He sat up,. 357 leveled. Despite his fall, he had the advantage now; his bullet had to have ruined Robert’s. 45.
Robert was standing perfectly still, about fifteen yards off, partly shielded by a stack of metal plates. Just watching him.
Tim’s glance dropped from Robert’s pink eyes, to his confident mouth-too confident for an unarmed man being gun-faced-to the rising globe of his biceps as his hand turned over, revealing the end of a remote detonator. Shifting farther behind the stack of plates so he was only a half man peering out, he nodded once at Tim, indicating something. Tim glanced down and realized that the brick pinching his hip was not a brick at all but a block of C4, the first of many spread around the monument’s base at four-foot intervals.
Mitchell’s body lay sprawled about ten feet to Tim’s left, his det bag several feet closer where Robert had pulled it when he’d prepped the C4. Of course Robert would have primed the explosives-he’d still thought Tim was up in the monument.
Tim’s head snapped up, and he fired once, but Robert anticipated his move, ducking behind the metal stack. The shot sparked off the steel. Tim braced himself for the explosion, but none came.
Instead came Robert’s rough voice. “You took Mitch’s head, you motherfucker. Took it clean off.” The words wavered and blurred.
Tim glanced at Mitchell’s body, a blur above the neck. Next to it lay Robert’s rifle, partially buried in red dirt. A scattering of tools had fallen from Mitchell’s bag. Spray-on glue. Needlenose wire clippers. The tiny shining cylinder of a nonelectric blasting cap, pushed into the earth. Tim picked up the blasting cap, rubbing its smooth side with his thumb.
LAPD would be here soon-the lit tree had to have been visible for miles-but Tim heard no sirens.
Robert’s rifle-no bullets. The. 45-out of commission.
He doesn’t want to detonate the whole hundred-foot monument, Tim realized. He wants to shoot me, but he doesn’t have any bullets left.
Tim turned the blasting cap in his hand and slid it down the bore of his. 357, leading with the well end. It fitted barely, touching the metal on all sides. He needed something to jam it in place. He looked frantically around him for an appropriate-size object, knowing it was only a matter of seconds before Robert made his final demands. Nothing in the dirt around him. He leaned forward to dig through the mound of debris, and a spasm of pain racked his stomach.
The slug.
Tim’s fingers scurried over the front of his bulletproof vest, finding the small mushroom of lead from the Stork’s gun. A jagged little nine-millimeter.
It went hard down the gun, sharp edges digging grooves in the smooth metal bore. He used the tip of Mitchell’s needlenose wire cutters to snug it in place. He lowered the. 357 into his lap, praying that Robert wouldn’t notice the altered weighting of the spiked barrel, since he was accustomed to a. 45.
Robert’s face resolved from the shadows on the far side of the stack of metal. “One click of this button and you’re done. The only question is, do you want me to blow up this memorial with you?”
“No,” Tim said. “I don’t.”
“Toss me your gun.”
“Don’t do this.”
The detonator jerked up, clenched in Robert’s hand beside his face. “Toss me your fucking gun.”
Tim threw the gun. It landed in the dirt a few feet from Robert’s boots. Robert stepped forward and took it, aiming at Tim with a shaking hand. The portable radio scanner swayed on his belt, long turned off. “Get up.”
Tim struggled to his feet, favoring his left leg.
Robert’s eyes pulled back to his brother’s body. A tear gathered on his lower lid but refused to fall. “I have a mind to take some time with you.”
Tim staggered a bit to keep his balance on his good leg.
“But I’m not an animal like you. I wouldn’t put your wife through the pain of having nothing left but a mangled corpse.” With the gun Robert gestured to Tim’s torso. “Take off your vest. I don’t want to fuck up your face.”
Tim pulled off his jacket and unstrapped his vest. The Velcro pulling loose sounded like cloth ripping. He dropped the vest in the dirt and faced the gun. From his angle he could see the scratches in the bore.
Robert beckoned him forward with the barrel, and Tim stepped from the cover of the monument, weaponless and bleeding and weak. The throw of ground outside the scaffolding seemed desert-barren. There was nothing to cut the wind.
“Was it you or Mitchell who met Kindell that night at his shack? Gave him the intel dump on Ginny…when she walked home, what route she took?” Tim’s throat clogged with disgust. “Told him she was his ‘type’?”
“Me,” Robert said, his eyes red and morose. “It was me.”
He pulled the trigger.
Tim dropped to a crouch, covering his head with his arms.
The blast was loud and surprisingly sharp, and when Tim looked up, Robert was gazing at him as if nothing had happened, his right arm extended as before, except his hand was blown off.
Robert’s eyes found the splayed end of his stump, a pulled-weed tangle of roots, and then blood spurted from the left side of his neck where a piece of shrapnel had blazed a groove through his carotid artery. He fastened his good hand over the side of his neck but only succeeded in splitting the stream between his fingers.
Tim rose slowly and approached him.
Robert raised his injured arm again and stared at the wound, its gaping permanence, as if he still couldn’t believe it. Blood streamed from his neck down his good hand, dripping from his elbow now. His eyes were wide and child-vulnerable, and Tim felt his breath catch in his throat.
Robert staggered back a step, his arm flaring for balance, and Tim took it and eased him to the ground. He stood over him, gazing down. Robert’s legs and arms started jerking, and quickly he couldn’t keep his hand pressed over the hole in his neck.
He bled out in the dirt.
Tim stood for a moment in the space between the sprawled bodies of the twins. His voice was steady by the time he called Bowrick. “It’s clear. Come get me.”
He pulled the Gurkha blade from Robert’s sheath. As the Lincoln made its way up the hill, headlights glaring intrusively and throwing the bloody tableau into shadowy relief, Tim left Robert’s body and limped over to meet it. Bowrick pulled to a stop, his elbow resting half out the window like a trucker’s. He killed the engine, and the car sat dense and immobile in a swirl of reddish dust.
“Pop the trunk,” Tim said.
Kindell had gone quiet, but at Tim’s voice he started shifting again. The trunk yawned open, and there he was, curled between an empty gasoline can and the spare.
Kindell, who couldn’t fix a fuse but could rape and slaughter. Kindell, who would forever own the privilege of seeing Ginny last, of being there when the light blinked out in her eyes. Kindell, the ultimate patsy.
“Lee me alone. Please lee me alone.”
Bowrick was out of the car behind Tim now, arms crossed, watching.
Tim grabbed the rope binding Kindell at the wrists and ankles and hoisted him out. Kindell screamed as his shoulders stretched back in their sockets, then again as he hit ground. He strained to peer back over his shoulder, the clammy skin of his face quivering. His cheek was bruised, and one nostril was clogged with dirt.
He lay for a moment with his forehead touching the ground, saliva stringing from his lower lip. He was panting and making throat noises like an animal cornered after a grueling chase.
“Doan you urt me. Doan you dare.”
Tim pulled the knife from his back pocket and crouched. Kindell let out a shriek and tried to wriggle away, but Tim pinned him with a knee between his shoulder blades.