Anyone who had survived the extremists in Afghanistan could smell out a trap set by the local police. They had only one chance, one visit to the shop, to grab him. She didn’t want to blow their best shot, so she did it on her own.

There was the other part, too-the chance to rub it in the faces of the cops trying to force her out. To prove who she was and what she could do. Ego. He couldn’t blame her for feeling that way, but he blamed her anyway.

“You could have called me, Amanda,” he whispered aloud. But Blake knows you, he could hear her saying right back at him.

The door to the shop opened, and two uniformed cops walked out They didn’t see Stride on their left. They stopped outside and lit cigarettes, and the aroma of the smoke wafted to him and filled his lungs with a longing more intense than he had felt in a year. He looked at his hands, which were trembling. The craving was a need, as if his soul were bone dry and nothing on earth could fill it up again except a cigarette. He could taste it on his lips, inhale it into his chest.

“Can you spare one?” he asked.

He didn’t recognize them, and they didn’t recognize him. The taller cop, about Stride’s height, with black hair and a mustache, nodded and shook a cigarette out of his pack. Stride took it and bent down to catch a flame from the man’s lighter.

“Thanks.”

The first drag was paradise. Like angels singing. He couldn’t believe he had gone a year without this.

“You know her?” the cop asked, cocking his head toward the shop.

Stride nodded. He pursed his lips and blew out a cloud of smoke. God would forgive him, even if Serena didn’t. He needed this.

“Tough break, but at least it gets the freak off the force, huh?” the cop added.

Stride heard a roaring in his head. He watched the man grin. He looked at the cigarette in his hand, and suddenly it was something ugly and foreign. A sick, hacking cough waited deep in his lungs, ready to spew out and leave him breathless. He dropped the cigarette on the ground and crushed it with his foot.

“Shit, man, those are expensive,” the cop said.

Stride grabbed the man’s shirt and threw him so hard his feet left the ground. The cop slammed backward into the wall of the shop, his head and shoulders colliding with the stucco. Dazed, he shook his head and crumpled to his knees. Stride squeezed his fingers into a fist and was ready to send it like a pile driver into the man’s face. He reached down to grab him again, but the other cop sprang between them.

“Back off, back off!” he shouted at Stride. “Are you crazy?”

He pushed Stride square in the chest, but Stride didn’t move. His feet were rooted to the ground. The cop hesitated, and Stride knew he was wondering if he should pull his gun.

“Listen!” the cop told him. “He’s got a big mouth. He can be an asshole. Okay? It was a stupid thing to say.”

Stride walked away. He was about to cross the street, but there was a crowd of gawkers on the other side. He reversed himself and walked to the corner of the block. There was a vacant lot there, and parked on the gravel was a truck with backlit photos of stunning women on its panels. It was the kind of truck that did nothing but drive up and down the Strip, advertising escort service phone numbers for tourists. Escorts who looked nothing like the women in the photographs.

It was one more shell game in a city of con artists.

Stride sat down on the truck’s bumper. He wished to hell he hadn’t thrown away the cigarette. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed Serena, who answered immediately.

“Amanda’s been shot,” he told her.

“No.”

He filled her in on the details. They were canvassing the surrounding blocks, looking for witnesses, hunting for Blake.

“Is she-I mean, what’s the outlook?” Serena asked.

“Not good.”

“I’m sorry, Jonny.” She added, “Don’t blame yourself. There isn’t anything you could have done.“

“I know.”

“Shit, I wish I was there. This is driving me crazy.”

“I’ll keep you posted.”

He hung up. He tried to slough off his feeling of despair. When he pushed himself off the truck, he saw someone jog around the corner. It was Cordy. He was breathless. The detective spotted him and shouted.

“Stride! I’ve been looking for you.”

Stride thought about the hatred that Cordy had shown toward Amanda, and he felt his rage building inside him again. His jaw was clenched so tight he wasn’t sure he could speak.

“What?” Stride hissed.

Cordy stopped short. He could read Stride’s emotions. His mouth was pulled into a thin line, and he seemed genuinely remorseful. “Hey, I know, I know. I’m sorry, man, okay? Sorry about a lot of things. Makes me feel like shit, it does. She bleeds blue like the rest of us.”

Stride nodded. He took a deep breath. “What is it?”

“We got a 911 call. Some hooker over near Harris Avenue. You know, the shithole hood near HQ? She says she saw our guy taking another of the street girls into an apartment building.”

Stride frowned. “A hooker? Blake? That doesn’t sound right”

“Maybe he figures he needs a hostage.”

“Is she sure?”

Cordy nodded. “Yeah, yeah, swears up and down it’s the guy. Says she’s seen the sketch all over town”’

“Did we get an address? An apartment number?”

“Not the number, but we got the building, yeah.” He rattled off the address. “Takes balls, huh? Guy’s been holed up so close to us we could have pissed out the window and drowned him.”

“How long ago did she see them?”

“Five minutes, maybe ten.“

Stride began to understand what Amanda felt. The desire to go it alone. To take Blake on mano a mano, just the two of them, where he could exact revenge for Amanda and all the others who had died. The cop in the parking lot at the Limelight. Peter Hale. Tierney Dargon. MJ Lane. Alice Ford. Stride could see Blake’s face and the arrogant smile as their eyes met. He wanted to drive over to the apartment building and storm inside, riding a wave of fury and adrenaline.

Fifteen years ago, he might have made that mistake. Like Amanda did.

“I’ll call Sawhill,” Stride said quietly. “We need to get him over here.”

Cordy nodded. “Uh-huh. We should get a cordon around the scene.”

“Right. Let’s get squad cars two blocks from the apartment building on every major intersection. But no lights, no sirens. Silent running, okay? And let’s keep diem off the actual street. We don’t want anyone in that building seeing a cop anywhere.”

“We’ll need to move fast. We don’t know how long he’s going to stay put.”

“Exactly. Let’s establish a base down on Harris in ten minutes, and we can meet Sawhill there to map out our plan.”

“Shouldn’t we do some recon?” Cordy asked.

Stride thought about it. “Yeah, see if we can get one of the undercover cops from vice. Someone already dressed like a hooker. We’ll have her do a walk-by on the building and then stake out a place where she can keep an eye on the front. Nothing too close. If Blake is eyeing the street, we don’t want him spooked.”

Cordy already had his phone in his hand as he took off.

Stride retreated toward the doughnut shop and found his Bronco. He wanted to be on the scene as the cordon took shape at Harris. If Blake was in for the night, if he thought he was safe, then maybe they could take him quickly, with a minimum of violence.

Why the girl? Stride thought. He knew there were killers who wanted sex after a murder, but he didn’t think that fit Blake’s profile. Maybe Cordy was right and Blake wanted a hostage. Whatever the truth was, it complicated their assault. It would slow them down, deciding how to proceed with a third party in the room. Maybe that was what Blake was counting on.

FORTY-ONE

Normally, Serena loved the silence of their town home, because it was a respite from the noise of the city. That was one thing about Las Vegas -you couldn’t escape the din of people and machines. At home, she and Jonny sometimes turned off the stereo and sat in the darkness to relish a few moments of quiet.

Tonight the silence felt like a threat. It got under her skin.

When she put down the phone, she thought about Amanda. She had heard the pain in Jonny’s voice. She had never really known Amanda, not well, but she of all people knew the effect that Jonny had on women. How they fell in love with his caring, his humanity. How he in turn wanted to wrap his big arms around them and be a protector. Some women hated that. Most wanted to get lost in it. She knew that Jonny and Amanda had taken no time at all to bond as partners and that Jonny felt her loss as keenly as if it had been herself or Maggie under the gun. It made her a little jealous.

Serena went to the front door. She opened it and went outside onto the porch. Her senses were on high alert, and fear pricked along the nerves in her back. She listened carefully, and she spied every detail around her home. Nothing was moving. The overhead garage light shone down on her Mustang convertible in the driveway. The maze of streets through the gated complex was empty, except for the tall silhouettes of palm trees. No strange cars. No headlights. She studied the shadows on both corners of the house. It made her palms sweat to realize that she had left her gun inside, that she was a target here, unarmed. But she was alone.

She returned inside and locked the dead bolt. She made sure the alarm was set. She thought about turning off the lights as she went upstairs but decided to leave them on. Let anyone who was out there think she was still awake. This time, she took her gun with her.

She felt guilty being here, safe. Jonny was out on the street, chasing Blake, and she should be with him. She said a silent prayer that he wouldn’t let his emotions overrun him, that he wouldn’t be foolish like Amanda and try to take Blake on his own.

Don’t die, Jonny. Don’t leave me. It was that simple.

But nothing was simple.

She passed the spare bedroom in which Clare was sleeping. She stopped there and listened. Her hand reached for the doorknob, and she turned it silently. To check on her, she told herself. To make sure she was okay. No, that was a lie. What she wanted to do was go in and sleep beside her. Touch her. Make her spill her secrets. Serena realized she was like Jonny, wanting to wrap her arms around Claire and protect her.

She let go of the doorknob, and it clicked loudly. Serena winced. She continued quickly to her own bedroom and shut the door behind her.

The ceiling fan moved the cool air around the room. Even so, she was overheated. Flushed. She laid her gun on the nightstand beside her bed and put her cell phone next to it. She took off her clothes and went into the bathroom to get ready for bed and take a brief shower. Her skin was still damp as she returned to the bedroom. She draped clothes for tomorrow over the back of a chair, in case she needed to get dressed quickly overnight, and then she stretched out naked on top of the blankets.

Serena switched out the lamp on the nightstand. The room was dark. She lay on her back, her eyes open. The aloneness of the night felt oppressive.

Tap tap tap.

She froze, and it happened again, a scratching on the window glass. Tap tap tap.

Serena practically leaped from the bed, her heart pounding. She scrambled for her gun and ran to the window, where she tore the curtains open. Dim light streamed in from the lamps hung outside. Where the glow reflected on the window, a white moth was beating against the glass, its wings quivering. After a few seconds, it rose up higher and flew away.

Good, Serena, she thought Shoot a moth.

She left the curtains open and went back to bed, where the beam of light from outside played across her body.

As her heart slowed down, sleep began to catch up with her. She tried to stay awake, in case Jonny called again, but the harder she tried to keep her eyes open by staring at the ceiling fan, the more it hypnotized her until her eyes blinked shut.

Dreams floated in. Bad dreams. The kind where she was chased, where footsteps pounded behind her and she ran from someone invisible. She was out in the desert at night, and she could hear rattlesnakes and hawk wings and the snuffling of javelinas-and someone’s breathing in the darkness near her, measured and loud.

Something awakened her. She didn’t know what. When she glanced at the clock, she saw that an hour had passed while she was sleeping. Had she heard something? A click. Footsteps. Was it real? She glanced around the bedroom and saw a ghost, a shadow by the closed door. As she squinted and looked harder, the shadow moved. Someone was in her room.

Serena felt paralyzed and exposed, naked in the glow from outside. She started to reach for her gun again. “Who’s there?”

From the darkness, she heard Claire’s voice. “It’s only me, Serena.” Claire stepped farther into the room, where the light found her, and she was naked, too.

She came and lay next to Serena on the bed without being asked. They were both on their backs, staring at the ceiling. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t sleep,” Claire said. “Did you hear something before?”

“I assumed it was you in the hallway.”

“No, something else.”

They waited and listened. Serena knew every groan and creak in the beams of her home, but there was nothing out of place.

“It’s my imagination,” Claire said.

“Try to sleep.”

Serena turned on her side, away from Claire. She could see the time glowing on the clock. Almost two in the morning. She wondered where Jonny was and when he would be coming home to her. She wanted to close her eyes, but she was awake now, keenly aware of Claire behind her. She could hear her breathing softly; she was awake, too. A fragile silence hung between them. Waiting for the next move.

Claire shifted onto her side, too. Without an invitation, she slid her body across the bed and spooned against Serena’s back, molding her skin against her. She didn’t say anything. Serena felt Claire’s breaths in short puffs on her neck, and her blond hair tickled Serena’s ear. Claire’s nipples were erect. Serena could feel them on her back. Her skin was smooth everywhere it touched her.

“Is this allright?” Claire murmured.

“Yes.”

Claire’s arm came around Serena’s body and rested lightly on her stomach. “You feel good.”

“So do you.”

Claire’s lips brushed her neck, kissing her. It was tender and erotic. They lay there like that for several minutes, connected, not moving or talking. Serena could feel warmth, love, and desire emanating from the woman behind her.

“I’ve never felt anything like this,” Claire told her.

“It’s nice,” Serena said, closing her eyes at her lame reply. Claire was telling her she loved her. She didn’t want to acknowledge it.

“You have a beautiful body. So strong. I can feel how strong you are.”

Serena didn’t feel strong at all.

Claire’s fingers came alive and began gently brushing Serena’s stomach. She was testing, waiting to see if Serena would stop her.

“Do you want me to leave?” Claire asked.

“I don’t know what I want” Not saying yes. Not saying no.

“I think you do,” Claire said.

Her hand seemed to fly, and when it came down again, it cupped Serena’s breast. Serena tensed, and Claire stopped.

“Too fast?”

‘Too everything.”

“I can go.”

Serena felt the heat of Claire’s hand over her breast “No, don’t go”

Claire’s hand began to move downward. Serena realized she was holding her breath.

“Relax,” Claire said. “Let it happen to you.”

Claire found her way between Serena’s legs. “Do you like this?”

Serena heard herself sigh with pleasure.

There was only one thing to do next, to let Claire inside, where she would find her wet and wanting. To open her legs and let Claire bring her to climax with a few quick circular caresses. That was all it would take. That was how close she was.

She felt Claire’s middle finger explore and could hear the rumble of satisfaction in Claire’s throat as she discovered her arousal, her folds supple and damp.

Serena bit her lip and cried out.

Then she was blinded as the bedroom light went on.

FORTY-TWO

The black van rumbled down the street, slowly, as if the driver were looking for something in the adjacent buildings, but its headlights were off. Flaking paint on the side of the van read MEADOWS CLOTHING AND CASINO SUPPLY, although several of the letters were missing. It drifted to a stop across the street from Blake’s twostory apartment complex and waited there with its engine running.

Stride was squeezed into the back with eleven other cops in body armor. All men. Tension and pent-up adrenaline buzzed among them. Sawhill had made the decision to go in, and they were waiting for the green light.

He heard chatter on his headset.

“The street is clear. No civilians. We’re good to go.” That was the driver of the van.

Sawhill radioed back. “Tammy, you concur?”

Tammy was an undercover cop who had been staking out Blake’s building from a complex across the street for more than an hour. “Right, no civvies. Nice to do this in the middle of the night, guys.”

“Alonzo, any movement in back?”

“Negative.” Alonzo had slipped into position in a yard behind the building and was watching Blake’s apartment.

“Lights from inside?”

“Negative.”

“Okay, insertion team, stand by.”

In the van, they continued to wait, anxious to get started. The vests were warm, and their bodies were in close quarters.

They had caught a break shortly after the cordon was set up on the surrounding streets. A Vietnamese man returning from his job in a downtown casino had approached them about access to his apartment. It turned out that he lived in Blake’s building. He was able to identify Blake from their sketch, pinpoint the location of Blake’s apartment on the second floor at the rear of the hallway, and give them a thorough map of the thirty-unit building itself.

The warrant had arrived fifteen minutes ago. They were ready to go.

Sawhill’s voice crackled on the radio. “One more time, people. We go with four in back, Rodriguez and Holtz on the north, Han and Baker on the south. The perp’s balcony is in the dead center of the building, count three from the north or south, one two three. Got it? Be ready if he tries to go over the side.”

Several voices in the van grunted affirmatively.

“Lee, Salazar, Alexander, Odom, Stride, Angel, you’re the assault team. Down the hall quick and quiet, then Lee and Salazar, you take the door, Alexander and Odom, you go in first, Stride and Angel, you’re behind them. Remember you’ve got a potential innocent party in the room with the perp. You’ve got a living area straight in, with a bedroom and kitchen on the south-side wall.”

“Copy that,” Stride replied.

“Kwan and Davis, you’re in the rear. Kwan, you take the upstairs hallway and keep any residents inside their apartments. Davis, you’re backup in front of the building.”

“Roger.”

“We go on my signal in one minute.”

The seconds passed slowly. It gave Stride time to think about Amanda again-and Serena. He had been on a limited number of major raids in his career, mostly drug related. They were always risky.

Sawhill’s voice came over the radio without fanfare. “Go.”

The van’s rear doors opened on greased hinges, and the team piled out. For large men, they moved with grace and speed. The first four peeled off, two heading to the left side around the rear of the building, two repeating the maneuver on the right side. They all carried automatic weapons. Stride moved with his team of six across the street at a jog and up the sidewalk to the building entrance. The outer door was open. Alexander and Odom, carrying assault rifles, went first, moving inside the building and then signaling behind them an all-clear. The two policemen began slowly climbing the stairs to the second floor, their weight causing the wood steps to creak.

Stride heard a voice on his radio. “We’re in position in back.”

Two cops with battering rams followed up the stairs. Stride and Cordy went next. The last man held position at the top of the stairs while the others proceeded down the hallway, hugging the walls. Stride heard few sounds from the apartments they passed. It was the middle of the night. He counted five doors on either side, and ahead of them, less than a hundred feet away, was an identical door at the far end of the hallway.

Blake’s door.

They tried to be silent. It was almost impossible. The complex was low-end construction, and the floors groaned as six bulky men made their way to the rear. If Blake was awake and alert, he’d hear them coming. Alexander and Odom had their rifles aimed at Blake’s apartment, and they picked up the pace, knowing they couldn’t make a quiet approach. Stride saw a spy-hole in Blake’s door and wondered if he was there, watching them. If he was, he had to know he was trapped and outgunned.

As Stride passed one of the apartment doors on the left, it suddenly opened inward.

He spun and was bringing his gun up when he saw an old woman in the doorway, her eyes bleary. She wore a tattered white robe. When she saw Stride, her mouth fell open in fright, and she was an instant away from screaming when he quickly pushed her back into the apartment and covered her mouth with his hand.

“Hold,” he hissed into his radio. Then, to the woman: “Police, ma’am. It’s okay. Stay in your apartment. Don’t open the door.”

She nodded frantically.

Stride smiled at her and backed out into the hallway. He shut the door with a soft click. “Go.”

Alexander and Odom took up positions on opposite sides of Blake’s door. Stride went to the left, behind Alexander, and Cordy went to the right, behind Odom. They waited. There wasn’t a sound from inside the apartment, and no light shined from the crack at the base of the door.

Alexander held up three fingers. Then he made a fist again and raised his fingers one at a time.

One. Two. Three.

The battering rams both hit the door at once, and it caved immediately. Alexander and Odom spun around the frame and ran crouched into the apartment with their rifles leveled. Stride and Cordy followed. They all shouted at once. “Police!”

They made a circuit of the small living room in less than five seconds, but it was empty. One man shouted that the kitchen was clear. The only other room in the apartment was the bedroom, and the fragile veneer door leading there was closed. Alexander didn’t wait for the battering ram but simply brought up his giant leg, which was like the trunk of an oak tree, and kicked the door down, tearing it off its hinges and sending it flying into the room.

He stormed in.

“Hostage on the bed!”

Stride followed him into the room. A young teenager was tied to the four casters of the bed. She was naked and spread-eagled, with a T-shirt rolled and tied around her mouth. Her eyes were as wide as saucers. She tried to scream, and she struggled with the rope that held her.

“Clear!” Alexander shouted, having checked the closet and bathroom. “The son of a bitch isn’t here!”

Sawhill’s pinched voice responded over the radio. “He’s not there?”

“Negative.”

“Rodriguez, Holtz, tell me you’ve got him in back.”

“Sorry, sir, nothing here, no movement.”

Sawhill was exasperated. “We had this place staked out five minutes after the 911 call! Where did he go? Start going door to door, check every apartment.”

“What about the warrant?” Alexander asked.

“We have a multiple murderer loose in the building. Just do it!”

Stride interrupted on the radio. “Give me thirty seconds, sir. Let’s talk to the girl.”

He gestured at the closet. “Alexander, grab me one of those dress shirts, okay?” The big cop pulled a shirt off the hanger and tossed it to Stride, who used it to cover the girl on the bed. She was small, and the shirt stretched from just below her neck almost to her knees.

“Take it easy, okay?” Stride said. “You’re fine now.”

He drew out a small knife from his pocket and cut the twine that tightly bound her tiny wrists to the casters of the bed. Deep red welts gouged her skin, and the rope was bloody where she had struggled to get free. As soon as he cut her loose, she sprang up and threw her arms around his neck. She sobbed, and her nose ran on his Kevlar vest.

Stride let her cry out for a few seconds, then gently pushed her away.

“Where is he?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“When did he leave the apartment?”

“A while ago. I don’t know. More than an hour, I think. I was afraid he’d come back.”

Stride didn’t think Blake was ever coming back here. “What happened after he brought you into the apartment?”

“He made me undress. Then he tied me to the bed, and he made me make the call. He held a gun to my head, and he told me exactly what I should say. As soon as I made the call, he gagged me and left.”

“Call?” Stride asked. He suddenly understood and felt a sense of horror.

“The 911 call. He made me call and pretend like I was outside, you know?”

“You called 911?”

The girl nodded earnestly.

Stride shook his head. “Shit.” He spoke into the radio. ‘The 911 call was a hoax, sir. Blake made the girl do it. He bolted as soon as she did. He’s been long gone, an hour or more, while we’ve been spinning our wheels.”

Sawhill, who never swore, sounded close to swearing. “I don’t believe this. Check the other apartments anyway, just to be sure.”

Alexander nodded. “Got it, sir.”

“He’s probably got a backup crib on the other side of the city,” Sawhill said. “Keep an eye out for reports of stolen cars from this neighborhood. He may have snatched another vehicle to get out of here.”

Stride was about to reply, and then he thought about it. Blake had begun to get inside his head. He couldn’t have expected to encounter Amanda in the doughnut shop, so he had to act fast to get out from under the heat. The net would be tightening, and sooner or later, it would lead the police right here. He needed a diversion. An escape. Blake was buying time.

Too much time, Stride realized. He didn’t need to invite the cops into a phony raid in order to get away. He was trying to tie them down, keep them occupied.

So he could launch his last big play.

Stride felt his whole body run cold. “That son of a bitch.”

He had spoken into the radio, and Sawhill responded. “What? What are you talking about?”

Stride ripped off his headset. He clawed his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed. It took forever for the call to go through, a stretch of dead air and silence that went on and on. As he waited, he began to have waking nightmares.

The phone rang. His home phone. Where Serena and Claire were.

“Pick up,” he begged them.

The phone kept ringing. No one answered.

Stride ran for the door.

FORTY-THREE

When Serena could see again after her eyes adjusted to the dazzling light, she knew she was about to die. Blake stood in the doorway with a SIG-Sauer pointed directly at her head.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said.

He had a hint of a cold smile. There was arousal in his eyes, looking at the two women entwined on the bed.

A flood of regrets ran through Serena’s head. That she had never been to Hawaii. That she had never been able to have children, although she had persuaded herself over the years that it didn’t matter. That Jonny would find them like this, naked, together, and realize she had betrayed him. That her weaknesses were stronger than she was. That he wouldn’t know how much she loved him.

Her eyes flicked to the nightstand, and in an instant, she measured the time it would take to leap for her gun and get a shot off. Too long. Much too long.

Blake watched her eyes. “Please don’t do that. Don’t make me kill you.”

“Like you’re not going to anyway.” Serena gave him a defiant look. She laid an arm across her chest, covering her breasts.

“Let’s just stay calm,” Blake said. “Claire, get off the bed and go to the other side of the nightstand.”

Claire hesitated, and Serena reached over and squeezed her hand. “It’ll be okay,” she told her. A lie.

Claire did as she was told.

“Good,” Blake said. “Now, with two fingers, take the gun on the nightstand and hand it to me.”

Claire picked up the gun as if it were a dead fish on the beach and let the butt dangle from her fingers. Blake kept his eyes and his gun trained on Serena the whole time. He took the gun from Claire and shoved it in his belt.

“Get dressed,” he told them.

Claire didn’t move. She waited until Blake looked at her. His eyes traveled up and down her naked body, and then he blinked, as if he were embarrassed. Serena thought his reaction was remarkably human for a multiple murderer.

“Do you know who I am?” Claire asked.

“You’re Boni’s daughter,” he snapped.

“And do you know what that makes me?” she asked. She stared at him hard. “You know, don’t you? You have to know.”

Blake’s composure developed a hairline crack. “Yes.”

“Then how can you do this?”

Serena waited to see if Blake would answer. He seemed to be at a loss for words. “Both of you, get dressed.”

“My clothes are in the other room,” Claire said.

“Use some of hers. Come on, let’s go. No sudden moves.”

Serena wondered what the hell he was up to. Why get dressed? She had expected him to kill them both immediately, but Blake seemed to be following a more complex plan. That was fine. The more time she was alive, the more opportunity there might be to escape or overpower him.

She slid her legs off the bed, still trying to cover herself. Quickly, she pulled on the clothes she had draped over a chair-panties, T-shirt, jeans. She opened two of her dresser drawers and tossed clothes to Claire, who was shorter and smaller than Serena. The clothes fit loosely, and Claire rolled up the pant legs.

“Where are we going?” Serena asked.

Blake didn’t answer. He pulled a roll of duct tape from his rear pocket and tossed it to Claire. “Bind her wrists together tightly.”

Serena looked at Claire, and their eyes met. Serena extended her hands, palms together.

Claire seemed to be frozen. She had the tape in her hands but didn’t move.

“Do it!” Blake said.

Claire’s eyes looked pointedly away at something behind and below Serena, then directly back at her. She did it again. And again. Directing Serena’s attention to something.

It took Serena only a second or two to figure it out.

Her nightstand. Her cell phone.

“I can’t believe I trusted you,” Claire said bitterly.

“I’m sorry.”

“You said you’d protect me!”

“Shut up!” Blake insisted.

“You?” Serena asked. “You arrogant little bitch! You could have hidden behind all your daddy’s money, and instead you got me killed, too!”

“Fuck you!” Claire screamed, stepping forward and laying both hands on Serena’s chest, pushing her violently backward. Serena toppled off her feet, colliding with the nightstand as she fell, knocking everything on its surface to the floor. The lamp crashed, its bulb shattering, and books and keys littered the carpet. Serena twisted, landing on her face, but she already had the cell phone spotted as she hit her knees.

“Get up!” Blake hissed. “Not another word!”

“Fuck you, too!” Claire retorted. She turned and partially blocked Serena from view as she bent over and began wrestling her back to the ground. Blake leaped forward and pulled Claire back by the hair. Claire was still clawing for freedom.

“Enough!”

Blake pushed Claire away and fired his gun into a pillow on the bed. The explosion rattled the walls, and a huge cloud of feathers burst into the room, flying and floating over the two women.

“The next one kills Serena,” he said.

Both women froze. Claire was crying. “I’m sorry.”

“Get up,” Blake told Serena.

Serena got back to her feet, her face flushed.

“Now tie her hands,” Blake repeated to Claire.

Claire nodded meekly. She began wrapping the tape around Serena’s wrists.

“Tighter,” Blake instructed. “Go higher up.”

Claire frowned and did the next loops more tightly and continued rolling the tape until it was almost to Serena’s elbows. With a tilt of her head, she managed to raise one eyebrow at Serena, who replied with the barest nod. A whisper of a smile came and went on Claire’s face.

Claire finished, and Serena’s arms were locked in front of her, her hands dangling below her waist.

“Now her face. Gag her. Do it.”

Claire took a final strip of tape and placed it across Serena’s mouth.

“Push her down on the bed,” Blake said. When Claire hesitated, he broke between them and roughly shoved Serena down. She landed on her back on the bed, her upper body strangled for motion. She watched as Blake tied Claire’s wrists next and then gagged her, too.

“Come on,” he told them. “Let’s go. The two of you go first. If you try anything, you’ll both be dead, and probably some other innocent people, too.”

He took Serena by the shoulder and forced her to her feet. She left the bedroom with Claire immediately behind her. They proceeded down the hall and then downstairs to the first floor. Blake pushed past them and opened the front door. He went out onto the porch, his eyes darting back and forth. With a jerk of his head, he gestured them outside and then down the steps to the street.

An old white Impala was parked at the curb, blocking her Mustang.

Somehow Blake had managed to steal the car and the keys. Or maybe he had kept another car hidden away for the endgame. He used the remote control on the keychain to pop the trunk. Serena’s heart fell again, and she had visions of him taking the two of them out and dumping them in the desert to rot. Or burying them alive. His desire for revenge was so bitter that anything was possible.

“In the trunk,” he said. “Fast.”

Serena tried to bend at the waist and ease herself inside, but with her arms bound, she could barely move. Blake came up behind her, grabbed her T-shirt and belt, and lifted her bodily like a suitcase and dumped her into the trunk. The hard floor smashed her face, and she tasted blood in her mouth and tried to swallow it quickly down so she didn’t choke. Her head banged the roof as she tried to move. Serena rolled to the back, and two seconds later, the car rocked as Blake threw Claire inside next. She heard a muffled cry of pain. Claire’s body was wedged against her.

Blake slammed the trunk down.

A black, claustrophobic fog enveloped her. Barely able to move. Unable to talk. All she could do was hear.

And feel the cell phone wedged inside her jeans.

She heard the driver’s door open, but then the next sounds made no sense. A shout, a gasp, a bang. A clattering as Blake’s gun fell to the ground. The car bounced again as something large and heavy struck the Impala above them. Like something hitting, sliding, and falling.

It took her a moment to realize that the sound was Blake being thrown across the roof of the car.

FORTY-FOUR

Leo Rucci came around the front of the Impala, where Blake was on the ground, shocked and dazed. Blake realized that his hands were empty, that his gun was gone. He reached into his waistband for Serena’s gun and pulled it out, but the impact had dulled his reaction time. He wasn’t fast enough. As he drew the gun, Leo kicked it out of his hand. It skittered down the street as if it were gliding on ice and wound up near one of the squat palm trees lining the curb.

“Okay, you pussy, now it’s just the two of us. Think you can beat an old man?”

As the fog lifted from Blake’s head, he felt Rucci’s giant hands on his shirt, lifting him up off the ground and slamming him face first into the rear door of the car. Blood erupted from his nose, and his brain seemed to slap against the sides of his skull. The world spun again.

“You killed my son. You murdered him like a dog. Now I’m going to make sure every bone in your body is broken before I finally finish you off.”

Leo spun Blake around. The Impala’s window was streaked with blood. Leo’s fist reared back and came streaking forward, but Blake had recovered enough to duck down. Leo hit the window instead and grimaced. Blake used the moment to try to squirm free, but Leo still had an iron lock on his shoulder. He grabbed Blake’s neck with his other hand and yanked him off the ground.

Blake couldn’t breathe. Leo’s fat fingers squeezed off his air. Blake grabbed at the man’s hand and tried to dislodge him, but it was like trying to peel away a boa constrictor that had coiled around his neck in a death grip. With a grin, Leo wound up and sent a hammering blow into Blake’s abdomen. Blake felt his lungs balloon as the pent-up air tried to escape and had nowhere to go. He felt as if he had swallowed a hand grenade that had blown up inside him, as if his chest were being cut up from within.

He was beginning to lose consciousness. There was a roaring in his ears, and a million blood vessels felt as if they were popping at once. Blake thrashed. He continued prying at Leo’s hand and got nowhere.

“This is just the beginning,” Leo said. “We’re not even close to being done. Once you black out, I’ll take you somewhere nice and private.”

An image penetrated Blake’s brain. Something long and smooth. He couldn’t even see it anymore, but he could feel the cold touch of steel. His knife. It was still in his back pocket. Blake gave up trying to free his throat from Leo’s grasp and instead used his last few seconds of awareness to squeeze his hand behind him. His limbs didn’t even seem connected anymore. Whatever messages his brain was sending were scrambled. He kept reaching for his pocket and finding nothing, and his fingers began jerking spastically.

Finally, he touched the handle of the knife. He had an instant of crystal clarity, and his hand dug for it, grabbed it, and pulled it free. In a single, desperate swing, he buried the blade in Leo’s forearm and heard the man roar in pain like a wounded bear. Leo’s fingers unlocked from Blake’s neck, and sweet air rushed in. As Leo stumbled back, Blake’s mind cleared, and he kicked ferociously with his boot into the meat of Leo’s knee. The old man toppled to his side, a tree falling.

Blake still had the knife.

He pounced, aiming the next thrust of the blade for Leo’s chest. Leo saw it coming and grabbed Blake’s wrist as the knife came down. His grip was slippery and loose from the blood on his hand, and Blake easily pulled away and jabbed again. The tip of the blade sliced Leo’s shoulder, but before Blake could inflict further damage, Leo used his other arm like a baseball bat and swatted Blake away. Blake rolled several times and got up, shaken.

Leo pulled himself to his feet. Both of his arms were streaked in red. He was unsteady, but he waved Blake toward him.

“Come on, pussy. You need a knife to beat an old man? Come on. Try it again.”

Blake didn’t let himself be goaded. He held back, breathing heavily, trying to nurse his strength back and drive the fog from his brain. He kept the knife poised in front of him.

Leo inched forward.

“Pussy, pussy. Gino would have crushed you in a fight.”

“You should have seen his head split when I shot him,” Blake retorted, taunting him. “Like a hairy coconut.”

Leo charged, his voice bellowing in rage. Blake sidestepped him and swung his knife again, finding a target in the fleshy muscles under Leo’s shoulder blade. He thrust the knife brutally inward all the way to the hilt. Leo threw his head back and screamed. Blake tried to cut his way downward into Leo’s organs, but the man twisted away, and Blake lost his grip on the handle. Leo swung blindly and caught Blake on the side of his head with a massive curled fist. Blake felt the world spin again, and he collapsed to his hands and knees.

He felt something metallic under his fingers. His car keys, lying on the pavement. He cupped them in his hands and tried to get up.

Behind him, he heard a sucking, slurping sound. It was Leo, pulling out the knife. Blake turned around, lost his balance, and steadied himself against the side of the Impala. He and Leo eyed each other warily. Blood soaked Leo’s shirt, and he looked weak and pale, but he still had a substantial advantage in size, and now he had the knife. Leo’s hand was so big that the knife looked tiny in his grasp.

Blake crept backward, still leaning against the car. Leo matched him step for step. Blake’s eyes scanned the pavement, looking for his gun, but he realized he had lost it somewhere on the other side of the car. Leo seemed to read his mind. As Blake retreated toward the trunk, Leo shifted, moving around toward the front of the car.

If the gun was in sight, Leo would get it first.

They stared each other down from opposite corners of the Impala, Blake on the right rear, Leo on the left front, near the headlight. Blake saw Leo’s eyes sweeping the curb and driveway, and then a twisted smile formed on Leo’s lips. Confident. Nasty. Their eyes met again, and Blake knew Leo had found the gun. He watched the old man edge away from the car toward the landscaping in front of Serena’s home.

Blake pushed a button on the remote control of the car keys. With a soft chirp, the lock on the trunk unlatched.

Leo watched him with a puzzled expression, and then he understood. He turned away, and with a groan of pain, he bent to retrieve the gun.

Blake swung the trunk open and ducked, expecting a bullet to tear through the metal. He saw Claire’s blinking, terrified eyes looking up at him. With both hands, he pulled Claire out of the trunk in one smooth motion and then slammed it back down. He twisted Claire around and snaked one arm around her throat. He put his other hand on top of her head and held her skull firmly.

He didn’t see Leo at first. He backed up, worried that the man would creep around the side of the car to ambush him. He kept Claire in front of him and could feel her fear. She fluttered in his grasp like a bird.

Leo straightened up. He hadn’t moved. He was still near the front of the Impala, but he had the gun now, and he pointed it at Blake.

“Let her go.”

“You want to take the shot and risk killing her? Go ahead.” Blake began to push Claire forward as he nudged toward the Impala. His keys were still in his hand. “Drop the gun, Leo. Throw it away.”

There was hesitation in Leo’s eyes.

“I’ll crack her neck, Leo. One quick snap, and she’ll be gone.”

Claire struggled frantically in his arms, panicking. He held her tight.

“And so will you,” Leo told him. “You kill her, and I kill you.”

“And then Boni kills you for letting his daughter die. Is that what you want? Do you want to be the one to tell Boni that you let his daughter die right in front of you? Do you want to fail him like that?”

Frustration boiled over in Leo’s face. Blake knew he wanted to shoot, and he couldn’t. Blood was still flowing out of his wounds, too, and Leo wouldn’t be able to stand much longer. Blake kept coming forward, moving up on the driver’s door of the car.

“Throw it away, Leo. If you throw it away, she lives.”

With a hiss of hatred, Leo flung the gun behind him, out of range.

“Smart move,” Blake said. “Now back off away from the car. We’re leaving, Leo.”

Leo retreated. He backed up slowly, retracing his steps around the front of the car and taking a few steps down the street. His hands were in the air. His eyes were dark with anger and pain.

“You don’t look good, Leo. Better call an ambulance after we leave.”

Leo kept backing away. Blake opened the car door and shoved Claire inside, pushing her across to the passenger seat. He clambered behind the wheel and pulled the door shut, keeping an eye on Leo. The old man seemed to be crumbling. His chest was heaving as he took labored breaths. His footfalls were erratic. He wasn’t even looking at Blake or the car anymore. He staggered back, bumping into a palm tree near the curb, and bent over, his hands on his knees. Blood began to spit from his mouth.

Blake started the car. He backed up and then turned for the street. As he spun the wheel, he saw Leo look up again, and with blood on his chin, the old man smiled, his face coming alive. It had been an act. Gasping. Staggering. Nearly falling. Blake realized finally that Leo had come to rest at the palm tree, inches from Serena’s gun. Leo ignored his pain and reached for it, and an instant later, he had the gun in his hand and was swinging it up, pointing toward the windshield of the Impala.

“Get down,” Blake told Claire.

He aimed the car at Leo and jammed his foot into the accelerator. The engine raced, and the car leaped forward, its tires squealing. Blake kept a hand on the wheel and jerked to his left, hearing the explosion of the gun at the same time that the windshield shattered and spilled glass into the car, covering him and Claire and the front seat with sharp confetti. The car shuddered as the front bumper struck Leo. A second later, the car jarred to a halt, and the air bags deployed, cushioning them as their bodies were thrown forward. The balloons collapsed, and he saw Claire jolt back against the passenger seat.

Blake looked through the shattered windshield.

The car was lodged against the palm tree. Leo was pinned between the car and the tree, his lower body crushed. The gun had fallen from his hands. He was still alive, barely, and he stared back at Blake with the ferocity of a man who has been defeated in a fight that means everything to him. Tears of agony slipped down his cheeks, but he didn’t cry out or say a word.

Blake got out of the car. He retrieved the gun from where it had fallen to the ground. Leo followed him, impotent, unable to move.

“You played this well, Leo,” Blake told him with genuine admiration. “Gino would be proud of you.”

Leo tried to spit at him. He couldn’t.

Blake glanced into the car and saw that Claire was watching him. He found himself feeling something like mercy. He shoved the gun in his belt and went around to the other side of the Impala. He opened the door, and Claire seemed to spill out into his arms.

“Are you hurt?” he asked her.

He let her stand up, and she was unsteady on her feet, but she didn’t seem to be injured. She was too stunned to walk, though, and Blake picked her up and carried her back to the trunk. He opened it and laid her inside next to Serena as tenderly as he could. He closed the trunk again and walked back to Leo.

“I know that the pain must be excruciating,” Blake said.

Leo didn’t look at him.

“Eyes open or closed, Leo. It’s your choice.”

Leo turned his head with what seemed to be a superhuman effort. His eyes were open. Blake nodded, brought the gun up to Leo’s head, and fired.

FORTY-FIVE

Serena reached for Claire’s bound hands and held them tightly. When the gunshot exploded outside the car, she knew that Claire was screaming behind the tape that gagged her mouth. She could hear the muffled cries as Claire buried her face in Serena’s shoulder in the dark, cramped confines of the trunk. She felt the dampness of tears through her shirt. Claire clutched her hands so fiercely that her nails were close to breaking the skin.

She felt the car rock as Blake got back inside, and then they were moving, their bodies bouncing loosely as Blake steered the Impala through the town-home complex toward the street. Serena recognized the familiar turns. She hoped someone had heard the shots and called 911, but she knew they would be long gone by the time a squad car responded.

Serena was bruised and sore. She had flown forward when the car thudded to a stop earlier, and she had banged her head against the rear wall of the trunk. Her arms ached from being held stiffly in place, and something-a tire iron?-had struck her squarely in the knee. The bone throbbed with pain.

She disentangled her fingers from Claire’s and rolled onto her back, landing hard on her shoulder blade. She had discovered earlier that she had enough play in her arms to bend them at the elbows and bring her hands up to her mouth. Her fingers clutched at the tape that was gagging her, and she peeled it slowly and painfully away. When her jaw was free, she rubbed it and took several long, deep breaths, gulping air into her lungs. She was sweating. The trunk was hot enough to make her light-headed.

The car rolled over a dip in the street, and her forehead struck sharply against the roof of the trunk. She cursed softly.

Serena braced her left foot on the floor and pushed herself back onto her side, facing Claire again. She found Claire’s hands.

“Claire, listen to me,” she whispered. “You can probably get your hands up to your face and get the tape off. Can you try it?”

She hoped Claire had enough strength, mentally and physically, to do it.

She let go and felt Claire squirming to reposition her arms and get her fingers near her mouth. Claire pulled the tape off quickly, and Serena heard her gasp.

“Shit, that hurt”

They both laughed. Serena was pleased that Claire sounded calm now and not frantic. She nudged closer and put her mouth close to Claire’s ear. “We need to be as quiet as we can. What happened out there?”

“It was Leo,” Claire said. “I think Blake killed him.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“No. But I was scared to death.”

Serena laid her cheek against the soft skin of Claire’s face. “If’s okay. We’re going to get out of this.”

It’s okay, baby.

Serena felt a strange sense of freedom. Of strength. As if she had been given a second chance, a way to make up for the past. To save Deidre by saving Claire.

“Do you know where he’s taking us?” Serena asked.

“I have no idea.”

Serena didn’t want to speculate. None of the alternatives sounded appealing. She had tried to keep track of the stops and turns once they made it onto the street, but the route quickly became too confusing to follow. She knew they were still in a busy part of the city, because she could hear plenty of traffic noise, even late at night.

“I’m sorry I got you into this, Serena,” Claire told her.

“You didn’t.”

Claire was silent for a moment. “What was happening between us inside-”

“Let’s not talk about that now.”

“I need to know if you regret it,” Claire said.

“No, I don’t.” Serena knew she had to change the subject. “That was smart, what you did inside with Blake. Pushing me. Yelling at me.”

“Did you get it? Did you get the phone?”

“Yes. You have to get it for me. I shoved it in my pocket.” Serena shifted her arms as far as she could, and Claire’s hands explored around the front of her jeans until her fingers pressed into the hard shell of the wafer-thin cell phone.

“Can you slide down a bit?” Claire asked.

Serena pushed herself down, bending her knees to get more room when her feet bumped the side of the car. She felt Claire’s fingers at her waist, slipping inside the tight pocket. It was strangely intimate, to be doing this in the dark, in the hot interior of the car. Claire’s breasts were almost in her face. Her T-shirt clung to her skin like glue.

“Normally, I’d enjoy this,” Claire whispered.

“Hush.”

Claire found the cell phone and slid it between her palms. As she tried to pass it into Serena’s hands, she dropped it somewhere between them.

“Shit!” she hissed. “My hands are slippery.”

The car went through a sharp turn at that moment, and they found themselves sliding and rolling in the narrow space. The phone slid, too. Serena lost her sense of direction in the dark and didn’t know which way she was facing or which way was front and back. She was disoriented. “Claire?”

“Here.”

Serena tried to roll back next to her. “We have to find the phone.”

They performed an awkward dance as both of them tried to flip over and scour the black interior of the trunk. Serena brushed her legs along the carpeted floor, trying to feel the slim rectangle of the phone. Claire did the same. Serena began to feel the pressure of time, wondering how long it would take for Blake to reach where he was going. The phone had seemingly vanished from the trunk.

“Anything?” Serena whispered.

“No.”

The car turned again, and their bodies shifted. Serena wasn’t sure why, but she had an intuition that they were almost there, and she had learned to trust her sixth sense over the years. The road beneath them was bumpier, as if there were loose gravel on the pavement. The noise outside had quieted. They weren’t on a busy street anymore.

“We need to hurry,” Serena said.

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it,” Claire replied. “It’s near my face. It slid over here on the last turn.”

“Try to get your hands on it before we turn again.”

Serena maneuvered herself in the direction of Claire’s voice. She bent her elbows again, bringing her hands near her face. She pushed herself closer and felt her fingers touch Claire’s forearm immediately in front of her. She followed the soft skin up to Claire’s hands and was relieved to feel the cell phone nestled between her fingers. Claire was holding it tightly.

“Okay, loosen up just a bit” Serena said.

She worked her own fingers into Claire’s hands and curled them around the phone. It was small and familiar. “I’ve got it.”

Claire breathed a sigh of relief.

The car swung through another turn, and Serena clutched the phone and tried to brace herself to keep from sliding. Claire bumped up against her. Serena almost lost her grip and bobbled the phone in her fingers, but then felt it sink back into her hands. She ran her fingertips over the keypad and tried to imagine the numbers laid out on the phone. The keys were almost flat, and she could barely feel them.

She pressed what she thought was the number two. The speed dial code for Jonny’s cell phone.

Nothing happened.

Serena tried another key with the same result. Finally, she realized that she had turned the phone off as she grabbed it from the floor in her bedroom, to make sure that an incoming call didn’t give away what she was hiding in her pocket.

“Shit, it’s off,” she said.

She hunted for the key that turned the phone back on and held it down. As she did, she felt the car turn onto a rutted stretch of pavement that rocked the vehicle up and down. The brakes squealed, and the car lurched to a stop.

The phone lit up. It began hunting for a signal. “Come on, come on,” Serena urged.

She heard the driver’s door open and Blake get out. His footsteps crunched on gravel.

“Hurry,” Claire said.

Serena punched the number two button again and held her breath. Blake was almost to the trunk. The phone began ringing.

FORTY-SIX

Stride swung into the gated driveway of the town-home complex and knew something was wrong. The gate was wide open. He hesitated and felt his horror grow as he heard sirens drawing closer through the surrounding streets.

He tried Serena’s cell phone again, as he had been doing constantly on the drive west from downtown. There was no answer. He tried their home number again, too, and heard Serena’s voice as the answering machine picked up. The hollow feeling in his stomach became an awful pounding in his head. He accelerated into the winding streets past the maze of homes.

When he reached their street, he saw a body lying under the glow of a streetlight. A big man, slumped like a beached whale. Stride got out of the car, the engine still running. The man was facedown, half off the curb, with blood dripping in the gutter. Recently dead. The burnt smell of powder was still fresh in the air. Stride bent down and saw the hole in the man’s forehead, and despite the red trails on his face, he knew it was Leo Rucci.

He had held out a faint hope that it might be Blake.

Stride ran for the house with an awful vision of what he would find inside. The front door was open. He drew his gun and leveled it as he crept through the doorway. He listened for voices or movement upstairs but didn’t hear a thing. When he glanced automatically at the alarm box on the wall, he saw that it had been disconnected. His heart turned to lead and seemed to plummet to the floor.

He was about to scream her name, but he stopped himself. Blake might still be here.

Stride silentiy followed the wall to the stairs and waited, listening again. He scoped out the empty hallway and took the steps to the second floor. The three bedroom doors upstairs were all ajar. The first, their office, hadn’t been touched. The second was the spare bedroom, and he saw Claire’s clothes on the floor. He checked the bathroom and the closet inside and didn’t find anything amiss.

That left their own bedroom at the end of the hall.

He stared at it and didn’t want to go through the doorway. Reluctantly, he sniffed the air, and he was relieved that he didn’t catch the mineral scent of blood. He could see part of the bed ahead of him, its blankets rumpled.

Anyone who was there would already have heard him coming. “Serena?” he called, not expecting an answer.

Stride used the toe of his shoe to push the door open slowly. He led the way inside with his gun. His eyes swept the room in an instant, and his heart started beating again when he realized there were no bodies on the floor. But something had happened here. The nightstand lamp was on the carpet, and the nightstand itself was tipped against the wall. Debris littered the floor-a hairbrush, a hardcover book, lipstick.

A fight?

It didn’t matter. They were gone.

Stride went back downstairs and tried to figure it out. If Blake hadn’t killed them here, what had he done with them? His MO was murder, not kidnapping. If he had taken them, why? Where was he going?

Stride went out into the night air again. The sirens were closer. The police would find him soon, and he didn’t want to be here. Every second put Serena and Claire at greater risk.

He went back to his Bronco. As he turned it around and headed for the street, he heard his cell phone ringing. He grabbed it from his pocket and saw Serena’s number on the caller ID.

“Where are you?”

Serena froze. She heard Jonny’s desperate voice in her ear as he answered. Blake was at the trunk, and she expected to feel a rush of air as he swung it open and see him looming above them.

“Wait, Jonny,” she hissed into the phone.

She listened and realized that Blake had continued walking past the trunk. He was somewhere close by, and she heard the jangle of metal, like a chain scraping through the links of a fence.

“Serena!” she heard in her ear.

“I’m here, I’m here,” she whispered.

“Where are you?” he repeated.

Serena knew their emotions were both running wild. She had to stay in control. Report the facts. They wouldn’t have much time before Blake came back.

“I don’t know yet. Claire and I are in the trunk of a white Impala.” She rattled off the license plate. “We drove for twenty minutes or so, and we’re stopped now.”

“Are you hurt?” Stride asked her.

“No. A little bruised, but we’re both okay. He killed Rucci.”

“I know, I found the body. Do you know which direction he went?”

“I think we headed east, but I couldn’t keep track.”

“Do you know what he’s doing?” Stride asked.

“No. This feels like the endgame, though.”

“How do I find you?”

Serena thought about it. “I don’t know.”

“If you keep the cell phone on, I might be able to have the phone company trace the signal,” Stride suggested.

“That’ll take too long, Jonny.”

“I know.”

Serena listened. Blake was doing something outside. She heard a grinding of metal. “It sounds like he’s opening a fence now. I think we’re going to drive inside. Hang on.”

She heard Blake’s footsteps returning. She hesitated again, wondering if he would let them out of the trunk, but he continued back to the driver’s door and got inside.

“He’s back in the car,” Serena whispered. “I don’t think we have much time “

“Can you keep the line open?”

“I’ll try. We’re tied up. I may be able to hold the phone without him seeing it.”

They were driving again. The Impala moved slowly, but the rocky ground caused the car to bump and jolt. Serena felt as if a prizefighter were delivering hammer blows to her kidneys. She heard Claire wince in pain beside her. They drove for less than a minute, and the car stopped.

“I think this is it. I have to go quiet now, Jonny. I don’t know what you’ll be able to hear. If he finds the phone, I’ll try to shout something before he shuts it off.”

“I’ll find you.”

The driver’s door opened, and Blake came around to the trunk. Serena heard a click as the lock unlatched. The trunk opened, and she felt as if she could breathe again. The hot air outside felt cool compared to the stifling interior. Wherever they were, it was barely lit, but Serena still squinted, her eyes adjusting to something other than complete darkness. She saw Blake’s outline above them. Behind him, stars in the night sky.

He reached in and took Claire by the upper body and lifted her out of the trunk. Her legs were rubbery, and she began to fall, so he had to support her. Claire turned and looked up and saw where they were, and she gasped.

Serena laced her fingers together, cupping the cell phone between her hands. She hoped she didn’t accidentally cut the connection. Blake pulled her gun from his belt and pointed it at her. “Please don’t try anything.”

Serena nodded. “It’ll be easier if I roll over.”

“Do it.”

She shoved herself over on her stomach. Her face and breasts were squashed against the floor of the car, and her hands were between her legs, clutching the phone. She felt Blake take hold of her belt and T-shirt and drag her roughly over the edge of the trunk. She dangled there briefly until he took one of her legs and maneuvered it so it was outside the car and almost on the ground. He took her T-shirt and lifted her up again, and Serena was able to stumble out onto the gravel.

She turned around and looked skyward at the dark hotel.

“Welcome to the Sheherezade,” Blake said.

FORTY-SEVEN

It was a looted beauty, stripped bare, ready for the imploders to do their work. Where the grand entrance had been, a jagged hole was punched in the wall of the building, more than two stories tall, as if some comic-book monster had fought its way inside. The windows on the lower floors were broken, leaving empty holes. Serena could see columns inside with their decorations gone, just rough concrete where carefully measured charges of dynamite would be inserted.

Higher up, the hotel looked as it always had. If they turned on the lights, it would be the same place she had driven by hundreds of times in the past two decades. It had been a jewel once, but that was long ago. Other towers dwarfed it now. Even before the wreckers had come, it was showing its age. Twenty stories held up by nostalgia and echoes. Sinatra’s voice. The whine of the roulette wheel. Honeymooners making love. All of it about to become dust.

She had never been inside, never been this close. Until tonight.

“The Sheherezade,” Serena said as loudly as she could. Did you hear that, Jonny? She added, “Why are we here, Blake?”

But she knew. This was Amira’s house, where she danced, where she died. Blake was coming home.

He gestured them inside. Serena and Claire led the way. They had to make their; way past rubble and glass. They walked right through the gaping hole into the lobby, as if they were checking in for the night.

“You can imagine what it was like, can’t you?” Blake asked.

Serena understood. It was easy to float back to the 1960s here. Easier than it would have been a few weeks ago, when the hotel was still open, and all the twenty-first-century guests were coming and going. Now they were alone with the ghosts. The furniture was all gone, the fixtures pulled off and sold at auction, everything taken away: chairs, wastebaskets, ashtrays, slot machines, paintings, craps tables, beer taps. Only the skeleton was left-but even the bones of the building told a story. The geometric Arabian design in the wallpaper. The desert mural stretching across the ceiling. The etchings of Sheherezade herself in gold leaf on the elevator doors.

Blake pushed the button for the elevator.

“Where are we going?” Serena asked. She heard the singsong chime of the elevator as its doors slid open. It seemed odd to her that the elevator still worked in a hotel that was about to be destroyed, but then she realized it would probably work right up until the last day, as explosive experts checked their charges throughout the building.

She was afraid she would lose the signal when the elevator doors closed.

“The roof?” she speculated loudly. “Of course, that’s where Amira was killed. In Walker’s suite. That’s where you’re taking us.”

Jonny? Are you there?

The doors closed. The three of them were alone in the small compartment as it hummed upward. Blake pushed the button for the top floor, heading exactly where Serena had expected-but why?

“I don’t see what you hope to accomplish, Blake. None of this will bring Amira back.”

“I’m here for the truth,” Blake said.

He didn’t say anything else. The elevator was slow, or maybe it was just that her nerves were on a razor’s edge, not knowing Blake’s next move. She watched the numbers for each floor Illuminate one by one. Climbing higher and finally thudding to a halt. With another birdlike song, the doors opened again, and Blake forced them out into the hallway. They were opposite two double doors, painted gold.

There was no suite number on the doors. Maybe they had sold the room numbers at auction. Or maybe, if you were in the high roller’s suite, you simply knew where to go.

Blake twisted the handle. The door was open. He pushed it in and waited as Serena and Claire walked past him into the foyer of the suite. Without furniture, the room was vast, and it kept a lingering elegance, despite its barren appearance. Even the carpet had been rolled up and sold, along with the chandeliers, but stretches of delicate porcelain tile had been left to be crushed in the demolition, presumably because it couldn’t be safely removed for sale.

Serena had to imagine what the suite would have looked like when it was fully furnished. There were hints in the multicolored kaleidoscope of the tile and the pistachio colors of the painted ceiling. She thought of flowing draperies behind honey sofas laden with pillows. Wrought-iron hanging lamps. Rich lapis vases. All that and a five-hundreddollar hooker would make any high roller feel like a sultan.

“Keep going,” Blake said.

He pushed them through the deserted suite to the far wall leading to the outdoor patio. Serena slid through open stained-glass doors and stepped outside with Claire beside her. Blake followed. They were immediately bathed in a rainbow of light from the giant Sheherezade sign flashing above them. Each letter in the name was mounted on its own frame and must have been thirty feet tall. They flicked on and off in a rhythm of darkness and color that made Serena think of a nightclub dance floor.

There were twelve-foot walls on three sides of the huge patio, all decorated in Moroccan tile, leading up to the actual roof of the hotel. She could see a barbed-wire fence on the roof, preventing trespassers from creeping down from the roof to the high roller’s suite. The fourth side of the patio, on her right, had a much shorter wall topped with scalloped icons. That wall faced the street and created the distinctive notch in the roofline of the Sheherezade.

The patio, like the rest of the suite, had been largely stripped of its decorations. There were still date trees that had been planted into stone circles cut directly into the floor, and marble fountains, now turned off, carved into the walls. The pool was filled with water that had turned dank and green from lack of care.

She noticed that Blake was staring into the murky water. Thinking of Amira.

“I’m sorry,” Claire said.

Blake looked up. “For what?”

“That you lost your mother. I never knew my mother either. It’s hard growing up that way.”

Blake was silent. Serena wondered how many times he had made secret visits to this place in the past few weeks. It wasn’t his first time, she was sure of that. She could imagine him alone in the hotel, here by the pool, obsessing over his mother’s death.

“I think I know what you want,” Claire continued, “but you won’t get it from him. I know him too well. He won’t confess. He won’t apologize. He’ll never tell you the truth.”

“We’ll see,” Blake said.

“He betrayed me, too, Blake. I hate him like you do.”

Serena thought again about the schism between Boni and Claire and wondered what terrible thing he had done. Whatever it was, Claire still carried the baggage. Serena had felt it from her since the first day they met. It was always there. Even when they were in bed together, Serena felt this aura of loss emanating from her, as if she were haunted. That was what made them kindred spirits.

“He hasn’t rejected you,” Blake said. “He hasn’t denied your very existence.”

“No, it was worse than that.”

Claire’s intensity made Blake hesitate. Then his face became a hard mask again. “I guess we’ll both find out how much you really mean to him,” he said. He pulled a phone from his pocket and dialed.

“Hello, Boni,” Blake said. “You know who this is, don’t you? I’m here where it all started. I’m home. If you go out on your nice penthouse balcony, you can see us all down here. By the pool. Where you had my mother murdered.”

Blake paused. “What do I want?” he said. “I want to see you face to face. Right here. You’ve got twenty minutes. Or else I kill your daughter.”

FORTY-EIGHT

Stride parked across the street, outside the hurricane fence. He stared through the windows of his truck up at the roof of the hotel, trying to see if anyone was watching from behind the parapet, but his eyes couldn’t penetrate the shadows at night. He had to take the chance. He got out of the Bronco, pulled his gun, and crossed the street, taking cover behind the plywood wall that surrounded the property.

He made his way to the gate, which was unlocked now and open. He slipped inside the demolition site and took a quick survey of the lot. Other than Blake’s Impala, there was nothing and no one around, just him and the eerie hotel shell marked for destruction. Stride jogged across the pavement. He stopped at the Impala, pulled a Swiss army knife from his pocket, and sliced through the valve on the right rear tire. Air began hissing out. He scuttled to the front of the car and did the same with the right front tire. Blake wasn’t driving out of here.

The roof?

Those were the last words he had heard from Serena on her cell phone before the call died. It was enough. He figured they were upstairs in the penthouse suite.

Stride made his way inside the hotel. He knew he was guilty of doing what Amanda had done, what he never did himself. He was going in alone, without backup, without letting Sawhill or anyone else know where he was. This was different. Serena was up there. Stride didn’t know what would happen if Blake felt trapped and surrounded, but he was deeply afraid that Claire and Serena would both wind up dead before they could mount a successful operation.

They might be dead now-but he couldn’t afford to think like that.

He looked for the elevators and spotted the elegant bank of gold doors on his left. He headed in that direction, then ducked as he saw twin beams of headlights shining through the lobby as another car drove into the hotel lot. When the car turned, he saw that it was sleek and black, a limousine. Stride hurried past the gaping hole in the wall until he was out of sight. He found a secluded hallway across from the elevators that had previously housed a bank of pay phones and waited there. Less than a minute later, he watched from the dark corner as a small, elegant old man strode purposefully for the elevators.

Boni Fisso.

“Boni!” Stride hissed before the man could push one of the buttons.

Boni turned around, startled. “Detective Stride. Were you invited to this little party, too?”

Stride shook his head. “Serena’s up there with Blake and Claire. She was able to let me know where they were.”

“Is Metro sending in an entire squad?” Boni asked, concerned.

“No, I haven’t alerted anyone yet. I thought this might turn out better without a crowd.”

Boni inclined his head. “My thoughts exactly. Thank you, Detective. I don’t care what happens to Blake. The only thing that matters to me is getting Claire out safely.”

“Technically, I shouldn’t even let you up there,” Stride said. “You become another hostage as soon as you walk through that door. Blake wants you dead.”

“You won’t stop me,” Boni said. “You want Serena back, just like I want Claire back. And after all, it’s my hotel. Besides, if I’m not up there in five minutes, Blake will kill Claire and probably Serena, too. I think he’s a man of his word.”

“Are they inside the suite?” Stride asked.

“No, oh the terrace outside by the pool. That’s where Amira was killed.”

“Tell me about the layout.”

Boni described the high roller’s suite and the patio area in detail from memory, as if it were still 1964 and the hotel was brand-new. The part that interested Stride was the fact that the roof of the hotel looked down on the patio area on three sides.

“Is there any access from the roof down to the terrace?” Stride asked.

Boni nodded. “There’s a locked gate and an emergency ladder near the parapet at the front of the hotel.”

“I don’t suppose you have a key to the gate.”

Boni smiled. “It’s a combination lock. One-two-one-six. My birthday. I like to make sure I have access to everything, Detective. Now we’d better go. The clock’s ticking.”

They took the elevator up to the top floor of the hotel. Stride waited out of sight until Boni signaled that the doors to the penthouse suite were closed and Blake was nowhere to be seen. Stride followed Boni into the hallway. He noted a green EXIT sign at the far end of the hall to his left.

“The stairs are down there,” Boni said. “You can go up to the roof. The door should be unlocked.”

“Try to keep him distracted. Keep him from looking toward the ladder.”

“I’ll do my best. Good luck, Detective.”

“You, too:”

Stride opened the door to the roof slowly and carefully, not knowing how well the sound would carry. He slipped outside and closed it behind him with a soft click. The hot wind off the mountains almost blew him over. He was exposed out here, with nothing except a few ventilator ducts to block the gusts.

The roof was bright, thanks to the massive Sheherezade sign stretching overhead, flashing its colors. A five-foot wall, capped by small onion domes, stretched all around the border of the roof, except for the segment where the roof dipped down and made a rectangular notch to offer a view for anyone on the elegant terrace one floor below. Stride saw the tall barbed-wire fence completely surrounding the open area of the terrace and quickly spotted the locked gate near the front of the hotel.

He wanted to run, but he was afraid his footsteps would echo down to the patio. Instead, he walked as quickly as he could, putting each foot down softly. He stayed away from the fence until he was near the gate, to make sure no one could see him.

The gate was near the edge of the roof. The winds were even stronger there. Stride dropped to his knees and crawled closer. He inched his head up when he reached the fence and saw that the terrace itself was invisible from this angle. All he could see was the upper few feet of the patio wall, with its colorful miniature tile. No one could see him here.

He checked out the lock, which was a combination lock, just as Boni had said. He hoped the old man was right about the numbers. The lock wasn’t attached to the gate itself but instead was looped through the links of a chain that was tightly wrapped between the gate and the frame. Stride carefully lined up the numbers 1-2-1-6 on the dials and tugged at the U-bar on the lock. It popped open. He slid the lock out of the chain and held the chain together with his fingers. After he hung the open lock on one of the holes in the mesh, he unwound the chain from the fence, taking care that the links didn’t rattle together. It was hard to keep his hands steady while his body was being buffeted by the wind.

Finally, the chain was limp in his hands like a dead snake. He laid it carefully on the ground. The breeze began to open the gate on its own, and Stride froze when he heard the hinges squeal. He grabbed the gate and held it tight.

He stopped and listened. The fence creaked and whined in the wind. Slowly, he began opening the gate, moving it an inch at a time, trying to minimize the rusting grind of the hinges and blend it in with the other noises on the roof. When he had a few inches of clearance, he squeezed his body through and dropped back to his knees. He pulled the chain gently to the other side of the fence, then swung the gate shut again. He rewrapped the gate and the fence together with the chain and relocked it, so that the gate wouldn’t swing wildly.

Stride was six feet from the sharp drop down to the terrace. He was at least twelve feet above the terrace floor. Immediately in front of him, almost butting up against the parapet, was a wrought-iron ladder bolted to the roof. As Stride crept closer and examined it, he saw that the ladder appeared to be original equipment from 1964. So were the bolts. The metal was rusting.

He didn’t know if the ladder would support his weight, or if it did, whether he could climb down silently. But he didn’t have a choice. There was no other way to the terrace, and it was too far to jump.

He lay flat on his stomach and stretched out his legs behind him as far as he could without colliding with the fence. He inched forward, pushing his face just past the edge so he could look down at the patio. His hair swirled in the breeze.

He heard voices below, by the pool.

FORTY-NINE

Serena saw Boni standing in the doorway of the suite. No matter how small or old the man was, he still carried an aura of power. It clung to him and fitted as neatly as his suit. Claire saw him, too, and Serena tried to unravel the emotions in her face, seeing her father again. Love. Longing. Most of all, contempt.

An unhappy family reunion.

Boni didn’t even look at Blake. He looked right past him to Claire. Serena saw a father’s love in his eyes, passionate and strong; he had missed Claire badly all these years. She saw something else, too, something she wouldn’t expect from Boni Fisso. Guilt. It was everywhere in his face and how he held himself. He could barely look into her eyes, and he almost cringed under the fiery anger he saw Claire directing at him.

Not like Boni at all.

Blake scowled. “I’ve waited a long time for this. To be face to face with you.”

Boni walked out into the open air of the terrace, the neon light playing on his features. He continued to ignore Blake. “Are you allright?”he asked Claire.

“It’s a little late to worry about that,” she answered.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t even think about forgiveness. Not now. Not ever.”

Blake gestured at Serena and Claire with his gun. “Both of you, get on your knees.”

“What are you doing?” Boni demanded.

“I think you know exactly what I’m doing,” Blake replied. “You of all people.”

He was preparing to kill them, Serena thought. A tight ball of frustration and despair lodged in her heart again, just as it had when she first saw Blake in her bedroom. Serena knelt near the marble skirting of the pool, with Claire right beside her. She kept a close eye on Blake, looking for any moment when he might be distracted and she could rush him.

Claire didn’t look at Blake or the gun. She held her head high and stared angrily back at her father.

“Take off your coat,” Blake told Boni. “I want to see that you’re not carrying.”

“I always carry a gun for protection,” Boni said. “It’s in my right suit coat pocket. But I hope you don’t think I can draw fast enough to shoot you.”

“Take the coat off,” Blake repeated.

Boni shrugged and complied. Serena wondered about the coldness of a man who could get a call in the middle of the night telling him his daughter would be dead in twenty minutes and could still take the time to dress impeccably, right down to the perfect knot in his tie. Blake balled up the coat and threw it to the far side of the terrace, well away from them.

“I’m here,” Boni told Blake. “What do you want?”

“What do I want? What the hell do you think I want?”

“I have no idea. You’re nothing but a murderer.”

Blake shrugged. “Like father, like son.”

Boni jabbed afingerat him. “Don’t you dare judge me. I’ve provided entertainment for millions of people. I’ve provided homes, food, and education for thousands of employees. I’ve built hospitals, parks, and day care centers. Right here on this ground, where we’re standing now, the greatest resort in the city is going to rise up. So don’t you try to compare your pathetic little life to mine, you worthless piece of shit.”

“You made me what I am!” Blake spat the words out.

“That’s bullshit. So you got dealt a tough hand. Big fucking deal. I was born with nothing, and I built everything myself If you’re still a sniveling child hiding in the closet in Reno, don’t blame me “

Blake took a step forward and shoved his gun hard into the skin of Claire’s forehead. Claire’s eyes widened in terror, and she tried to back away, but Blake grabbed her by the throat. “You don’t give a shit about your son?” he asked Boni. “Maybe you give a shit about your daughter.”

Boni’s voice was like ice. “Let her go.”

“Tell me about Arnim.”

“Let go of my daughter,” Boni repeated.

Blake yanked the gun away and pointed it at Boni. “Amira,” he said again.

“What do you want to know?” Boni asked.

“Why did you make her give up her baby?”

Boni hesitated. Serena could see it again-the calculations always spinning in his mind as he looked for the best odds. As he looked for a winning hand.

“Our baby,” Boni replied quietly. “I was the father”

“Do you think I don’t know, Dad? Blake said. “That makes it even worse.”

Boni shook his head. “I had no choice. Eva, my wife, knew about Amira. Eva hadn’t been able to get pregnant herself, and she was furious to find out that Amira was going to have a baby. My baby. She wanted it to go away. I mean, really go away. An abortion. But I wasn’t about to do that. So instead I sent Amira away to have the baby, and I led Eva to believe that Amira had had the abortion and was in Paris getting over it. Getting over me.”

“Amira wanted to keep me,” Blake said.

Boni hesitated, and his eyes flicked to Claire. “Yes, of course. She was devastated to give up her child.”

Serena remembered what Boni had told them before, that Amira couldn’t wait to berid of the screaming brat. That she had no interest in the child at all. Had that been a lie? Or was he now trying to spare Blake’s feelings and talk him down?

“Then Eva did finally get pregnant,” Boni went on. “While Amira was away. It made me wonder if she’d been taking precautions all along and not telling me.”

“But Eva thed,” Blake said. “She thed giving birth to Claire, and you had your daughter. And I was in the hands of a monster. Why didn’t you come get me then? How could you turn your back on your own son?”

“No one knew it was my baby. Just me, Amira, and Eva. I couldn’t very well admit it at that point. Particularly-”

Boni stopped.

Blake finished the sentence. “Particularly because you murdered Amira.“

Boni was silent.

“Tell me what happened,” Blake insisted.

“I have nothing to say about that.”

“Tell me.”

“It won’t change a thing.”

Blake stormed back to Claire and shoved the pistol back in her face, nearly knocking her backwards. “Tell me.”

Blake was breathing heavily. Serena saw that he was focused on Boni and paying less attention to what was going on around him. She began to slowly move her feet, so she was in a better position to leap when he gave her the opportunity.

That was when she noticed something in the darkness over Blake’s shoulder. She saw movement on the roof, in the corner of the terrace. For the first time, she realized there was a narrow ladder stretching along the tiled wall, and someone had appeared at the skyline, climbing onto the first step.

Her heart raced.

Jonny.

Stride knew this was the best time. Blake was absorbed in me intense argument with Boni, and he wasn’t thinking about anything going on behind him or above him. He thought about taking a shot at Blake from the roof. If you’ve got the shot, take the shot, and make the shot. That’s what Sawhill would say. Put an end to it right now. But the distance, the wind, and the crazy neon light were working against him. Claire and Serena were both in the path. He couldn’t see clearly. If he fired and missed, or if Blake moved, he could hit either one of them, and that wasn’t a risk he was willing to take.

He crouched low and turned around so his back was to the terrace. He took hold of the iron railing of the ladder with one hand; his other hand held his gun. When he looked down, he thought he saw Serena glance his way and then turn quickly back to Blake.

The wind buffeted him. He felt the railing quiver under his touch. The ladder was loose and unsteady, and he didn’t know what would happen when he put two hundred pounds of weight on the platform. He swung his right leg over the edge. His foot gingerly touched the topmost step. He tried to test it, leaning his weight back into the step, and he felt the ladder sway under the gusts and the bulk of his body.

It held.

He gripped the railing tightly, looping his arm around the metal for more leverage. He kept his gun trained on Blake, but his arm kept jostling, spoiling his aim. He swung his left leg over now, and both feet were squarely on the top step of the ladder. He could feel vibration running up his body through his legs.

He took a step down, climbing backward, one-handed.

Then everything fell apart.

The atmosphere seemed to yawn, taking a deep breath and exhaling it across the notch in the roof like a tornado. The gust slapped him in the back and drove his whole body against the fragile ladder. His wrist struck the railing, and it popped his gun out of his hand, and he watched in horror as it tumbled downward toward the floor of the terrace. He lurched off balance as the wind shifted and sucked him backward. The rusting bolt that held the ladder to the wall popped, and a moment later, Stride was flying. The ladder spun in a lazy arc toward the parapet. He hung on with one hand, feeling the iron buck and swing as his weight crushed all of its pressure onto the last rusting bolt.

With an awful grinding, the bolt gave way.

The ladder began pitching forward at its middle, metal tearing and bending. Stride looked down, falling, and saw the onion domes stretched along the top of the wall, and beyond them, twenty stories of air.

Serena saw the gun fly out of Jonny’s hands. She braced her left foot against the marble and stared at Blake, waiting. When the gun clattered to the ground, Blake instinctively twisted to look behind him, and in the same instant, Serena sprang forward, shooting up from her knees. She rammed Blake with her fists clenched together and drove her arms up into his abdomen. The gun flew from his fingers and skittered away behind him. Blake tumbled backward, and the momentum carried Serena with him, both of them spilling off their feet. With her hands tied, Serena couldn’t break her fall, and the hard ground flattened her arms against her chest, knocking the wind from her lungs. She couldn’t breathe.

She tried to get up and made it to her knees. Her eyes searched the shadows.

Where was the gun?

She felt air coming back slowly. Her chest swelled. Blake’s gun was only a few feet away, almost within reach. She clawed out for it and then tried to stand up, but before she could get to her feet, she felt an electric shock of light and pain through her skull. Blake’s elbow crashed against her head, knocking her over. Then Blake was climbing over her, scrambling for the gun.

The parapet zoomed up into Stride’s face. He hung on to the railing as the ladder disintegrated, swinging him over the big drop to the street. For an instant, he dangled there, his feet hanging free, and he felt his insides turn to water. The iron squealed and protested and dropped lower. His grip on the railing was slippery from sweat. Stride hunted for a foothold, feeling nothing but space, and then finally he scraped the edge of the wall with his shoe. He shifted his weight and was standing on the parapet, with half of one foot on the ledge.

For a few seconds that felt timeless, he hung on, caught between the back-and-forth swirls of the wind. Finally, a gust roared in, pushing him toward the hotel, and Stride let his hand slip from the iron. He bent and reached for one of the stone onion domes, but he was beyond that already, tumbling, falling, landing with a jolt and rolling onto the terrace.

The impact dizzied him, and he swayed as he got to his feet. He looked quickly for his gun but didn’t see it. Then he saw Blake scrabbling across the marble and saw another gun lying almost within the killer’s reach.

Stride charged, just as Blake curled his hand around the butt of the pistol.

With a flash of light and a deafening noise, Blake fired. Stride felt a searing pain streak across his leg, and he half dove, half collapsed across Blake. He heard a snap and realized it was Blake’s wrist breaking as Stride’s shoulder fell across his arm. Blake choked back a cry of pain, and the gun dropped from his hand. Stride twisted around, lunging for the gun, but Blake bucked like a bronco and threw Stride off his back. Blake picked up the gun again; he could barely hold it now. Stride rolled away and then stood up. Blake was still prone on the ground, trying to raise the gun, and Stride kicked his broken wrist hard with the side of his foot, causing a new bellow of pain from Blake and sending the gun spinning toward the pool.

Stride reached down and yanked Blake to his feet. The killer’s body was like rubber, and his face looked bruised and dazed. Stride recoiled to send a fist across Blake’s jaw, then realized he had been suckered as Blake brought a knee viciously up into Stride’s groin. As hot pain raced through his body, Stride staggered back and saw Blake’s left forearm slicing backhand toward his head. He tried to dodge the blow, but it connected hard on his cheek and sent him reeling, stumbling to his knees.

Serena saw Stride’s gun lying on the ground a few feet from the roof wall, near the twisted remnants of the ladder. As Blake spun around, he followed her eyes, and he saw it, too. They both ran. Serena didn’t have her wind back completely, and she realized that Blake was faster, that he would get there first. She turned and dove for him, trying to take him down. Blake saw her coming and swerved, then leaped to clear her body. His foot became tangled in her legs. Blake pulled free, but he lost his balance, stumbled, and fell.

She saw that Jonny was on his feet again. He was running for the gun, too.

Then Serena felt a powerful arm snake around her neck and yank her up to her knees, sealing off her windpipe in a crushing grip. She fought and couldn’t breathe. Blake had her locked in a stranglehold.

“Stride!” Blake shouted.

She saw Jonny freeze. It felt as if her eyes were bulging out of her head.

“I’ll kill her.”

She wanted to tell him to go for the gun. Fuck Blake. Put an end to this. But she couldn’t make a sound; all she could do was watch the world start to spin and darken. Her limbs felt as powerless as a marionette’s. She wondered if it had been like this for Amira, dying here.

She heard Blake’s labored breathing. His arm didn’t let loose. He was killing her, choking her second by second. The blood began roaring in her brain, and her nerve ends exploded like firecrackers, causing a headache that made her skull feel as if it would burst open.

Her eyes met Jonny’s. He floated in her vision and did somersaults. Go for the gun, Jonny.

Stride took a step toward the gun.

“I’ll kill her,” Blake repeated.

Serena felt his other arm slide over the top of her head and grab her hair. He was going to twist her neck and snap her spine. Then through the blackness that was falling down on her, Serena realized that Blake could barely hold her head with his other hand. Snap. His wrist was broken. Fragile. Vulnerable.

She hoped she could stretch her bound arms over her head. She told her limbs what to do, and somewhere between the confused impulses shooting from her brain, her arms obeyed. She reached up to the top of her head with her bound hands and took hold of Blake’s wrist and clamped down on the bone as hard as she could.

Blake screamed. Serena jerked on his wrist. For just an instant, Blake’s other arm came loose, and Serena wriggled free, gasping for air, feeling blood rush back to her head. She stumbled, unable to keep her balance.

Five feet away, Jonny ran for the gun. So did Blake.

Blake was closer to the gun, but Stride was on him before he could reach for it. He threw Blake against the parapet so hard the killer slammed into it and bounced off. Stride was waiting and threw a sledgehammer punch directly into Blake’s face that snapped his head back. Blood sprayed from his mouth. The killer staggered back into the wall, and Stride followed, hitting him again.

Stride felt a stinging, bone-deep pain in his hand. He realized he had probably broken a couple of fingers.

Blake crumpled to his knees, and his head slumped forward. He teetered and then collapsed on the ground, not moving. Stride took a deep breath and reached around behind his back to snag his handcuffs.

He looked down. Something was wrong.

Behind him, Serena saw it, too, and shouted, “Where’s the gun?”

Stride realized he didn’t see his gun anymore. Blake had deliberately pivoted his body to fall on top of it. Stride saw Blake’s arm moving and saw the man pushing himself off the ground, the gun in his other hand.

Blake aimed the gun, not at Stride, not at Serena, but at himself.

He pressed it to the side of his head. He could barely keep it steady.

“Drop it, Blake,” Stride told him.

Blake dragged himself to his feet. He staggered back to the wall. Stride and Serena edged closer from two sides.

“Give us the gun,” Serena said.

Blake gave them a bloody smile. He put his bad hand around one of the onion domes atop the parapet and braced himself, grimacing in pain, as he pulled a leg up onto the wall. The gun wobbled in his grip. He pulled his other leg up, too, and stood, precariously balanced on the slim stone edge of the wall. Blake swayed, the wind toying with him.

He took the gun away from his head and casually tossed it off the top of the building.

Stride took a step forward, but Blake held up his hand, stopping him. Blake shook his head. He took a long look at the ground below.

“Amira,” he said.

Blake leaned into the wind. He spread his arms wide.

“Don’t do it, brother.”

The sharp voice from the terrace stopped him in the moment before he let go. Blake looked around and steathed himself on the wall. So did Stride and Serena. Stride couldn’t believe what he saw.

It was Claire.

She was standing by the pool, with Serena’s gun in her outstretched hands. She was pointing it at Boni’s head.

FIFTY

Claire, what the hell are you doing?” Serena demanded.

Claire didn’t look back. She stared down the sights of the gun at her father and walked toward him step by step, slowly, until the gun was an inch from his eyes. Serena saw Claire’s whole body trembling. There was hatred in her face and a world of hurt gushing out like oil from a well.

Boni didn’t even seem to notice the gun. His blue eyes and her blue eyes were locked in a duel. Claire was crying, and she struggled to keep the gun level.

“Now you know what it felt like for me,” she said. “Powerless.”

“What do you want, Claire?”

“Tell Blake the truth,” she said. “You owe him that.”

“I don’t owe him anything,” Boni snapped.

Claire shook her head. “You murdered Amira, didn’t you? Because she had the fucking gall to try to get out from under your thumb. Because she didn’t want to be owned and controlled anymore.”

“I loved Amira,” Boni told her.

“Everything you love gets hurt,” Claire retorted.

“I can’t talk about it.”

“It was forty years ago,” she insisted. “No one can touch you now.”

“You may as well kill me, Claire, if that’s what you want. I’m not going to say anything about Amira.”

“Is that what you want? You want me to pull the trigger?”

‘For God’s sake, stop this,” Serena pleaded with her. She started to move toward them, and Boni held up one hand to stop her.

“It’s all right, Detective,” Boni said. He focused on Claire. “Kill me if you want, sweetheart. I just wish you wouldn’t throw away your own life to do it.”

“Does my life mean more to you?” Claire asked. She tilted her head back and shoved the barrel of the gun under her own chin. “How about now?”

“Claire! No!” Serena shouted.

Boni looked at his daughter. Serena thought his eyes were filling up with tears. “You’re so beautiful. Just like your mother.”

“Do you think that kind of shit will work on me now?” Claire asked. “What’s next? You’ll tell me how much you love me? That doesn’t mean a thing.”

“I do love you”

‘’Do you think I won’t do it?” Claire demanded, pushing the gun harder against her skin. “Is that it? I’m your child. You know I will.”

“If you thought it would give me enough pain, yes, I know you would.”

“Look at us!” Claire said. “This is the family you’ve built. Look at your son on the wall. That’s what you did to him. And you know damn well what you did to me.”

Boni recoiled as if he had been struck. “Please, Claire, don’t go there.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Am I airing our dirty laundry in public? Am I embarrassing you?”

“Claire,” Boni begged her. “No.”

It was as if Claire smelled a wound and steered for it like a shark. “You knew what that bastard did to me.”

Serena didn’t know who Claire was talking about, but Boni obviously did. He was visibly shaken.

“It was a terrible misunderstanding,” Boni said.

“Misunderstanding? You accused me of being drunk. You said I led him on. You knew that was a lie.”

“I didn’t want to believe what he had done to you.”

Boni raised his arms, reaching out to her, trying to touch her. Claire stepped back and flung the gun into the pool, where it splashed into the opaque water. She screamed, “He raped me!”

“Claire, we can’t talk about this. Not here.”

“Oh, no, no, of course not. It might endanger the empire. It might hurt him. My God, he raped your own daughter, and you covered it up”

“I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”

“You had a choice. Me or him. But that was never a choice, was it? It’s always been him. Everything you’ve ever done, it’s been to protect him.”

Who? Serena wanted to shout.

“We talked about this,” Boni said. “You told me you understood.”

“Of course I understood. I was asking you to expose a lifetime of lies. You would have lost everything. Gone to prison. So I was the good girl, and I shut up. I shut up, even though I had nightmares for years. I shut up, even though I was sick and scared every time I saw his face. I shut up, and I saved you.”

“It was more than ten years ago, Claire,” Boni said. “What can I do? How can I finally make this right?”

“You can never make it right. But just once in your life, you can tell the truth. You can face up to something you’ve done. What happened to Amira?”

Boni looked stricken. “I can’t talk about that.”

“Why not? You say you don’t owe Blake, but you sure as hell owe me.”

“I know I do, but you can’t ask me that, Claire. You can’t.”

Claire looked as if she would explode in frustration. If the gun were still in her hand, Serena thought, she would have killed Boni. Or herself. Or both. She turned away, and her shoulders wrenched as she sobbed.

Boni closed his eyes. His daughter’s pain seemed to stab him and open up old wounds. “It was him, Claire,” he said quietly. “Back then. With Amira.”

Claire swung back in disbelief. “No.”

Boni nodded. “That was when it started between him and me. I made him. Like some kind of Frankenstein’s monster.”

“Mickey killed Amira?”

Boni’s face contorted as if Claire had thrown open Pandora’s box and all the demons had flown out and scattered. As if, by saying the name, she had taken the gun and shot him.

Serena’s mind raced, and she mouthed the word at Stride. Mickey?

Claire stepped forward and slapped him across the face, so hard that the old man lost his balance. “You knew what kind of monster he was. How could you let him near me? How could you ask me to go out with him?”

“So much time had passed, Claire. I thought he was different. I thought I could trust him.”

“He’s still more important to you than I am, isn’t he? After all these years. Of course he is. This is still about the empire. The Orient. The capstone to your life, and every brick of it built on suffering and violence and death.”

“Stop it, Claire.”

Claire shouted in his face, her lip curling in contempt. “Mickey! That’s our big secret, Daddy. He’s been hung around your neck-and mine-for forty years.”

Boni shook his head. “He’s still there, Claire. This doesn’t change a thing. You know that.”

“Yes, it does. It’s over. There’s going to be a trial. Blake’s trial. It’s all going to come out. Amira. Mickey. You. Everything.”

“I can’t let that happen.”

“It’s out of your control now.”

Boni’s voice was weary. “Nothing is out of my control, Claire.”

He reached into the back pocket of his pants and pulled out a pack of European cigarettes. He slid one into his hand and then hunted in another pocket and emerged with an oldfashioned Zippo lighter.

“Nothing,” he said.

He flicked the lighter, and even in the wind, it threw up a tiny flame.

A second later, on the ledge, Blake jerked up like a toy dancer jolted with electricity, his eyes growing wide. Serena saw him stagger in confusion. A stain of red opened up on his shirt, dripping in trails down his chest. Another instant later, the sound wave of a distant crack rolled across the terrace. Blake seemed to fold in on himself. He sagged, his face went pale, and he vanished backward on the long fall that led to the parking lot below.