Abby watched him, a sad smile on her lips.
"Are you done, Paul?" she asked finally.
Slowly he lowered the pistol. He blinked, and for a moment he found it difficult to form words.
"How'd you do it?" he whispered.
"How'd you-what did you-" He couldn't complete the thought.
"Its simple, really." The.38 in her hand never wavered. It was targeted at his chest.
"I knew if you'd framed Howard, you'd want to use his gun tonight-a gun traceable to him. I gambled that it was the one you'd bring."
The one he would bring. The one… But he'd brought two guns. There was the Beretta in his shoulder holster-Even as he thought of it, Abby shook her head in a warning.
"Don't try, Paul. I know you're carrying a backup, but you can't draw fast enough. You've seen me at the firing range. I'm quick when I have to be.
And I will shoot you."
He studied the hard set of her mouth, the coldness in her eyes. She wasn't lying.
"Anyway," she went on as if there had been no digression, "when I found that gun in the nightstand, I had a bad feeling about it. Thanks to you, I had Howard Barwood pegged as Hickle's accomplice. It didn't seem like a good idea to leave him with a fully functioning deadly weapon, so before I left, I took the gun apart. The Colt 1911, you know, is one of the few models that can be detail-stripped without the use of tools.
When I put it back together, I left out the firing' pin."
Travis heard everything she said but couldn't quite make sense of it.
"You didn't disable Hickle's guns," he whispered.
"No, because the next time he used them for target practice, he would have discovered the tampering. But Howard's gun wasn't being used at all. He hadn't even lubricated it." Abby smiled.
"At the hospital, I intended to let you know what I'd done, but that nurse interrupted us. Lucky for me, huh?"
"Lucky," Travis echoed.
"I've always been a fortunate gal. Now, shall we go downstairs?"
Travis was suddenly too exhausted to move.
"What for? What's down there?"
"Nothing yet, but after I call a friend of mine at the LAPD, we'll have some company. Go on, Paul."
"Why don't you just shoot me right here?"
"It's a temptation. But I think I'd rather turn you over to our system of justice, risky as that can be in LA.
I actually look forward to visiting you in prison. But don't get your hopes up. They won't be conjugal visits."
A surge of helpless anger shook Travis like a fever chill.
"You bitch. Fucking bitch."
Abby frowned.
"That's not very nice. I may have to edit that part out."
"Edit…?"
"I've been running the recorder in my purse ever since we entered the building. Switched it on when I was rummaging for my flashlight. I've got your whole confession on tape."
On tape. She'd thought of everything.
"Get moving," Abby ordered, but Travis still did not obey. The full reality of what she'd done, how she'd handled every detail, was finally real to him.
"You set me up." He said it slowly, almost in righteous indignation.
"You played me. Asking for my help, telling me how we couldn't call the police, getting me to talk. You put on an act and sold it to me, sold it all the way."
Abby shrugged.
"That's my job, Paul. Its what you trained me for-or did you forget about that?"
"No." Travis's anger was spent.
"No, I didn't forget."
Then his gaze drifted upward, and in a softer voice he added, "But maybe there's something you forgot."
On the upper landing, amid the shadows, the long barrel of Hickle's rifle was slipping through the bars of the banister to draw a bead on Abby's back.
Abby saw Travis's gaze tick upward and the almost imperceptible change in his expression. He said something, but she didn't register the words, because she was too busy processing what her eyes had shown her and seeing all the implications as clearly as if she could see the red stamp of Hickle's laser on her back.
The rifle cracked a split second later, but she was no longer in the bullet's path.
Diving for the floor, she hit the concrete hard as the shot flew over her head and clanged on the steel handrail of the banister. A second shot was coming, but before Hickle could adjust his aim she snap-rolled through the landing's open doorway into a dark ninth- floor hallway.
The rifle barked again. Abby scrambled half upright and flung herself into the deeper darkness of the hall until she was out of Hickle's line of sight.
Not Travis's, though. The hall was illuminated suddenly with a fan of light from the flashlight in his hand. Three shots crackled behind her.
Small arms fire.
Travis had unholstered his Beretta. She spun and snapped off two rounds, then ducked into the nearest doorway.
She found herself in a dark, windowless inner office.
From what she'd seen in the sweep of the flashlight, she believed that the office was situated at the intersection of two halls, the short hallway from the stairwell and another, wider corridor running perpendicular to it. Somewhere along the far wall there might be a second doorway, which would open onto that other corridor. She groped her way toward it, her hands sliding blindly over sheets of gypsum wallboard.
She had messed up. She should have made Travis head downstairs sooner, should have anticipated that Hickle might leave his firing site and approach the stairwell. If she died tonight, the fault would be hers.
Okay, blame assigned, responsibility accepted. Now shut up about it and stay alive.
She advanced in darkness, feeling her way toward an exit that might not even exist, and then outside the office there was movement. Two sets of footfalls pounding hard. The beam of a flashlight flickered through the doorway she had used. Travis and Hickle were coming after her, hunting her together.
Huddled against the wall, she lifted her.38. If they were reckless enough to burst into the room, she would open fire.
They didn't enter. She saw the flashlight's glow slide past the doorway, and a new brightness dawned a few feet from where she crouched.
There was indeed a second exit, and she'd been close to finding it, but Travis, aided by the flash, had found it first.
She pressed her ear to the wall. It was cheap plywood screwed into wooden studs, and it conveyed sound fairly well. She heard faint whispers, the words unintelligible. The two men evidently had stationed themselves at the outside corner of the office, where they could cover both halls and both doorways. If she tried to leave via either exit, they would gun her down.
It was two against one. They had her trapped. Now they were discussing strategy.
Abby liked to think of herself as an optimist, but right now she had to admit that things did not look good.
"Where the hell is she? Where did she go?"
"Calm down."
"God damn it, where is she?"
"She ducked into that office. We've got her boxed in.
Just breathe easy, Raymond. Breathe easy."
Hickle's ears were still ringing from the flurry of gunshots, his own and Travis's. Every report had been amplified in the echo chamber of the stairwell, the sounds reverberating off the steel staircase and the concrete walls. Even now, in the aftermath, he could hardly hear Travis's low voice over the din in his ears.
But he knew the man was right. Keep calm-yes, that was the right thing to do. Keep calm and kill Abby.
They stood together at the intersection of two hallways, where Travis had led him on the run. Instinctively Hickle had yielded to Travis's expertise in this situation, but he couldn't resist pointing out that Travis had not always been in command.
"She had you, man," Hickle whispered.
"I saved your ass back there."
"Yeah, you saved me." Travis's face, lit harshly by the flashlight, was all hollows and crevices and bright, staring eyes.