With a high-pitched cry, the blades fought to power through the metal, but the barrel was too thick. Still, somehow, the machine managed to draw the gun in nearly two feet before jamming completely. The conveyor belt lurched to a stop, a wisp of sour smoke coughed from the grinder’s engine, and though they strained violently to devour the gun barrel, the blades no longer moved.
When I looked toward the control panel, I saw that Alexei was already there. He punched the kill switch, and the engine powered down.
“Nice shot, Agent Bowers.”
“Nice throw.”
He bent over Jake’s body. “I really thought that I… Aha.”
He held up the shattered iPad that Jake had stuffed into his jacket when we were just outside the door. The slug had gone through it, but the iPad must have deflected it enough to strike Jake in a place that allowed him to live long enough to try to kill again.
Sirens. Close. Maybe a mile out, maybe less.
Alexei approached me. “Do you know who Valkyrie is?”
I felt my heart hammering.
He flicked out the bone gun and placed the device’s tip against the bone on the outside of my plastic-cuffed ankle.
“Alexei, think about this-”
“I’ll start with the calcaneus and work my way up. Do you know who Valkyrie is or don’t you?”
“I do.”
He tightened his grip on the bone gun, positioned it carefully against my heel. “Who is Valkyrie?”
“You are.”
Alexei stared at the agent. “What?”
“You’re Valkyrie. You’re the one who killed Tatiana, and when you did, something happened inside of-”
“No.”
“You loved her and when you-”
“No!”
But even as he denied it, images were sliding across Alexei’s mind, images of things he should not have been able to remember, not if he were innocent. The pictures came to him as if they were filtered through a screen, as if he were recalling someone else’s life… attacking Erin Collet on Wednesday night… pressing the remote control detonator and blowing off Kirk Tyler’s head… then leaving to read The Brothers Karamazov… having a conversation with…
Himself.
No!
Yes.
Valkyrie.
The sirens drew closer.
Valkyrie knew about the Tanfoglio in Italy. About Tatiana! He had contacts in Pakistan, first appeared in May, left the money at the dead drop. All of this, Alexei, all of this, because you were Images. Memories. Pain.
Seeing Tatiana, the look on her face when he raised the pistol, the terror in her eyes, the sound of the shot No!
Yes.
The day Valkyrie was born. The day Tatiana died.
Alexei removed the bone gun from Special Agent Bowers’s calcaneus bone.
“If you leave here”-Bowers’s words were steely and unflinching-“I will find you. I’m going to bring you in.”
“I have no doubt,” Alexei heard himself say softly.
Blue and red lights were flashing, curling, through the blowing snow, flashing through the windows and the still-open door.
He backed away from the conveyor belt, and, as the patrol cars arrived on the property, Alexei pocketed his bone gun and disappeared into the night.
104
Four days later
We did not find Alexei Chekov.
I expected him to use Sean’s truck for his getaway from the sawmill, but he did not.
In the hours, and now days, following his escape, state patrol scoured the lumberyard, the roads surrounding the area, even the ELF tunnels and base.
Nothing.
That night, thinking that Alexei might try to catch a ride in one of the cruisers, I’d had the officers check their trunks before leaving the property. No sign of the assassin.
It was as if he really was a ghost and had stepped out of that sawmill door and slipped right into the invisible fabric of the air.
Alexei Chekov, shirt off, back to the mirror, stared over his wounded left shoulder at his reflection, studying the infected bullet wound beside his scapula.
He had managed to hide in the forest until the officers left the lumberyard, and then made his way down here to South Chicago one borrowed car at a time, and now he was in a motel that charged by the hour. He’d paid for four.
Alexei had purposely left the bullet in his shoulder, purposely left it untreated in order to make his wife’s killer suffer. The day she died he had vowed to do so, and he was a man of his word.
Angry, red, infected lines fingered out from the bullet wound and snaked across his shoulder, down his arm, up onto his neck. Bearing this wound without complaint had also been his own private penance, a self-imposed sentence for slaughtering his beautiful bride.
But it had not been enough.
The memory flashes hadn’t stopped, but each day became more and more frequent: conversations he didn’t know he’d had, travels he’d been unaware of until now, crimes Valkyrie had committed against those whom Alexei never would have harmed.
There were two people inside of him. One who killed because it was his profession, the other who killed because it was his passion.
But this battle was going to end tonight.
Last week when he was in that jail cell in Wisconsin, Alexei had told Agent Bowers, “I have someone to take out my vengeance on; you have only God to blame.”
Tonight he would avenge Tatiana’s murder by putting a bullet in the brain of her killer.
Alexei put on his shirt, dressed for the cold, and then left the motel to find a pawn shop where he could purchase a handgun.
Lien-hua and I arrived at Sean’s house late for supper.
This afternoon’s debriefing with Tait, Torres, Natasha, and Linnaman, the coroner, had gone longer than I’d thought, and when we arrived at the house, Tessa, Sean, and Amber were already seated at the table for the meal.
As Lien-hua hung up her coat, I noticed a small package addressed to me sitting on the table near the front door. The package had a Denver postmark, and I knew immediately what it was-the item I’d had my friend John-Paul send me.
The item I needed for tonight.
Surreptitiously, I slid it into my pocket so Lien-hua wouldn’t see. “I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” I told her. “I need to run to my room for a sec.”
“See you there.”
Alexei arrived at the pawn shop.
“Can I help you?” asked the greasy-haired man behind the counter.
“I believe you can.” Alexei indicated toward the guns propped up in a large glass case on the wall.
“You got a Firearm Owner’s ID card?”
“No. And I’m looking for something you have cartridges for, here in the store.” Alexei pulled out a thick wad of hundreds. “This will be a cash transaction.”
Sean stared into the wok. “It’s called what, again?”
“Tofu,” Tessa said.
“Tofu,” he mumbled.
“Yes.”
Amber slid some of the firm white squares onto his plate.
Sean tentatively prodded at them with his fork. “And it’s… you said it’s curd?”
“Soybean curd,” Tessa answered. “You’ll like it. Trust me.”
“Soybean curd.”
“It’s really not that bad,” I assured him. From across the table Lien-hua gave me a wry smile.
Margaret had wanted me to rest for a few days, Tessa didn’t mind missing a little school, and Amber needed family around, so it’d been an easy decision to stay at Sean and Amber’s place for the week. Additionally, with all of the follow-up on the cases, it hadn’t been hard to get Margaret to sign off on letting Lien-hua stay in the area for a few extra days as well.
Obviously, Sean and Amber had a rocky road in front of them, but I figured if their marriage could survive everything that had happened last week, they might just be able to make things work after all.
“Mmm, not bad,” Sean said, referring to the tofu. “It’s kind of tasteless, but that’s better than I expected.” He offered Tessa a friendly wink.