Elena Cruz stood perfectly straight, arms together in front of her. A ribbon of smoke drifted from the singed corner of her clutch purse.
CHAPTER 47
His first thought was that he'd never loved someone so much as he loved her in that moment.
His second thought was for Billy.
"Watch him!" Jason gestured at Adam Kent, who stood stunned and blinking behind his boxy desk. Cruz whirled, and he raised his hands high.
Jason scrambled across the floor, stepping over Galway's ruined corpse, the cop's vacant eyes staring at the ceiling. He found Washington already cradling Billy, hands stroking his hair. The old man's face was a mask of pain, and as Jason forced himself to look down, his mind was full of horrors, a cracked skull, the boy's face cyanotic blue. But though his eyes were closed, Billy's breathing seemed steady.
"He's okay," Washington rasped without looking up. "Just a cut, maybe a concussion. I don't know." His hands shook on the boy's pale shoulders.
Jason rose, the gun in his bound hands. Fire pumped in his veins. DiRisio. This time he would pay.
Kent's eyes grew wide as Jason stalked to the desk. "Mr. Palmer, I assure you, I wouldn't have hurt-"
Jason silenced him by raising the gun. "Scissors."
For a moment Kent just stared, but then his mind caught up. "Sure," he said, and reached for the desk drawer.
"Slowly."
The millionaire gently slid open a drawer and removed a pair of black handled scissors. Jason held his arms out, the gun level at Kent's belly. "Cut the zip-tie."
Kent glanced at him, at Cruz with her gun steady on his head. With exaggerated care, he slid one blade of the scissors under the tie and clamped down until the plastic broke.
"Now hers." He covered Kent while the man freed Cruz.
"Galway?" She asked, her voice cracking.
Jason shook his head, and her eyes narrowed. He stared at her for a moment, probably only a second, but it felt much longer. He was at once exhausted and jittery, every cell humming, and he let it all show in his eyes. All the pain and rage, his retinas playing a movie of Billy flying through the air. Looked at her and let her know what he was going to do.
Gave her a chance to stop him.
When she didn't, he nodded and turned for the door. Behind him he heard Cruz ordering Kent to sit down. Jason's fingers tingling with energy and the return of circulation. He paused for a moment and looked back at the scene: the slow spread of crimson from Galway's body, Scarface unmoving in front of the desk, Cruz with Kent locked dead to rights. And on the floor, Washington holding Billy, and crying.
He knew that somewhere out there, DiRisio waited. A guy like that, he wouldn't quit, not now, not over a shoulder wound. And remembering how fast he moved, the joy he took in killing, Jason wasn't sure he was a match for the man, even now.
It was ironic. Kent hadn't been wrong about him. For months, he'd half-chased death. Flirted with it. Teased it. Now that he had reasons to live, he had to gamble his life. He owed it to them. To Washington, a man of peace dragged into violence. To Ronald, killed or wounded trying to protect a boy that wasn't his. To Galway, who had turned out to be a cop after all. To Michael, who had dared dream of a better world. And to Billy, the only true innocent in the whole mess.
With the weapon in front of him, Jason stepped out the door, a soldier hunting an evil spirit in a cheap suit.
Cruz knew what Jason planned to do. In that long moment he'd stared at her, he'd told her as clearly as if he'd said the words. With that look he'd asked her permission to kill Anthony DiRisio, and she'd given it.
She supposed as a cop she ought to feel bad, but couldn't find it in herself.
"Put your hands on the desk." She cracked her voice like a whip, and Kent complied quickly. It made her sick to look at him, his former rich man's arrogance replaced by a pasty, nauseous expression. His eyes darted from body to body, the reality of costs right in front of him, no longer items on a spreadsheet. "I didn't know it would be like this," he said, his voice thin.
"Shut up," she said. "Don't move. I don't care if you're just trying to scratch your nose. Your hands leave that desk for a second, I'll blow you away." The words felt silly, something from an action movie, but they had the intended effect. Kent went rigid as a statue, palms flat and fingers spread.
Eyes still on him and gun up, she took four cautious steps back, feeling behind her with her feet to make sure she didn't trip. When she reached Galway's body, she stepped over him so that she could look down without letting Kent out of her peripheral vision.
Her partner lay on his back. He'd been hit at least three times, two in the chest, and he lay in a spreading lake of blood. His mouth and eyes were open, and his service weapon lay a foot from his hand.
An ache rippled through her. Goddammit, Tom. A day late and a dollar short, again. She thought of his son, Aidan, seventeen years old and sullen, but with his father's bright eyes and sharp mind. He would go to college, get a job, marry, raise kids of his own, but he would never be able to say he knew his father. A man who had made mistakes and taken the easy path. Who had been, at times, a bad man, and at other times a hero. Who could only be defined, like everything else, in shades of gray.
She glanced quickly at Kent, who hadn't budged. Then she dropped to a squat and used her free hand to close Galway's eyes. Good and bad were for angels to judge. Here on earth, she could at least give him a little dignity.
"Officer Cruz!" The urgency in Washington's voice yanked her to her feet, let her know something was wrong. At first she assumed Kent was moving, and raised the Glock quickly, eyes staring down the barrel. But the millionaire sat exactly where she'd left, his face white and hands flat. She looked over to Washington.
And saw Billy convulsing in his arms.
Jason took careful steps, weapon up and sweeping. The motion was familiar. How many hundreds of times had he moved this way? How many rooms had he cleared, how many desert streets had he walked point? Though the pistol he'd picked up felt different than his M4 carbine, the principle was the same.
The living room was bright with lamps and catalog furniture. An open arch led to a darker room, and he quickstepped along the wall to stay out of the line of fire. Felt the beat of his heart, the sweat on his sides. The old fear. Back in battle.
He took a breath and then swiveled around the corner. A long table with one tall metal candlestick on it, ornate chairs on both sides, a giant hutch in the near corner. Dining room. Beyond it another door, probably to the kitchen. He tried to remember the size of the house, to place the room in context. He guessed there were maybe five or six more rooms on the ground floor. Best to clear them before tackling the upstairs. He'd be exposed on those steps.
Jason moved forward, pulse throbbing in his forehead. Stretched out a hand for the kitchen door and pushed it slowly, concentrating on the room ahead.
Behind him, the doors of the hutch parted silently, and a dark shape unfolded from it.
Cruz sprinted the few steps to where Washington knelt. The boy seemed to be in an epileptic fit, his hands and legs twitching, head jerking.
"What happened?"
Washington stared up at her, his eyes burning panic. "I don't know. He just… started. Maybe the hit to his head. Do you know what to do?"
She grimaced, then dropped beside the boy. "Here," she said, and held the Glock out.
Washington jerked away as if burned. "No, I-"
"Look, just point it at Kent, and if he moves, pull the trigger."
"You don't understand-"
Billy made a long strangled gasp. His face was beginning to color. "There's no time." She shook the gun at him. "Come on!"
Reluctantly, Washington reached for the weapon. His lips curled like something was rotting in his mouth, but he raised the gun and pointed it in Kent's direction, and that was all she cared about right now.