The Kill Clause

44

Tim eased down the tiled corridor and slid into Room 17, checking the door numerals against the crumpled slip of paper in his hand. Bowrick sat cross-legged in bed, blanket drawn around his shoulders like an Indian chieftain. He started, then pressed his hand to his chest, relief washing across his face. “Can’t you ever knock like a normal person?”

Tim tapped his lips with his index figure and gestured for Bowrick to follow. They made their way out the back entrance, the silence broken only by the admitting nurse’s humming in the lobby.

They’d driven two blocks before Bowrick spoke. “Man, you’re just in time. Nurse Needlestick’s been foaming at the mouth, wanting insurance cards, asking billing questions, all kinds of crap. For the forty-eight-hour hold, you’re free and clear, then they Grand Inquisition your ass.” He glanced up as a green freeway sign floated overhead. “Where we going?”

“You still have your Monument Hill access-control card?”

Bowrick fumbled his key chain out of his pocket and held up the card.

“The two guys who tried to kill you are there. They’ve got a hostage, who they’re planning to hang from the tree. I’m gonna surprise them. I need you to brief me on the monument.”

Bowrick let out a pensive whistle, then chewed his bottom lip and picked at the scab on his arm. “Only way in is the front gate, ’cause the fence is high and they run an electric current across the top. That’s the bad news. The good news is, the gate’s out of view from the monument and quiet when it opens. Steer clear of the dirt path-you can see it pretty well from up top. Just east of it is the most brush cover, and it’s a steeper approach, so it’ll keep you pretty well hidden.”

“How about the monument? How do you get up on it? Platform elevator or anything?”

“Nope. Climb the scaffolding, that’s all. On the back side, there’s some two-by-fours in place like a ladder. They use pulleys to hoist shit up, drop-tubes to junk stuff from up high.”

“What kind of equipment is available? That can be used as weapons?”

“Mostly locked up at night. Probably a few hammers lying around. Oh-and a sandblaster. That fucker’ll strafe your ass, lift skin. Then there’s the usual suspects-steel plates, boards, nails. I’ll show you as we go.”

“You’re gonna stay down the hill. I’ve gone through too much effort for you to get killed now.”

“Why would you care?” His tone, sharp and little-boy bitter, cut through the collaborative mood they’d briefly established. He shifted in his seat, his face taking on a reddish hue Tim usually associated with crying. “Answer me. You’ve dragged me into enough because of all this. I’ve gone along with all your crazy shit. I want to know.”

Tim fought away the first responses that came, knowing Bowrick deserved something more. “Look.” He moistened his lips. “When I got to your house to kill you, when I saw you, I felt like I was looking into a mirror.”

Bowrick’s eyes shifted across the dash. “A mirror. Right.”

“Look at me. Don’t look down, away. That’s just arrogance.”

Bowrick held his gaze, though his face paled and his hands fidgeted in his lap.

“You think you’re so bad nobody else can look you in the eye. Well, I can. We’ve both killed people for the same reasons. And I see that you’re at the beginning of a process that just might be redemption. And I’m betting on that.”

“What if I don’t want that responsibility?”

“If you screw up, I can always come back and shoot you later.”

Bowrick let out a short stutter of a laugh. His grin faded when he saw Tim wasn’t smiling. “Okay.” He nodded, his pale face flecked red with acne. “Redemption. Hell. I never had anything like this I’m supposed to carry until now.”

“And?”

“That’s fine by me. But you better keep studying it, too. Redemption. Because if you’re just gonna look at me and think, ‘Hell, that kid ain’t as bad as I’ve been convincing myself, so maybe I’m not either,’ then, shit, you haven’t learned a damn thing. It’s a path not a status.” He let out a jerky breath. “And I don’t know shit about redemption, but I been walking that path long enough to know you gotta keep walking.”

They came around a bank in the freeway, and there it was, its dark silhouette visible even against the black sky, overlooking both downtown and the 101 like a guardian angel. They reached the base of Monument Hill within minutes, left the car on the street, and crept to the gate. Bowrick flashed his access-control card at the pad, and the gate whirred slowly open. They slipped inside and vectored east of the path, Bowrick leading, Tim clutching his binoculars so they wouldn’t make noise brushing against his chest. He’d taken Betty from the collection of tech treats in the Stork’s dining room, and he held her respectfully at his side, the earpiece coiled around her handle. The Stork had been correct about one thing: There was a good line of sight down the hill on all sides.

Bowrick extended his hand like a shark fin, tracing the route Tim should take up the rugged hillside. Tim nodded, then handed him the car keys and the Nokia, catching his eye so his meaning was conveyed. Gesturing Bowrick to stay put, he began his cautious approach. After a while he bellied back toward the path, forging through a stand of chaparral that blocked his vantage, the speedloaders in his pocket digging into his thigh.

He emerged about a hundred yards from the hilltop. Up ahead loomed the monument, now a complete tree, the metal hide having been laid over the skeletal supports of the tree’s final branches. It remained ensconced within the web of scaffolding, a harmony of primitive planes and angles, a rudimentary form eager to emerge and shake off its shell. On the plateau at the monument’s base sat a Ford Expedition and a Lincoln, parked nose to nose, visible between stacks of metal sheets. Though no one was in evidence, Tim discerned the faint murmur of voices. The uphill breeze quickened, just slightly, but enough to overpower any sound from the hilltop. He aimed Betty up-slope in the direction of the cars, but she picked up little aside from the rumbling of wind across the parabola.

One of the Mastersons stepped into view between two tall piles of metal, and then the other. The dark figures were unmistakable, the swollen chests, the hard taper of the sides, all top-heavy muscle and bellicose posture. The first put his foot up on a sawhorse and lit a cigarette, arm bent across the raised knee. Through the binoculars Tim watched the ribbon of smoke unspool from the dark face. The glowing point of the butt lowered; the mouths moved in conversation. The mood of the twin shadows was stern, focused, decisive.

One pulled open the trunk of the Expedition and yanked a bound man to the edge of the tailgate.

Kindell.

Gripping him with a fistful of fabric at the shoulder blades and a clench of the belt, the man steeled his muscles. Kindell remained limp and contracted, hands bound behind his back, knees curled to his stomach. His captor tugged him hard from the tailgate, letting him drop the four feet to the dirt, doing nothing to break his fall.

Kindell landed flat on his chest and face. Despite the breeze, Betty picked up his pained gasping.

Robert and Mitchell were discussing something. Beneath their voices Tim made out a few spats of radioed correspondence from the service desk officer, in all likelihood issuing from a portable radio that was a counterpart to the one in the Stork’s kitchen.

Through the earpiece Tim heard “…under wraps until…then come back…”

The first shadow had his foot resting on Kindell’s back, as naturally as it had rested atop the sawhorse a few minutes ago. They seemed to arrive at some conclusion, for the second figure picked up Kindell and, swinging him once to pick up momentum, tossed him into the trunk of the Lincoln. He slammed the lid. Tim watched closely-no sign of either Masterson setting a booby trap in the trunk.

The two turned and disappeared into the maze of pallets and junked wood.

Tim crept out from cover and inched toward the two cars, but it wasextremely slow going since the sawhorses and heaps of building materials concealed myriad hiding places, and he had to zigzag back and forth to ensure he wasn’t leaving open a vulnerable angle. He reached the brink of the plateau and lay still in the waving foxtails, taking in the area in a long, slow sweep of the parabolic mike, earpiece snug in place, his right hand firm-gripping the. 357. He got nothing back from Betty but a tinny whimpering from the Lincoln’s trunk.

He popped up and did a quick run to the nearest cover, diving behind a mound of jagged metal refuse, the bulletproof vest and clayred dirt not softening his fall enough to keep pain from screaming through his stomach.

Still no sign of Robert or Mitchell. Plastic drop cloths fluttered everywhere-between stacked metal planes, beneath sawhorse legs, around corded bundles of boards. Tim scanned up the dark monument with the binocs, but it was hard to make out much more than the tree’s outline through the scaffolding. He could see the open hatch at the base of the trunk where the Sky-Tracker spotlight had been slid into the tree.

He low-crawled to a rusting sandblaster about ten yards from the two vehicles, close enough that he could hear Kindell’s desperate thumping in the car trunk. Again Tim surveyed the plateau, his eyes picking through the heaps of gnarled metal and discarded cuttings, the resting machinery, the boxy rise of scaffolding.

Kindell in the car trunk could very well be a baited trap. Tim rustled the Stork’s new Nextel from his pocket. Since Mitchell, as a demolition expert, was accustomed to keeping his cell phones turned off, Tim clicked the preset number to “R,” readied Betty, and hit “dial.” The faint chirping ring of a phone was immediately audible, and Tim fanned the parabolic mike back and forth, searching for the strongest signal. The cone climbed the trunk of the tree, fanned out over one of the branches. Robert was not visible, because the wooden platform of the scaffolding cut off almost the entire branch from view, but Tim got a strong ring through the earpiece. He figured Robert was probably up there preparing a noose for Kindell.

The expected rough voice answered. “Robert.”

Tim clicked the phone shut.

Robert appeared at the edge of the branch scaffolding, as Tim hoped he might. Raising his fingers to his mouth, Robert whistled a single harsh note. There was movement to the side of the monument, and then Mitchell’s head poked up from a throw of scrubby brush; he’d been walking a surveillance patrol around the base of the monument while Robert readied the branch above.

Blocked from their view by the stacks of metal, Tim dashed over and tried to open the trunk of the Lincoln, but it was locked. The doors were locked as well-no getting to the trunk release without breaking a window. His efforts led to invigorated thumping in the trunk, and Kindell’s muffled voice.

“Doan urt me. Please lee me be.”

Kindell’s loose, deaf enunciation brought fresh recollections, flooding Tim with revulsion.

He jogged back behind the sandblaster and aimed Betty again in Robert and Mitchell’s direction, catching the tail end of their shouted discussion. “…on the Stork’s phone…keep an ear on the scanner…get me Kindell…”

Mitchell started for the vehicles, his Colt glinting. Tim, crouched behind the blaster, was almost directly in his path. Mitchell drew near, approaching the car, and banged on the trunk with the barrel of the. 45. Kindell let out a shriek.

His face twisted with disdain, Mitchell dug in his pocket for the keys.

Tim braced himself, weapon up near his cheek, then stepped from cover. Mitchell caught sight of him breaking into the open, and at once both guns were up and aimed. Miraculously, neither one of them fired.

A Mexican standoff.

“Well,” Mitchell said. “Now what?”

“You tell me.”

The wind had picked up; Tim was pretty sure as long as no shots were fired Robert wouldn’t hear them from his position up high in the tree.

They drew a little nearer, Mitchell’s left hand supporting the hairtrigger. 45 in his right. His eyes jerked to the monument, betraying his urge to yell for his brother. Hands regripping the pistol, Tim shook his head, and the look on Mitchell’s face made clear he understood what the price would be for shouting. His thick hand was steady on the gun, his finger curled through the trigger guard. Tim pictured him sitting in a parked van watching Ginny leave Warren Elementary, his eyes calm, a notepad in his lap. Mitchell following her silently, shadowing her through the streets she took on her route home.

A Detroit cop, task-force member, explosive-ordnance tech. Stalking a seven-year-old girl who still used bunny ears to tie her shoes.

Mitchell’s mustache broadened with his smile. “Don’t suppose you want to drop the guns and go at it man to man.”

“Not on your life,” Tim said.

They circled each other slowly within the ring of metal stacks, blocked from the monument’s view.

“Let me tell you this,” Tim said. “I’ve fired nine shots in the line of duty, and they’ve all been hits. Eight of them have been kill shots.” He paused, moistened his lips. “If we throw down, you have no chance of surviving.”

Mitchell mused on that, his head bobbing. “You’re right. I’m not a shooter.”

He spread his arms wide, letting the gun dangle from his thumb. He tossed it to the left, aiming for the sandblaster. It bounced off the metal box, missing the “on” button by a few inches.

Mitchell’s eyes went to the metal stack to his side. If anyone could lift a five-foot pane of half-inch steel by himself, it was Mitchell. Tim wasn’t about to take any chances.

“On your knees. Arms wide. Turn around. Hands on your head now. That’s right. Not a noise.”

Tim slide-stepped in on him, both hands on the gun. At the last moment he saw that the toes of Mitchell’s boots were curled rather than flat against the dirt.

Mitchell pivoted and sprang. Tim laced his hand through the. 357 and hammered Mitchell across the face with a ball of fist and metal.

Bone crunched.

Mitchell staggered but did not drop. As he charged into Tim, his legs shoved against the ground, a linebacker gaining yards. He knocked Tim back into a stack of metal, jarring him, then the immense arms were a frenzied blur. The blows were even more devastating than Tim could have imagined. They were rapid and unremitting. They were car-crash powerful. They were rage and pain vented and embodied. Hunched protectively like a winded boxer on the ropes, Tim was wave-battered against the steel.

A haymaker brought him to his knees.

He’d have to shoot Mitchell or be killed. He brought the gun up, but then a shadow streaked toward Mitchell, flying up on his back, and Mitchell reeled, delivering a vicious elbow to the temple of his attacker. In the flash of an opening before Mitchell turned back, Tim delivered another gun-enforced blow, on the rise, directly between Mitchell’s legs. Mitchell expelled a hard gust of air, and then a dry heave pulled him down into a lean. Tim rose, blood running freely into his eyes, and hammered the gun down across Mitchell’s face.

Mitchell fell, his mouth open against the ground, his breath kicking up puffs of dirt. Bowrick stirred beside him, a lattice of broken veins coloring his left temple and upper cheek. Tim turned quickly, looking behind him for Robert’s approach, but there was no sound save that of fluttering plastic and wind drawing across the plateau. Tim studied the monument but spotted no movement, no trembling of the scaffolding to indicate Robert’s descent. Bowrick rolled over and shoved himself up on all fours, his forehead wrinkling with pain. He reached over, pulling Mitchell’s gun from the holster, the barrel pointing at Mitchell’s chest.

Tim tensed, dread locking the breath in his lungs.

Bowrick glanced over at him, their eyes holding for a moment, then he slid the gun into his jeans, sat back on his heels, and looked at Tim expectantly.

Tim gathered some cord from one of the wood stacks and double-bound Mitchell’s wrists behind his back, then his ankles. One of Mitchell’s eyes stared up at him, a glossy animal organ, all pupil. Tim’s first blow had broken his cheek badly; the skin sucked in beneath the eye like a drape pulled to an open window. Tim was gentle with the gag. He patted Mitchell down, pulling the car keys from his pocket.

Bowrick sat with his elbows resting on his knees, watching Tim work. He spoke in a harsh whisper. “Where’s the guy they want to kill?”

Tim pointed at the trunk of the Lincoln.

“Why don’t we get him out of there?”

Keeping his eyes on the monument, Tim crossed to Bowrick, lowering his voice so Mitchell couldn’t hear. “Can’t have him making noise. And he’s unpredictable-we don’t want him running around right now.” He tossed Bowrick the keys. “Get the hostage clear. Don’t open the trunk, don’t talk to him. Neutral it down the hill, nice and quiet. The metal stacks’ll block you from view part of the way down. Don’t turn on the car until you’re through the gate, then drive a few blocks, park somewhere out of sight, and stay alert. Keep the cell phone on. If you haven’t heard from me in an hour, split, call Deputy Jowalski at the U.S. Marshals Service, and explain the mess I dragged you into. And this time don’t come back, even if it is to save my ass.”

Bowrick nodded, slid into the driver’s seat, and pulled the door gently shut. The Lincoln began the solemn downhill roll, tires crackling softly on the dirt path, brake lights glowing in the night.

Tim sat for a moment and mopped the blood from his forehead. One of Mitchell’s blows had opened up a seam just at his hairline; he’d have a scar on the left to match the rifle-butt wound from Kandahar. Another punch had struck his shoulder near the bullet-fragment wound; it had already swelled up. His torso felt like a nerve-filled skin bag holding rocks and razor blades. After a few moments the rush of blood into his eyes slowed, and he stood up, fighting off light-headedness.

He retrieved Betty and the Stork’s phone and dialed Robert’s number again. Betty sourced the ring to the same branch, hidden from view by the scaffolding.

Same gruff voice. “Robert.”

Tim hung up. He circled the monument to the far side. If there was gunplay, Robert would have a tactical advantage firing down on him; there was no harder shot than one directly up.

The scaffolding made for easy climbing. Leaving Betty behind, Tim worked his way up as silently as he could, minding every creak and shift. When possible he climbed the metal branches, as they gave off less noise than the wood. Every few moments he’d pause and strain his ears, listening for Robert’s movement, but the wind, especially as he got higher, drowned out most noise-a factor that also worked to his advantage. Metal plates were missing here and there, dark, empty gaps looking in on the hollow tree interior.

About fifty feet off the ground, he paused, leaning against the cool metal of the trunk, drawing a deep breath, and hooking his fingers into a few of the monument’s myriad holes designed to beam out the spotlight’s glow. From this angle he had a clear view of the dirt path. The Lincoln drifted silently through the gate. He saw the lights blink on as the engine turned over, and then it pulled away.

Tim inched his way up, hugging metal and wood, drawing a few splinters. He wound up on the platform supporting the branch opposite Robert’s, about three feet lower. Crouching on a knee, he withdrew the Stork’s phone from his pocket and dialed again. The phone’s chirping ring sounded clear and loud, just on the far side of the trunk. Tim kept the call active, sliding the Stork’s Nextel into his pocket. Double-handing his Smith amp; Wesson, he drew back to the far edge of his platform so he could get three steps of a running start.

He timed two deep breaths, then thundered into his run. The trunk brushed his shoulder as he leaped, shoving off the platform hard and flying across a five-foot break of open air. Beneath him the drop stretched down seventy feet, broken only by metal branches and wooden crossbeams.

He hit the edge of the opposing platform and rolled evenly across his back, popping to a high-kneel shooting stance, one knee down, one up, the thrust of the gun an extension of both elbow-locked arms.

About six feet off the platform, dangling from a noose looped over the scaffolding above, was Robert’s Nextel. Ringing. It swayed gently, rocked by Tim’s hard landing on the platform.

He felt his insides go slack, the rush of panic. Keeping both hands firmly on the. 357, he shuffled two steps, careful not to trip over a stray two-by-four, and peered over the platform’s edge. On the ground Robert sprinted across the plateau, directly at the monument, sliding a curved Gurkha knife back into a hip sheath. He was coming from the direction of the parked car and the stacks of metal. Tim knew before he raised his eyes that next he’d see Mitchell, staggering twenty yards behind Robert, working the freshly cut cord from around his wrists. Though Mitchell moved unevenly, dizzied from Tim’s blows, his shoulders were firmed with rage, his legs moving in short, punching steps.

What alarmed Tim even more was that Mitchell had his black det bag looped over one shoulder.

Tim glanced down, trying to spot Robert again, but he had already disappeared underfoot. Before he had time to formulate a single coherent thought aside from the slapping awareness of how badly he’d been fooled, a reverberating clank announced the spotlight’s activation. Blinding light filled the core of the tree, shot in thin beams from the holes of the trunk and branches. A gap between metal plates below threw light up against the bottom of the platform; it streamed around the sides like a gold, twinkling river.

Squinting against the brightness, Tim glanced over the edge of the platform and saw Robert stepping slowly backward, peering up at him through the scope of a McMillan. 308.

A bullet cracked through wood, zinging past Tim’s head and embedding in a beam overhead. Tim threw himself flat against the platform. A second bullet punched through the platform inches from his face, throwing a spray of splinters past his cheek. He rolled toward the trunk, splitting beams of light. Two more shots penetrated the platform inches from his spinning body and ricocheted off wood and metal. Tim froze near the trunk.

The ping of metal and then the slapped-meat sound of slug smacking skin. Tim’s leg jerked as he heard the delayed report, and he cried out, more from shock than pain. His mouth cottoned instantly. Beams of light shot out from the tree branches all around him and through the bullet-riddled platform, one ray an inch off his nose, another just in front of the bend of his elbow; two he sensed rising between the split of his legs. He lay still, realizing that his movement made him detectable as he crossed over the fingers of light, making them blink out.

His thigh throbbed, numb and painless. He estimated that the bullet had entered just north of his right knee. When he heard movement down below, he risked rolling his head over to glance through one of the platform holes.

Robert, head down, chambered another round. In a clear stretch of plateau about twenty yards from the monument, Mitchell was on a knee, pulling blocks of C4 from his det bag. From this distance the blood staining his face looked like oil.

Tim strained his eye back to where Robert had been, found him missing, and jerked away just as another bullet split the wood where his head had been, enlarging the hole he’d been looking through. A remarkable shot, particularly given the angle.

Tim froze.

The silence was nearly unbearable.

Another bullet broke through the wood; another beam of light sprang up like a fast-growing vine between his neck and shoulder.

The stray two-by-four, about five feet long, was just within reach of his right hand. With a grunt he shoved it a few inches forward. The far end of the board crossed a hole in the platform, quashing the thin beam of light, and quickly two bullets hammered through the wood on either side of the existing hole. Tim covered his head, waiting for the ricochets to stop.

What Tim had gleaned at Rhythm’s indicated that Robert preferred a sitting shooting posture, an elevated tactical advantage, and a position offset right from a frontal view. Right now he was shooting from a standing position at a target directly overhead, and-despite those hindrances-firing with astounding accuracy. If Tim didn’t get off this platform, he was going to get picked apart piece by piece.

The mouth of a tube, about three feet in diameter, faced him across the length of the platform. Designed as a flexible safety trash chute for workers to clear scraps of material, the tube wormed over the edge of the scaffolding and dropped to the ground. The sturdy canvas would never hold Tim’s weight, and even if it could, the nearly free-fall seventy-foot drop would spit him out almost directly at Robert’s and Mitchell’s feet.

Blood soaked his jeans around the bullet wound; it was only a matter of time before a few crimson drops made their way down one of the holes near his right leg and gave away his position.

Even if his leg wasn’t injured, the tree trunk’s diameter was too wide for him to James Bond down the interior, spread-eagling to slow the fall. He couldn’t count on a rapid police response to such a remote site; even if the gunshots were audible over the rush of the freeway, at that distance they’d probably sound like little more than firecrackers. The only way off the monument was a tedious climb.

Tim shoved the two-by-four again to disrupt the light flow farther down the platform and risked a look through the hole near his head. Robert was repositioning himself. Mitchell had finished laying C4 around the tree trunk’s base and was storming back to his det bag.

To buy a few seconds, Tim pressed his gun barrel to a hole near his hand and fired four times, blindly. Then he rolled to his back and shot once at the rope tying Robert’s dangling Nextel to the scaffolding above. He hit the rope near the wood, pinching it off and causing the phone to drop straight down rather than swing off the platform’s edge.

He timed a lunge, grabbing the phone and landing flat, arms and legs spread, barely missing the bullet holes in the platform, the loose two-by-four pressing hard into his shin. Two more shots hammered through the wood precisely where he’d been. Robert had now all but ventilated the platform; there was very little unpenetrated wood left on which Tim could lie without giving away his position. He removed the coarse rope from the phone and used it as a tourniquet for his leg. Another shot broke the wood beside him, forcing him to flatten against the platform again.

Breathing hard, his elbow bent to dodge the new beam of light, Tim lowered his hand and worked the Stork’s phone from his pocket. With excruciating slowness he brought the two phones up to his chest, holding them side by side. Bullets continued to punch through the floor at intervals, pinging around the small cross-section of scaffolding.

He worked his foot over the two-by-four, pressing his toe against its end, then snapped his foot out. Right when the board slid off the platform’s edge, drawing Robert’s attention-Tim hoped-at least for a moment, he glanced through the hole to his right.

As he’d anticipated, Mitchell was still coming strong, the det bag looped over his shoulder and bouncing musically against his hip. He was heading for the C4 he’d left at the tree trunk’s base, a coil of wire in one hand, a razor knife in the other, an electric blasting cap in his mouth.

Tim hit “redial” on the Stork’s phone and tossed Robert’s Nextel into the canvas tube. He heard it ring once on its way down. It whistled along the canvas as it fell, guided in toward the trash heap at the base of the monument.

A sharp crack as the electric blasting cap detonated, triggered by the ringing phone’s RF pulse. A moment of perfect stillness, nothing but the wind whipping through the scaffolding, then a gut-wrenching wail.

Robert.

Tim rolled twice, sticking his head over the platform’s edge. Directly below, Robert was genuflecting beside his brother’s body. A spray of matter above the shoulders confirmed that Mitchell’s head had been blown apart by the electric blasting cap.

Tim swung over the platform, gripping the edge to aid his swing, and dropped ten feet to the one below. His right leg, weak and slick with blood, gave out, and he collapsed.

Robert roared down below, then bullets started hammering through the platform, sending chunks of wood flying. The gap between the metal plates in the trunk made the lower platform blindingly bright. Tim dragged himself to the visible section of trunk, lead flying up all around him, plunged his arm into the gap, and fired once, directly down the core of the tree.

A blast rocked the monument as the spotlight lamp exploded. The sharp flare of light disappeared at once, plunging everything into darkness.

Tim worked his way swiftly around to the far side of the tree. Smoke was seeping from the holes in the metal, the sluggish discharge recalling blood from wounds.

Robert continued to bellow down in the dark, firing randomly up at the branches and sky.

Tim hooked a toe on an opposing branch and pulled himself onto the far wall of scaffolding, then half fell, half slid down, catching splinters, moving quickly while the rifle reports covered the sound of his plunge and marked Robert’s place across the monument.

The shooting stopped, either because the ammo had run out or because Robert was circling to Tim; either way the silence sat thick in the air like an unvented smell. Tim slid from the lowest metal branch, dropping six feet to the ground and bearing his weight on his left leg.

Fumbling out a speedloader, he refilled the wheel of his gun. Despite the makeshift tourniquet, blood had twisted down his jeans, engulfing his knee. His head swam for a moment, static obscuring his vision; he’d lost a lot of blood. He tried to run, but his right leg had gone numb, and he fell over, catching a mouthful of dirt. With the help of a sawhorse, he pulled himself back to his feet.

Robert broke into view, one-handing the. 45 as it kicked and bucked, cording his forearm with muscle, muzzle flare lighting his face. His eyes showed too much white. Sheets of flesh pulled down from his jaw on either side, tight against twine-split muscle. He was roaring something, his lips loose and wet, his mustache a red slash above his stretching mouth.

Tim ran as best he could, threading through the scaffolding around the trunk’s base, putting metal and wood between him and Robert. Robert was firing wildly; he was less skilled with a handgun. Tim could barely run with his bad leg; boards were flying past him on either side and overhead. He ducked and jumped and dodged. Lead sparked off metal, always just behind him, always just around the turn. He’d sprinted nearly 180 degrees around the trunk when he swung wide and turned, lining the sights. Robert appeared, gun leading around the curved turn and, still in dead sprint, Tim squeezed off a round.

Robert’s. 45, raised in front of his upper chest, caught the bullet with a clang of lead meeting steel. The barrel sparked, and Robert cried out as the gun tore from his hand.

Tim swung back just in time to see the thigh-high mound of refuse before him, and he ran into it full bore, nails and dust exploding. Shaving through the left side of the heap, he hit ground hard and slid a few feet, landing on his back with a brick pinching into his left hip. He looked up through the thickening cloud of stirred debris and saw, ten feet above him, the open bottom of the canvas tube staring down at him like a curious eye.

He sat up,. 357 leveled. Despite his fall, he had the advantage now; his bullet had to have ruined Robert’s. 45.

Robert was standing perfectly still, about fifteen yards off, partly shielded by a stack of metal plates. Just watching him.

Tim’s glance dropped from Robert’s pink eyes, to his confident mouth-too confident for an unarmed man being gun-faced-to the rising globe of his biceps as his hand turned over, revealing the end of a remote detonator. Shifting farther behind the stack of plates so he was only a half man peering out, he nodded once at Tim, indicating something. Tim glanced down and realized that the brick pinching his hip was not a brick at all but a block of C4, the first of many spread around the monument’s base at four-foot intervals.

Mitchell’s body lay sprawled about ten feet to Tim’s left, his det bag several feet closer where Robert had pulled it when he’d prepped the C4. Of course Robert would have primed the explosives-he’d still thought Tim was up in the monument.

Tim’s head snapped up, and he fired once, but Robert anticipated his move, ducking behind the metal stack. The shot sparked off the steel. Tim braced himself for the explosion, but none came.

Instead came Robert’s rough voice. “You took Mitch’s head, you motherfucker. Took it clean off.” The words wavered and blurred.

Tim glanced at Mitchell’s body, a blur above the neck. Next to it lay Robert’s rifle, partially buried in red dirt. A scattering of tools had fallen from Mitchell’s bag. Spray-on glue. Needlenose wire clippers. The tiny shining cylinder of a nonelectric blasting cap, pushed into the earth. Tim picked up the blasting cap, rubbing its smooth side with his thumb.

LAPD would be here soon-the lit tree had to have been visible for miles-but Tim heard no sirens.

Robert’s rifle-no bullets. The. 45-out of commission.

He doesn’t want to detonate the whole hundred-foot monument, Tim realized. He wants to shoot me, but he doesn’t have any bullets left.

Tim turned the blasting cap in his hand and slid it down the bore of his. 357, leading with the well end. It fitted barely, touching the metal on all sides. He needed something to jam it in place. He looked frantically around him for an appropriate-size object, knowing it was only a matter of seconds before Robert made his final demands. Nothing in the dirt around him. He leaned forward to dig through the mound of debris, and a spasm of pain racked his stomach.

The slug.

Tim’s fingers scurried over the front of his bulletproof vest, finding the small mushroom of lead from the Stork’s gun. A jagged little nine-millimeter.

It went hard down the gun, sharp edges digging grooves in the smooth metal bore. He used the tip of Mitchell’s needlenose wire cutters to snug it in place. He lowered the. 357 into his lap, praying that Robert wouldn’t notice the altered weighting of the spiked barrel, since he was accustomed to a. 45.

Robert’s face resolved from the shadows on the far side of the stack of metal. “One click of this button and you’re done. The only question is, do you want me to blow up this memorial with you?”

“No,” Tim said. “I don’t.”

“Toss me your gun.”

“Don’t do this.”

The detonator jerked up, clenched in Robert’s hand beside his face. “Toss me your fucking gun.”

Tim threw the gun. It landed in the dirt a few feet from Robert’s boots. Robert stepped forward and took it, aiming at Tim with a shaking hand. The portable radio scanner swayed on his belt, long turned off. “Get up.”

Tim struggled to his feet, favoring his left leg.

Robert’s eyes pulled back to his brother’s body. A tear gathered on his lower lid but refused to fall. “I have a mind to take some time with you.”

Tim staggered a bit to keep his balance on his good leg.

“But I’m not an animal like you. I wouldn’t put your wife through the pain of having nothing left but a mangled corpse.” With the gun Robert gestured to Tim’s torso. “Take off your vest. I don’t want to fuck up your face.”

Tim pulled off his jacket and unstrapped his vest. The Velcro pulling loose sounded like cloth ripping. He dropped the vest in the dirt and faced the gun. From his angle he could see the scratches in the bore.

Robert beckoned him forward with the barrel, and Tim stepped from the cover of the monument, weaponless and bleeding and weak. The throw of ground outside the scaffolding seemed desert-barren. There was nothing to cut the wind.

“Was it you or Mitchell who met Kindell that night at his shack? Gave him the intel dump on Ginny…when she walked home, what route she took?” Tim’s throat clogged with disgust. “Told him she was his ‘type’?”

“Me,” Robert said, his eyes red and morose. “It was me.”

He pulled the trigger.

Tim dropped to a crouch, covering his head with his arms.

The blast was loud and surprisingly sharp, and when Tim looked up, Robert was gazing at him as if nothing had happened, his right arm extended as before, except his hand was blown off.

Robert’s eyes found the splayed end of his stump, a pulled-weed tangle of roots, and then blood spurted from the left side of his neck where a piece of shrapnel had blazed a groove through his carotid artery. He fastened his good hand over the side of his neck but only succeeded in splitting the stream between his fingers.

Tim rose slowly and approached him.

Robert raised his injured arm again and stared at the wound, its gaping permanence, as if he still couldn’t believe it. Blood streamed from his neck down his good hand, dripping from his elbow now. His eyes were wide and child-vulnerable, and Tim felt his breath catch in his throat.

Robert staggered back a step, his arm flaring for balance, and Tim took it and eased him to the ground. He stood over him, gazing down. Robert’s legs and arms started jerking, and quickly he couldn’t keep his hand pressed over the hole in his neck.

He bled out in the dirt.

Tim stood for a moment in the space between the sprawled bodies of the twins. His voice was steady by the time he called Bowrick. “It’s clear. Come get me.”

He pulled the Gurkha blade from Robert’s sheath. As the Lincoln made its way up the hill, headlights glaring intrusively and throwing the bloody tableau into shadowy relief, Tim left Robert’s body and limped over to meet it. Bowrick pulled to a stop, his elbow resting half out the window like a trucker’s. He killed the engine, and the car sat dense and immobile in a swirl of reddish dust.

“Pop the trunk,” Tim said.

Kindell had gone quiet, but at Tim’s voice he started shifting again. The trunk yawned open, and there he was, curled between an empty gasoline can and the spare.

Kindell, who couldn’t fix a fuse but could rape and slaughter. Kindell, who would forever own the privilege of seeing Ginny last, of being there when the light blinked out in her eyes. Kindell, the ultimate patsy.

“Lee me alone. Please lee me alone.”

Bowrick was out of the car behind Tim now, arms crossed, watching.

Tim grabbed the rope binding Kindell at the wrists and ankles and hoisted him out. Kindell screamed as his shoulders stretched back in their sockets, then again as he hit ground. He strained to peer back over his shoulder, the clammy skin of his face quivering. His cheek was bruised, and one nostril was clogged with dirt.

He lay for a moment with his forehead touching the ground, saliva stringing from his lower lip. He was panting and making throat noises like an animal cornered after a grueling chase.

“Doan you urt me. Doan you dare.”

Tim pulled the knife from his back pocket and crouched. Kindell let out a shriek and tried to wriggle away, but Tim pinned him with a knee between his shoulder blades.

He cut him loose and stood back up. Kindell continued to weep into the dirt.

“Get out of here,” Tim said, though he knew Kindell couldn’t hear him.

He shoved him with his foot, and Kindell looked up at him, fear finally draining from his face.

Tim enunciated clearly. “Get. Out. Of. Here.”

Kindell scrambled to his feet and stood rubbing his wrists, disbelief doing a slow fade from his eyes. “Thank you. Thank you. You aved my life.” He stumbled toward Tim, hands extended in gratitude. “I’m orry I illed your daughter.”

Tim struck him hard in the face, his knuckles grinding teeth. Kindell yelped and went down. He lay panting, drooling blood, his eyes wide and unfocused. His front tooth hung by a bloody thread from his gums.

“Get the fuck out of here.”

Kindell pushed himself to his feet and staggered a bit, staring blankly at Tim.

“Get the fuck out of here!” Tim took a menacing step forward, and Kindell turned and scurried away. Tim watched his loping, irregular run, watched him trip once or twice on his way down the hill. A few moments after Kindell disappeared, he realized he was shivering, so he retrieved his jacket from the ground.

When he walked back, Bowrick stood watching him, his face impassive. “That guy killed your daughter?”

“Yes.”

Bowrick bounced his head in a nod. “If you’d have killed him, would it have felt good?”

“I don’t know.”

Bowrick spread his arms-an ironic suggestion of martyrdom and self-display-then let them fall. He hooked his thumbs in his pockets, and he and Tim stood squared off, like adversaries or lovers, the dust still settling around them, letting the silence work on their thoughts.

Now, finally, came the distant scream of approaching sirens, and far down on the freeway Tim could see the glittering approach of blue and red lights, LAPD all the way.

Bowrick walked over and got into the passenger seat of the Lincoln, where he sat patiently. Tim looked at the spilled bodies on the dirt, the monument.

He climbed into the driver’s seat and spun around in the plateau, throwing dust and pebbles. His headlights flashed past the boulder at the monument’s base. The quotation chiseled into its flat side was now complete:

AND THE LEAVES OF THE TREE WERE FOR THE HEALING OF NATIONS.

REVELATION 22:2.