Travis crouched by him, the flashlight sweeping the damage done to Hickle's body by the volley of shots.
"You're a born loser, Raymond." He did not say it unkindly.
He was even smiling.
"You can't do anything right. You couldn't kill Abby. Strike one. You couldn't kill Kris. Strike two."
Hickle wanted to say something, utter some protest or excuse, but he had no more excuses, and anyway, there was a lot of blood in his mouth.
"And you couldn't kill me." Travis bent closer, and his gun felt sleek and smooth as it slid gently under Hickle's chin.
"Strike three. You're out."
Blammo, Hickle thought numbly.
The last thing he ever saw was Travis's cold smile.
Abby heard the coup de grace delivered outside the office wall.
Her plan had worked. It was no longer two against one. She had gotten Hickle killed. She ought to have felt good about that, but all she felt was nausea, cold and burning at the same time.
Think about it later. There was still Travis to deal with. If she wanted to survive, she had to take him out too.
"Nice job, Abby," Travis said, his voice clear and close through the wall.
"I'll bet Raymond was thinking of you when-he died."
She didn't answer. Talking would only betray her position, and she knew she couldn't manipulate Travis the way she had played with Hickle.
Travis was too smart and knew her too well.
"You've helped me out, actually. I was wondering how I'd explain one of my nine-millimeter rounds in your body. The police would ask questions about that. Now it won't be an issue. You want to know why?"
She wouldn't be goaded into giving a reply. She waited.
"Cat got your tongue? I'll tell you anyway. See, when the police find you, the Beretta will be in your hand. My prints won't be on it. It's not my personal weapon; that gun was confiscated by the sheriff's department for ballistics tests after the little dust-up in Malibu.
This Beretta is one I got from the TPS supply room. Only, when the police look at the sign-out sheet, they're going to see your signature.
I can forge it."
She was sure he could. He had many talents, some of which she'd never guessed until today.
"They'll think you weren't satisfied with your five shot Smith, so you stopped by TPS and checked out a backup that packs more firepower. Then you went on a vendetta against Hickle. Tracked him down, and there was a running gun battle, slugs deposited everywhere-rounds from his rifle and your Smith and your new Beretta. There'll be no way for the evidence techs to ever piece it together and no reason for them to try very hard, since the bottom line will be obvious. Double homicide.
I'll be inconsolable when I hear the news."
None of that mattered, except for one thing. He had told her he would be using the rifle now. It was the only way he could kill her and pin the blame on Hickle.
The rifle had to be nearly empty. She had lost count of the rifle shots, but there must have been at least six or seven by now, and Hickle's Model 770 had a ten-round magazine. Hickle might have carried spare mags in his pocket, but it was equally possible he kept the ammo in his duffel, and she doubted he had lugged the duffel with him on the run. There was a fair chance Travis was down to only three shots. He couldn't blast wildly. He would have to get close. If she ran, he would pursue until he had a clear shot.
"Abby," Travis called, "did I ever tell you how much I love you?" He was laughing.
She ignored his words. They meant nothing. But from the direction of his voice, she knew he was closer to the second doorway than the first.
It was all she needed to know.
Travis held the rifle in both hands, ready to fire. The flashlight was lashed to the long barrel with a strip of his shirtsleeve; its glow moved wherever the muzzle pointed. The Beretta was holstered again, to be wiped clean and left with Abby once she was dead.
He was ready. He would enter the office, and then it was a simple matter of kill or be killed. Either Abby would get him, or he would get her. He couldn't hope to flush her out of hiding, and he could no longer force her to waste her ammo. Even if he had been willing to use the Beretta, he could not fire through one doorway while covering the other exit. That was a job for two men, and he was alone.
Still, he had the advantage. Abby's survival instinct was strong, but her conscience was stronger, and it was her conscience that would make her hesitate for an instant before shooting him. He, on the other hand, would not hesitate at all.
He drew a few quick, shallow breaths, over breathing like a diver preparing to submerge, then readied himself to go in.
In the adjoining hall-running footsteps.
She'd fled, using the first doorway.
He sprinted around the corner, the glow of his flashlight swinging down the hall and spotlighting a blurred, disappearing figure. He almost fired but didn't trust his aim, and then she spun and shot at him once, driving him back behind the wall. When he looked out again, she was gone.
There was only one exit she could have taken. The door to the stairwell. She was trying to get out.
She'd made a mistake. He knew it. He charged down the hall, the flashlight bobbing with the rifle in his arms.
Heading downstairs, she would be an easy target.
He would have the high ground. He could fire on her from the landing and finish her before she could take cover.
He reached the stairwell. Professional caution made him hesitate on the threshold of the landing. He swept the rifle downward, and the flashlight's beam picked out a small, familiar shape on the stairs descending to the lower level.
Abby's purse. She'd dropped it as she ran.
No, wait. Too obvious.
She hadn't dropped the purse. She'd thrown it there to mislead him into thinking she'd gone down, when actually-' She'd gone up.
Ambush.
Hugging the doorway, he aimed the rifle straight overhead and fired twice, gambling that she was in the doorway directly above him, leaning out to take her shot.
A cry, a clatter of metal on metal-Abby's.38, clanging on the steel staircase. He'd nailed her.
He burst onto the landing and took the steps two at a time to the tenth floor, expecting to see Abby's fallen body, but she wasn't there.
His flash swept the area and found no blood spatter.
He hadn't scored a hit after all. But she'd lost her weapon. She was disarmed, defenseless. She was finished.
Travis proceeded down the dark hallway at a run.
The game was nearly over. The tenth floor would be the killing ground.
Abby had liked to believe she was lucky, but that was before Travis saw through her ambush and literally shot the gun out of her hands. She didn't think she'd been hit, but the gun was lost, and now she was out of options and almost out of time.
She ran along a tenth-floor corridor, away from the stairwell into a wider hall that fed into an open floor plan occupying the front half of the building. Bands of plate glass stretched from floor to ceiling along the far wall. Through the windows came the glow of streetlights, starlight, the luminous haze of the city. The light allowed her to orient herself and to dimly see the space around her. When the tower was finished, where she stood would be a large work area partitioned into cubicles. Now it was an open expanse of concrete floor without walls or furnishings.
Nowhere to hide. She ran toward the windows, seeking light. Dying might be a little easier in the light.
In the corridor behind her, there were footsteps, charging hard.
She reached the windows. Past the glass lay Wilshire Boulevard and her condo building. By one of these windows Hickle had waited for the long-distance kill that had never come. Waited with the rifle in his hands, the rifle Travis was carrying now.
Ahead was a worktable, indistinct in the gloom.
Hickle must have dragged it near the window to have a place to sit.