The Switch

79

A man screamed.

The gun bucked and danced in Will’s hand. The explosion was so loud it momentarily deafened him. A high-pitched note rang in both his ears.

A man screamed, “Augh!” and then the shape tumbled to the floor, and Will saw that he had shot a man, a large man, who now lay sprawled on the floor in the shadows. He had shot a human being for the first time in his life, and what he felt most of all was fear. He was terrified that the man he’d just shot would die. A few seconds ago he’d fired at a motion, a potential threat, a disturbance in the field, nothing. Now he knew he’d wounded someone, probably killed him. He didn’t know if the man was dead or not, but he was sprawled on the concrete floor, not moving.

Then Tanner lunged at him.

The plan had worked perfectly until it hadn’t.

Tanner had expected William Abbott to come after him. It was a certainty. He just had to make it plausibly difficult. Too easy to track him down, Abbott would be suspicious. On guard.

When he heard that Abbott’s mother sold houses, Tanner thought it — well, not likely, but possible — that Abbott would figure out where he was hiding. Because Abbott seemed smart and strategic.

Abbott had impressed him. He’d found him after all. The NSA couldn’t find him, but William Abbott had.

But if he hadn’t, Tanner would have simply called him and told him they had to meet, they had to come up with an arrangement, a truce. And Abbott would have met him, though much more warily.

And now Sal Persico — who’d instantly agreed to bring his own MacBook Air, just like Tanner’s, to the office, even agreed to put a long scratch in its case — was probably dead.

Rather than dropping the laptop and immediately leaving, as Tanner had asked him to do, Sal Persico had decided, on his own, to lie in wait for Abbott in the dark office.

And Abbott had probably just killed him.

Sal, who’d done a kindness for Tanner. Who’d overcome so much and had such a gift. If he wasn’t dead, he was gravely injured.

It was as if someone had pulled a switch inside Tanner and he was suddenly flooded with white-hot anger, a fury he’d only guessed was there, beneath the surface of things, something he’d fought against all his life. With a guttural snarl he launched himself at Abbott, body-slammed him against the concrete wall. Something clattered on the floor: the gun, skittering a couple of feet away. Abbott’s face came away from the concrete and Tanner could see blood sluicing from the man’s split lip. Tanner body-slammed him again, and Abbott sank to the floor, his right hand extended, grappling for the pistol. Tanner saw this a moment too late. Abbott sprang to his feet, the gun gripped in his hands. Tanner was about to try to grab the gun when it suddenly went off, incredibly loud. His ears rang.

Abbott must have accidentally pulled the trigger, fired into the air. The bullet pinged against something hard and metallic.

Tanner flinched, but at that moment, Abbott jammed the gun against the side of Tanner’s head, right against his temple.

“No!” Tanner said, and he froze.

He could smell that acrid gunpowder smell. He could smell Abbott’s perspiration too. He felt the hard metal muzzle grinding painfully into the skin of his temple.

A trigger-happy man who’d just fired twice, once by accident, now held a gun a quarter inch from Tanner’s brain. He might pull the trigger even if he didn’t mean to. He’d just done it. He could do it again.

Tanner’s mind went blank for an instant.

He was about to die.