Burch scanned the pines and oaks surrounding the cabin, then looked up at Gage. “But why try to kill me? I didn’t have a clue.”
“Gravilov was afraid you’d start putting together your pieces of the puzzle and they were still a couple of months away from the missile sale.”
“I didn’t even know there was any connection between Gravilov and SatTek.”
“Gravilov couldn’t count on that. Or that Zink was smart enough to contain everything.”
“But that doesn’t explain Fitzhugh. I thought he was one of them.”
“Only at the beginning.” Gage exhaled as a wave of fatigue shuddered through him. Two nights without sleep, debriefing first Matson, and then Zink, had pushed his body close to its limit. “Granger had Fitzhugh ingratiate himself with you months before he even met Matson. Granger was looking to run an offshore scam even before he’d heard of SatTek.”
“But why kill him?”
“Zink showed up in London two days before he contacted the Metropolitan Police. He met Fitzhugh and decided he’d melt when British cops applied the heat. Razor took care of him while Zink cleaned out his files.”
A chill breeze swept through the property and swirled fine raindrops around them. Burch pulled up the blanket to cover his chest.
“And when Granger decided to cooperate with Peterson,” Burch added, “I guess he had to go, too.”
Gage nodded.
Burch glanced back toward the living room as if Zink was still lying there on the floor. “What did Zink plan to do with Matson?”
“Pretend Matson came up here and killed us, kill him, and then go back to San Francisco and play hero.”
“Seems like it would’ve been smarter to do away with Matson before he got here.”
“He needed the fresh blood spatter to make the crime scene look real.”
Burch stopped rocking. “He really thought it through like that?”
“He started as a street cop. He knew what homicide detectives would look for.”
Burch sat silently for a moment, then said, “I’m still worried about Kovalenko, and now about the gangsters who first got to Zink. Don’t they usually clean up the kind of mess that Matson created?”
Before Gage could answer, a low rumble and a crunching of tread on gravel sounded in the distance.
“What now?” Burch threw aside the blanket and struggled to his feet.
Gage raised his hand toward Burch. “What are you doing?”
“What do you think?”
Burch hobbled over to a porch support, then leaned against it, his left palm bracing his gun hand. He glanced at Gage, then jerked his head backward. “Don’t just stand there, get behind me.”
Gage shook his head. “Let me have the gun.”
“Don’t you understand? I have to stand up to these guys. I can’t spend my life hiding.”
Burch lowered himself into a crouch and aimed the barrel dead center on the spot where the road entered the clearing.
As the car approached the last turn and its headlights haloed through the mist-choked trees, Gage slid his hand under Burch’s and raised the gun skyward, then pulled it away from him seconds before Faith’s car emerged into the clearing.
Burch’s whole body sighed. He then slowly pulled himself up using the porch support, and steadied himself against the railing.
While Faith parked the car and Courtney came running toward them, Gage slipped the gun into his back pocket and reached around Burch’s shoulders.
“Not today, champ,” Gage said. “The bad guys aren’t getting you today.”
EPILOGUE
Nine Months Later
Gage pulled his car onto a dirt patch along the winding road where it overlooked the Northern California coast. He gazed through his windshield toward the rolling hills, their crests and valleys covered with oaks and eucalyptus and their sides burned yellow by the summer sun. A lone buzzard circled in the distance, and below it the flattening land disappeared into the hazy nothingness of the Pacific.
He climbed out into the late September heat and walked back along the curving, shimmering blacktop toward a section of aluminum railing far less oxidized than those bracketing it. Its bolts still reflected the morning sun and its posts hadn’t yet faded from greenish-brown to the weather-bleached gray of its neighbors.
As he approached the barrier, he scanned the pavement for skid marks, but they were long worn away or paved over during the two years since Katie Palan had been murdered at this place. He nonetheless felt her wrenching terror as her car suddenly fishtailed, and then her panic and bewilderment as it smashed through the thin metal strip and tumbled down the hillside.
He stopped at the top of the ravine and looked down at the sage and fennel and California poppies, long since healed from their thrashing by the plummeting car. He then picked his way down the rocky trail through dusty shards of glass and plastic, and over the chunks of bark and the shattered branches that marked Katie’s tormented path to her resting place.
In a small clearing at the bottom he found an oil patch, like an anonymous tombstone marking the spot where she died. He knelt by its edge and rubbed the stained dirt between his fingers, then sat on a granite boulder and watched a gray-brown grasshopper flit away. Only then did he notice the finches and sparrows chirping in the trees and the cu-ca-cow of quail fluttering among the low bushes. When they went mute, he glanced up to see a red-tailed hawk swoop and disappear behind a pine. Moments later, their songs began again.
He tore off a sage leaf and wondered whether Katie had smelled the wild herbs during her last moments; whether she heard the shudder of the wind in the eucalyptus; whether hope swelled at the sound of Zink’s footsteps; whether she grasped that he froze in place because he was waiting for her breath to cease; whether, in the last thoughts she spoke to herself, she asked herself why.
Maybe she was lucky, and didn’t live long enough for any of that. Zink had refused to say. He’d just shrugged his shoulders when Gage asked.
Gage stared down at the dark soil, thinking of her parents welcoming Faith and Courtney and Jack and him into their little apartment a week earlier. The dining table was centered in the living room, surrounded by chairs borrowed from neighbors. The home was filled with the aromas of Ukraine, and the pall of sadness. A picture of Katie, framed in silver, rested on a bookshelf between two icons. Eyes that would’ve seemed serious if she was still alive simply looked forlorn.
Jack had taken her mother and father into their bedroom where suitcases and boxes sat half filled in preparation for their return to Ukraine, for there was nothing left to bind them to their adopted country except pain and loss. Jack had closed the door and sat with them, then came out a half hour later, holding Olena’s hand and with his arm around Tolenko’s shoulders, their eyes moist and red.
Gage leaned forward to rise from the boulder, but paused when he caught sight of a Russian Orthodox, triple-barred cross standing under a tiny evergreen at the far edge of the clearing. It hadn’t been there when he last visited in June. He walked around the oil patch and knelt down to read the laminated note attached to the base, its words written in English, in a man’s handwriting Gage had known for a generation: Dear Katie, rest in peace. I’ll make sure your parents will never want for anything.
So what if it was blackmail, Gage said to himself as he rose and looked up the ravine. Maybe even extortion. He and Jack showing up at Franklin Braunegg’s office unannounced a month earlier. Then at Daniel Hackett’s. Both lawyers feigning outrage, slamming their fists, claiming they deserved every nickel of the millions they’d profited from the crimes of SatTek.
It wasn’t that Gage and Jack had demanded that they surrender all the money; only enough to ensure that poverty wouldn’t compound the grief and loneliness of aging parents.
So what if it required a slick bit of money laundering and a Channel Island shell company to funnel the involuntary donations into an offshore account.
