A star.
37
Hunt rolled out onto a very steep hillside dotted with low shrub and coarse spring grass. The rest of it seemed to be a kind of slippery schist of broken-up limestone and dry dirt. A bright half-moon had risen on the horizon. About a hundred feet below him in its light, Hunt could see an unpaved road that ran in the cut, where the promontory's steeper slope met the tended vineyard beneath it. There was no question in his mind that this was the road that Juhle had taken when they'd split up, and that several hundred feet farther along by the barn was where he had been planning to meet up with Chiurco.
He wiped the blood off his face, off his hands onto his pants and shirtsleeves. He started downhill, keeping low, using the cover of the shrubbery whenever he could, just in case. For all he knew, and had to assume, Mrs. Manion was armed and obviously at least competent enough as a strategist to have been nearly able to eliminate him from tonight's equation.
Because of Amy's phone calls to her, she would certainly have known that she was dealing with more than one adversary, and she might already have disabled one or all of his troops. It would not do to be careless now.
So he forced himself to move slowly and with great care. Even so, every five or six steps brought a small landslide of the unpacked dirt and rock that comprised the face of the slope. Twice, Hunt slid as he stepped and loosened what felt and sounded like an avalance of earth under him. Moving next from shrub to shrub to avoid further slides, he made it down finally to the road, where he turned to his left. He unholstered his gun, racked a round, then keeping low, broke into what he hoped was a silent enough jog.
It wasn't far-a few hundred yards uphill-to the crossroads where Juhle and Chiurco were to have met, and Hunt stood in the middle of the road, where a driveway broke off and led to the barn off to his left. Hunt, paralyzed, standing tall here where the roads met, where Juhle and Chiurco couldn't miss him, held his breath and tried to listen to the sounds of the night over the beating of his heart.
Where were his guys? And on the other side of the barn, where was Tamara?
Automatically, he glanced at his watch, although it told him nothing. He realized that he had almost no idea of how much time had passed since he'd left Juhle-maybe as much as an hour. Certainly no less than forty-five minutes.
But whatever it had been, his men weren't where he thought they'd meet up or where they were supposed to have been waiting for him. Which meant that something else had gone wrong. Or Devin and Craig had given up on him and forced something. And if that were the case, judging from the silence, it was already over.
He turned back to the barn and stared at its looming form. Moving to one side, then another, he tried to get an angle through its ancient redwood planks. Were there places he could actually see through the structure? Did he just imagine it or was there a dim light out in the junkyard beyond it on the other side?
Now, without his goggles, without his flashlight, he had to depend upon the moon, but as he advanced on the barn, the promontory's shadow engulfed the road, and again he was in darkness. But here, because of the contrast, he could see that he hadn't been mistaken. Someone had turned on some kind of a light, perhaps over the barn door on the other side.
He kept moving forward, slowly, quietly. Now into the barn, stall by stall, letting his vision grow accustomed to the space. The front door wasn't completely closed, and a thin shaft of weak yellow light drifted through the crack.
And then, so faintly he couldn't at first place where it came from, he heard a man's voice. He waited, patient now, unwilling to expose himself until he was completely certain about what was transpiring out there. At last, he came around the low wall of the last stall and crossed the no-man's-land of open space in the center of the barn, coming to rest in the shadow still far back behind the door.
Now a woman's voice. Sharp and imperious, although the words were still indistinct. It definitely wasn't Tamara, but Hunt didn't imagine that Carol Manion would use that tone to Juhle. So who did that leave?
He moved to his left and forward toward the door. Quietly, quietly. The gun flat down against his side. One more step, and then he finally could see Juhle, obviously still alive and even well, sitting with his arms behind him, next to Chiurco on the edge of an empty trough in the middle of the junk-strewn foreyard. A great relief flooded him, and he even dropped his guard and took another step toward the door-now as the whole scene opened in front of him.
Shiu was here, too!
Juhle must have relented and called him earlier while they'd been killing time at the base camp and told him he'd probably want to come up after all. Obviously, Juhle wanting to let him in on the arrest, covering his sorry partner's ass, when it might otherwise look bad for Shiu, who looked as though he hadn't wanted to investigate the people for whom he'd done so much security work.
Shiu's presence hadn't been part of Hunt's original plan, but not much this night seemed to be working out in textbook style. Besides, Dev was always such an incorrigibly good guy, and if calling Shiu up without telling Hunt had been an element in making the plan work, he wasn't going to complain about it.
Shiu was standing in front of a rusted-out old tractor, next to Carol Manion, his own gun drawn.
An instant before he got to the door and stepped out into the open, something about the arrangement of the characters stopped Hunt in his tracks. His eyes darted back to Juhle-with his arms behind him.
He looked more closely, caught a glint of metal.
Christ! Juhle was handcuffed.
Which could only mean that Shiu…
Shiu?
"What's your girlfriend's name again?" Shiu raised his gun to Craig Chiurco's face.
"Tamara."
"Call her."
"She's not here," Chiurco said.
"Juhle said she was."
"I was mistaken," Juhle said.
"Shut up, Devin. I'm talking to your friend here."
"Juhle's telling the truth, sir. He was wrong. She went out the back way, when he was coming up."
"Then that's going to turn out very badly for you, I'm afraid."
Carol Manion spoke up. "Mr. Shiu, please don't…"
"Not now, Mrs. Manion." Shiu never took his eyes off Juhle, but he was talking to Carol. "If you hadn't panicked and taken Parisi, we wouldn't even be here. But no, you had to talk to her and find out what she knew, didn't you? And that's what's screwed it all up. Don't you understand that? If you'd left it all up to me, none of this would have happened. So don't tell me how we're getting out of this. Right now it's a work in progress and I'm making the calls."
"So what'd she do with Parisi?" Juhle asked. "Is she dead?"
"Probably," Shiu said, "by now." He came back to Chiurco. "Call your girlfriend."
Craig took a shallow breath and swallowed. "I told you. She's not here."
Shiu took a fast step forward, sighted along his barrel, and pulled the trigger-a huge blast that echoed across the valley. Craig let out a muffled scream and dropped to the ground. "Tamara!" Shiu called out. "That was a warning. The next one's in your boyfriend's head. I need to see you right now."
With a cry, Tamara broke from around the far side of the château, running into the light toward them. "Craig!"
Shiu turned his gun quickly to Juhle to make sure he still had his attention, then turned again to Chiurco. Stepping back, he made room to let Tamara get up next to Craig. He was getting himself back up, his face spooked and his hand over his right ear.