the hallway with her hands raised and her feet off the ground. Scott Pearse stood behind her, one arm wrapped around her waist and the other cocked behind her, pressing a gun to the back of her head.
“Weapons on the floor,” Pearse called, “or she dies.”
“So fucking what?” Bubba said, and settled the stock of his M-16 into his shoulder, sighted down the barrel.
Diane Bourne’s body was wracked with tremors. “Please, please, please.”
“Put your weapons on the deck!” Pearse shouted.
“Pearse,” I said, “give it up. You’re boxed in. This is over.”
“This is not a negotiation,” he yelled.
“You’re fucking A, it ain’t. This is bullshit,” Bubba said. “I’m going to shoot through her now, Pearse. Okay?”
“Wait!” Pearse’s voice sounded as shaky as Diane Bourne’s body.
“Ah, no,” Bubba said.
But then Pearse’s gun dropped from the back of Diane Bourne’s head, and Bubba paused, and Pearse’s arm swung again and was suddenly extended over Diane Bourne’s shoulder and the muzzle centered on Angie’s forehead.
“Move an inch, Miss Gennaro, and your skull disappears.”
Pearse’s voice was not even remotely shaky anymore. His gun hand remained steady as he came down the hallway toward us, his arm still wrapped around Diane Bourne’s waist, her feet lifted off the ground as he used her as a body shield.
Angie was frozen, her.38 hanging down by her side, her eyes on the hole at the end of Pearse’s pistol.
“Anyone doubt I’ll do it?”
Bubba said, “Fuck,” very softly.
“Weapons on the deck, people. Right now.”
Angie dropped hers. I dropped mine. Bubba didn’t even move. He held his bead on Pearse as Pearse closed to within twenty feet of us.
“Rogowski,” Pearse said, “relinquish your weapon.”
“Fuck no, Pearse.”
Sweat darkened the back of Bubba’s hair, but the rifle never wavered.
“Oh,” Pearse said. “Okay.”
And he fired.
I slammed Angie’s shoulder with my own, and then a hot spear of dry ice tore through my chest, just below the shoulder, and I bounced into the cement wall and landed on my knees in the middle of the hallway.
Pearse fired again, but his shot banged off the wall behind me.
Bubba’s rifle unloaded, and Diane Bourne disappeared in a haze of red, her body jerking like she’d been electrified.
Angie, on her stomach, crawled for her.38, and I felt the corridor swerve, and my back hit the floor.
Bubba spun hard into the doorjamb and dropped his M-16, grabbed his hip.
I tried to get off the floor, but I couldn’t.
Bubba’s hand shot out and grabbed Angie by the hair and yanked her into the room with Wesley Dawe. I could hear bullets clanging off the cement around me, but I couldn’t raise my head to see where they were coming from.
I turned my head to the left, tilted my eyes up.
Bubba stood in the doorway to Wesley’s room and his eyes grew as soft and sad as I’d ever seen them as he looked down at me.
And then he slammed the door closed between us.
The firing stopped. The hallway was still except for the sound of footsteps approaching.
Scott Pearse stood over me and smiled. He ejected the clip from his nine-millimeter and it dropped on the floor beside my head. He slammed another home, and racked one into the chamber. His clothes, neck, and face were saturated with Diane Bourne’s blood. He waved at me.
“You got a hole in your chest, Pat. Is that funny to you? ’Cause it’s funny to me.”
I tried to speak, but all that left my mouth was warm liquid.
“Shit,” Scott Pearse said, “don’t fucking die on me yet. I want you to see me kill your friends.”
He squatted down beside me. “They left all their weapons out here. And there’s no way out of that room.” He patted my cheek. “Man, you are fast. I was hoping you’d see your little love-bitch take a bullet to the head, but you moved so quick.”
My eyes rolled away from him, not because I’d intended them to, but because they suddenly seemed to be on ball bearings, sliding through grease, beyond my control.
Scott Pearse turned my chin and slapped my temple, and the ball bearings jerked my eyes back to face him.
“Don’t die yet, dude. I need to know where my money is.”
I shook my head slightly. I felt a warm, jagged prickling on the left side of my chest, just below the collarbone. It was very hot, actually, and growing hotter. It was starting to burn.
“You like a joke, right, Pat?” He patted my cheek again. “You’ll love this. You’re going to die here, and even as you do, I want you to understand something-you never, even now, saw the whole board. That, I find hilarious.” He chuckled. “The money’s in your car, which I’m sure is parked close by. I’ll find it.”
“No,” I managed, though I’m not sure any sound came out.
“Yes,” he said. “You were fun for a while there, Pat, but now I’m bored. Okay. Gotta go kill your bitch and that big freak. Be right back.”
He stood and turned toward the door, and I stretched out a numb hand along the floor as the pain blew up in my chest.
Scott Pearse laughed. “The guns are a good five feet past your legs, Pat. But you keep trying.”
I gnashed my teeth together and screamed as I raised my head and back off the floor and managed to sit up, and the blood poured out of the hole in my chest and saturated my waist.
Pearse cocked his head at me, turned his gun in my direction. “Way to take it for the team, Pat. Bravo.”
I stared at him, willed him to pull the trigger.
“Okay,” he said softly, and pulled back on the hammer. “We’ll end you now.”
The door behind him flung open, and Pearse turned, got off one round that blew a chunk out of Bubba’s thigh.
But Bubba never stopped. He covered Pearse’s gun hand with his own and clamped his other arm around Pearse’s chest from behind.
Pearse let loose a guttural scream and tried to twist his body out of Bubba’s grasp, but Bubba squeezed tighter, and Pearse began to gasp, began to make high-pitched keening yelps, as he saw his gun hand move against his will up toward the side of his head.
He tried to twist his head away, but Bubba reared back and butted his massive forehead into the back of Pearse’s head so hard it sounded like a pool ball exploding.
Pearse’s eyes spun from the shock of impact.
“No,” he yelped. “No, no, no, no.”
Bubba grunted with the effort, blood pouring down his leg as Angie scrambled out into the hallway on all fours and grabbed her.38.
She rose to one knee, pulled back on the hammer, and pointed it at Pearse’s chest.
“Don’t you fucking do it, Ange!” Bubba screamed.
Angie froze, finger curled around the trigger.
“You’re mine, Scott,” Bubba whispered hoarsely in Pearse’s ear. “You are all mine, sweetie.”
“Please,” Pearse begged. “Wait! No! Don’t! Wait! Please!”
Bubba grunted again and slammed the muzzle of Pearse’s gun into Pearse’s temple, shoved his finger over Pearse’s and around the trigger.
“No!”
Bubba said, “Feeling depressed, isolated, possibly suicidal?”
