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My threat assessment lasted no longer than a micro expression, a product of years of experience and too many doors that opened slowly. I took longer with his face. His cheeks were smooth, his brow relaxed, his mouth slack. Latrell didn’t appear surprised, happy, or sad to see us. He shot a quick look at me, then broke a small smile when Ruby barked at him as she squirmed under Kate’s arm.

“You must be Latrell,” Kate said, putting Ruby on the ground.

“That’s right,” he said.

His voice was soft and calm. He didn’t move. I let my right hand drift from my gun to my side.

“Jack has told me so much about you. We came to pick up the dog’s toys.”

Ruby ran into the house and jumped up on Latrell, pressing her paws against his leg, her tongue hanging out the side of her mouth, her tail wagging. Latrell hung back, still keeping his left side hidden.

“Isn’t that sweet?” Kate said, following the dog into the open doorway and crouching down to rub the back of her neck. “You must have taken very good care of her. She’s so glad to see you.”

Kate and Ruby distracted me enough that I didn’t see Latrell’s left shoulder dip. I caught a glimpse of his right hand swinging over his head, clutching a gun that he slammed into the side of Kate’s head. She collapsed without making a sound.

Latrell pivoted, his back to the door, kicking it closed in the same instant I threw my shoulder into it. He hit it low and I hit it high, the dense wood absorbing both blows without moving.

I pulled my gun and crashed into the door a second time, diving over Kate. Latrell was standing in the entry hall just past the sweep of the open door. I heard a gunshot and felt a bullet graze my hip as I rolled on the?oor, coming up to one knee, gun in hand. Latrell was holding a.45 caliber Marine pistol to his temple that matched the murder weapon.

“Put it down!” I screamed.

He pulled the trigger but didn’t die. The gun was jammed. He pulled the trigger again and the gun still refused to fire. He swung the barrel toward me, his eyes filled with tears, his face twisted with pain as if the gun had fired.

“Put it down, Latrell! Don’t make me shoot you!”

He leveled the gun at my head. We both knew it wouldn’t fire, but he wouldn’t put it down. He had tried to kill himself and me and failed at both. He wouldn’t be the first person to commit suicide by threatening a cop, but I wasn’t going to let him use me to do it. Then his shoulders caved in and his knees buckled as a high-powered bullet exploded in his chest, tore a hole in his back, and lodged in the wall behind him.

Chapter Fifty-one

I shifted my aim to the front door, lowering my gun when Troy Clark burst into the house seconds after the shot was fired.

“You okay?” he asked.

I nodded. “He missed me and then his gun jammed.”

He pointed to my right hip. “From the looks of that burn, he didn’t miss you by much.”

“Close calls and second chances. That’s what keeps it real.”

I leaned over Kate. She was lying on her side, a thin stream of blood?owing from a gash on the side of her head, clotting with her hair. I eased her onto her back, cradling her head with my hand. Her eyes were open and she was moaning softly. She reached for my hand and squeezed it tight. All good signs.

“You’re going to be fine,” I told her.

“You?” she whispered.

“I’m good.”

“Latrell?”

He lay at angle to her, his head turned away.

“I don’t know.”

“What about Ruby?”

I scanned the room. She was hiding under the sofa, her front paws folded over her nose. I whistled and she came running, licked my face, and laid down next to Kate, who closed her eyes and squeezed my hand again.

Troy knelt next to Latrell, his fingers pressing gently on Latrell’s neck, searching for a pulse. He snapped an order in to the radio clipped to his bulletproof vest.

“I need two ambulances. Now!”

“Is he dead?” I asked Troy.

“He will be soon. I doubt he’ll make it to the hospital.”

I left Ruby in charge of Kate and cupped Latrell’s chin in my hand, tilting his head toward me. His eyes were?uttering and his breathing was shallow. Troy was on his knees, applying pressure to the wound in Latrell’s chest, but I doubted it would be enough to save him.

“Hang in there, Latrell,” I told him. “An ambulance will be here any minute.”

“That woman you brought messed it up for me,” he said, his lips barely moving.

I leaned closer to his face. “How did she mess it up?”

“I knew you would come. That’s why I only had two bullets. One for you and one for me. Then you brought that woman and I didn’t have enough bullets. She messed things up just like Oleta done.”

Latrell wasn’t going to live long enough to explain everything. I had to choose which questions I wanted answered, which meant that I had to fill in the blanks first on my own. If, by some miracle, he lived, it would take an army of government lawyers and a deaf, dumb, and blind judge to keep anything he told me in evidence.

“Did Oleta mess things up when you killed Marcellus?”

He nodded, his voice feathery, his words coming in gasps. “She was waiting for me when I come out of the house.”

“Where’s Oleta now?”

He opened his eyes wide. “Don’t matter. You followed me. You ruined all of it.”

“I followed you? Where? How did I ruin it?”

“Took my things,” he said, his voice rattling for the last time, his eyes open and dead.

Troy studied me. “You got something else you want to tell me?”

“I wish I did. I have no idea what he meant. I haven’t followed him anywhere and I haven’t taken anything from him. Looks like he’s good for the drug house killings, but we may never find Oleta.”

I looked around. The house had filled with members of my squad. Ammara Iverson was sharing guard duty with Ruby, one of them on either side of Kate.

“Who’s she?” Troy asked.

“Kate Scranton.”

“The jury consultant?”

“Yeah.”

“What the hell is she doing here? For that matter, what the hell are you doing here?”

“It’s a long story and you aren’t going to like any of it.”

“Well, you aren’t going anywhere until I hear all of it.”

I gave him a quick and dirty explanation of the Facial Action Coding System, told him about Latrell’s phone call to Ammara and why it seemed like a good idea at the time to bring Kate and the dog with me to talk to Latrell. When I finished, he stared at me with openmouthed aggravation.

“Is there any chance at all you will stay out of this without getting killed or arrested?”

“Once I know that Wendy is safe, I’ll take a long vacation. You have anything new on her or Colby?”

Troy shook his head. “They aren’t using their credit cards. They haven’t made any withdrawals from their bank accounts. They haven’t made or received calls on their cell phones. Either they don’t want to be found or they’re in real trouble. I’m sorry, Jack, but I don’t know any other way to say it.”

We both looked out the door to the street. It was a parking lot of police cars and ambulances. I glanced at Troy, not needing to ask the question out loud.

“From the far side of the BMW,” he said. “Sniper ri?e.”

“You take the shot?”

He looked at Latrell’s body, his shoulders sagging. “Yeah. It was me.”

“How did you end up there in the nick of time?”

Troy looked at Latrell again. “Wasn’t exactly in the nick of time. Latrell had two bullets. He fired one round and the other one jammed. If I’d known that, I’d be reading him his Miranda rights instead of waiting for someone to perform his last rites.”

“No way you could have known. If you hadn’t shot him, I probably would have,” I said.

“Doesn’t help much.”

“And doesn’t tell me what you were doing outside Latrell’s house.”