He knew several of them were loose. He breathed
through his mouth. Breathing through his nose made his face ache. He thanked God there was no glass in his eyes. Pain was relative. His broken arm stung when stationary, but it screamed when he moved it. It all hurt, but it hurt less if he kept still.
Michaels stood over him. His own 9mm pistol was
in Michaels’s hand. He found the situation funny. The hunted had turned hunter. Michaels aimed the pistol at his face.
“Don’t do it.” The professional’s teeth shifted when he spoke. He sucked a gasp of air into his mouth to cool his aching gums.
“Why shouldn’t I? I doubt you’d do the same for me if I was lying there.”
Michaels shook. The professional didn’t know if it was from fear or anger.
“You’re probably right, but I want you to know
something.”
Michaels showed little interest in anything the professional had to say. However, he let the gun drop to
his side.
A man joined Josh Michaels. He stood behind him
and peered over his shoulder. The professional didn’t recognize the man, who was dressed in running clothes, and Michaels seemed unaware of the man at his back.
Even though the professional saw the man, he wasn’t sure if he was really there. Unlike Michaels, the ceiling or walls, the jogger lacked substance. The running man was like a reflection off a lake.
“Know what?” Josh said.
It clicked. The professional now knew the running man. The runner was Stuart Shore, an AIDS patient.
He had been the first. The first one Dexter Tyrell had hired him to kill. He’d mowed down the jogger on a
300
Simon Wood
deserted Seattle highway one rainy fall morning almost two and a half years ago. But Stuart was unharmed, exhibiting none of the lacerations or broken bones from the last time he had seen him. He was as he had been the moment before his murder. The last time the hit man had seen Stuart, he’d crushed his neck under the wheels of a car to make his death look like a hitand-run.
Stuart looked down at the professional like Josh
Michaels did. He wanted to know what his murderer had to say, too. Others joined Michaels and Stuart.
The room was filling with them, all a transparent reflection of who they once were. People stood behind
Michaels and the dead jogger. The murdered poured in from the kitchen and the bedroom. Much to his discomfort, he turned his head over his shoulder and saw
them filing in through the front door. They were all there. All the innocent people he had killed for Pinnacle Investments.
They swarmed around him jostling for position,
hoping to get a better look. There must have been over fifty people crammed into that house. All the people he had killed. He didn’t remember all their names, but he did remember how and where he’d killed them. The
farmer he’d pushed into his threshing machine poked his head between two others. His family and friends never knew if it had been an accident or suicide. Jesse Torino—he’d beaten and shot her before stealing her purse to make it look like a smash ‘n grab gone wrong.
The professional recognized a guy who worked with computers. He’d tampered with his car to make it look like a bad overhaul and the car had crashed into a truck, killing the computer analyst and seriously injuring the truck driver. Two people were allowed front
row access. Mark Keegan led Margaret Macey to the head of the throng. Keegan glanced at Josh and flashed him a smile Josh didn’t see. Keegan turned his gaze back to his killer, his features hardening.
All of them wanted to know. They wanted to know
his name, his real name. Not the names he’d used to get close to them to gain their trust before killing them. It was time to tell.
More than that, the professional wanted to tell them his real name. For years he’d lived a life where the people he came in contact with never knew who he truly
was. He couldn’t remember the last time someone said his real name, and it made his heart sink. He wanted someone to say his name. Just once.
The professional smiled. In a bizarre twist, the killer was touched that so many would turn out for this occasion.
He had always thought he would die alone, without a friend or foe present.
“I want you to know my name,” the professional
said. The blood in his throat made speech difficult.
“I didn’t think it was James Mitchell. But tell it to someone who gives a shit,” Josh said.
Michaels’s lack of interest hurt the hit man. Seeing the gun being raised, he feared Michaels would shoot him before he got the chance to say his name. He
didn’t wait for an invitation.
“John Kelso. My name is John Kelso.” He blurted
out his own name like a stool pigeon under the bright lights of a cop’s interview room.
The murdered victims of John Kelso murmured his
name amongst themselves.
“Jesus, is that important to you?” Josh asked.
Kelso swallowed and tasted his blood running back down his nose. “Yes.”
Michaels snapped his head away from Kelso and out the window. Police sirens filled the air with their wail.
Their sound was muted by distance, but it wouldn’t be long before their arrival. Neighbors must have called them during the gunplay.
Michaels, panicked by the sound of approaching police cars, lost his hardness. He recognized time was
running out.
“Tell me, did you tamper with my plane?” he demanded.
Kelso
glanced at Keegan at the front of the crowd.
“Yes, I did.”
Michaels drew in a deep breath and exhaled, closing his eyes momentarily. “I wish I could kill you all over again.”
Slowly, Kelso’s victims became more solid and Josh Michaels and the house took on a hazy quality. Kelso knew his time was running out.
The sirens grew louder. Michaels made for the front door. Kelso grabbed his leg. Josh stopped and looked down at him.
“Say my name,” Kelso commanded.
“Fuck you,” Michaels spat.
“Say my name and I’ll tell you something you should really know.”
“Like what?”
“Say my name,” Kelso insisted.
Michaels hesitated. The sirens were close now, too close for comfort. “Okay. John Kelso. Your name is John Kelso. Now tell me.”
“You can’t save them. You’re too late.”
“Save who?” The puzzled look returned to Michaels’s face.
“Your family. You can’t save them.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Josh’s blood froze. His body became brittle—he would shatter at the slightest touch. He refused to accept it.
Regardless of what Kelso said, it wasn’t too late. He could still do something about it. He kicked off Kelso’s grip on his leg.
“What have you done to Kate and Abby?”
The hit man laughed. His eyes darted in all directions, focusing on nothing. “You’re too late,” he said
again.
“Don’t say that.”
Josh’s head swam in the confusion of the screaming sirens and Kelso’s boast. The man was laughing at him.
His anger made him want to inflict a lifetime of pain on Kelso. He wanted to make him sorry for the misery he’d caused him, his family, his friend and Bell. The sirens sounded like they were outside the door. There was no more time.
“Are they still alive?”
“They won’t be when you get to them.”
“What does that mean?”
Kelso shook his head and laughed. Josh knew he
wasn’t going to get any more from the hit man.
“Time for a taste of your own medicine,” Josh said.
Josh put out his arm with his thumb up and gradually turned his arm. When his thumb pointed down,