The Avenger

'I figure the two of us are enough.'

Slater squinted and looked over at the slight form of Higgins standing some yards way.

Warren glanced at his assistant. 'Let's just say some folks fare better behind a desk.'

'Let's do it then,' Slater said without argument.

Chapter Twenty-nine

With Jack's keen hearing he detected the rattle of wind and whisper of voices, and in the distance the scream of sirens. He judged how far away by the wailing that rang in his sensitized ears. Seventeen minutes, two patrol cars.

The Judge's bullish scent reached Jack's nostrils strong and clear. So Warren had come and was close by. Not that it mattered. The whole situation would be over before anyone had a chance to enter the church.

Olivia's higher-pitched but soft voice tinkled through the musty air like chimes in a breeze, and it was followed quickly by the oily sound of Randolph's words. Jack moved stealthily toward the source of the sounds, his knife blade clenched between his teeth. The sweat of the hunt slicked his flesh and he flashed back to the jungles of Africa and his last mission. It might all end here, he thought.

The aroma of incense and smoking candles wafted through the building as he edged carefully through the dim room. The hollow slap of Olivia's bare footsteps and the much heavier tread of the killer's shoes resounded through the church.

Jack darted behind a sleek column and peered into the large vault of the church's interior. Randolph held Olivia's left hand. Although her eyes had a heavy look, she appeared unharmed. Her bare feet showed from beneath the hem of a brown robe that covered her body and fell to the floor. In a single moment, she looked up and then quickly away as he jerked behind the column.

Good. She'd seen him.

He removed the knife from his teeth and hefted it once, twice. Grasping the knife by the blade, he raised his hand over his head and aimed for the vulnerable eye socket where the tip would pierce the brain and bring instant death. He darted another look around the column. Olivia stood between him and the target, an inadvertent barrier protecting Randolph.

He hesitated.

In the moment that he wavered, the quiet creak of a door opening in the foyer alerted him to someone entering the church. The Judge.

Stupid move. There was a reason Warren avoided field assignments at his age.

Howard Randolph reacted to the sound immediately, pulling Olivia in front of him and using her as a human shield. He eased backward one pace at a time. Jack stepped from the shadows in full view, his back to the foyer of the church. Olivia strained against the vise of Howard's arm around her waist.

'Bitch!' Randolph snarled and cuffed her hard on the face with his free hand.

From the pocket of his robe, he pulled a.32 caliber Baretta and pressed the barrel against her temple, his left arm still secure around her waist. The weapon was so small it looked like a toy, but Jack knew its lethal capacity.

'Back up, Agent Holt,' Randolph ordered.

Had the threat to Olivia been a knife to her throat, Jack would've thrown his dagger straight for Randolph's exposed eyes. And he would've enjoyed watching the life drain out of the man as the blade penetrated the frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex. He was that sure of his skill.

But even as fast as his reflexes were, he couldn't outrace the speed of a bullet. Livvie would be dead while his knife still flung through the air. His heart tripled-hammered in his chest, a fearful staccato wholly unfamiliar to him. He glanced once at her as her fingers dug into the powerful arms clutching her waist while rage flooded through him like the roar of a waterfall.

The risk was too great.

Slowly, he lowered the knife, crouched down, and laid it on the marbled floor.

'That's a good boy,' Randolph taunted. 'Are you wondering how I know who you are, Agent Holt? Wondering how I knew where you'd hidden her.' He indicated Olivia with a jerking of his chin. 'While you've followed me, I've followed you.' He grinned. 'And her, of course.'

'I suppose you must be a very smart man, Randolph.' Jack bared his teeth and growled quietly. 'A computer search, an informant who knew, or you followed her. What does it matter?'

'It doesn't. My, look at you, Agent Holt dressed like a cast member of… what? The Lord of the Flies?' His shrill laugh revealed his disintegrating mind.

'Which character are you, I wonder?' he continued. 'Are you Jack, Jack? Or Ralph? I'd have guessed Ralph when I saw you years ago, dressed so tidily in your federal costume of suit and white shirt. So sure that the rules would save everyone.'

The gun wavered in Randolph's hand while Jack considered rushing him. A mere leap and he'd be on him, ripping his throat out with gnashing teeth.

'But now,' Randolph continued, 'seeing you in your primordial state, I realize you're not Jack. Not even Ralph. But Roger.' He nodded as if answering his own question. 'Yes, Roger of the simian brow and the jutting jaw. Man at his most primitive.'

Jack thought of Roger Strong, Olivia's stepfather, and tamped down the fury. 'Shut the fuck up.' The words came with a calm and coldness he didn't feel. As if he were the one who held all the cards, but the emotion was that of a beast in pain.

Then the reflection of red and blue lights – from a patrol car, probably – flashed through the stained glass windows.

'Cops are here, Randolph,' Jack snarled. 'You'll never get out alive.' And if you put down that gun, you'll be dead in less than a second. I'll gut you faster than a hog for slaughtering.

At Jack's warning, Livvie's expression changed and he imagined he saw revulsion fixed there, not for her captor, but for him, her would-be rescuer. The thought jarred him deeply.

Randolph's eyes darted to the vestibule. 'She dies first,' he threatened, digging the pistol harder into Olivia's temple. 'Kick the knife this way,' he ordered.

Jack heard the footsteps that crept through the vestibule into the church interior. Two men. He inhaled deeply and caught the familiar scent of his mentor and the steady odor of his old friend. The Judge and Slater.

Suddenly a white, hot pain jabbed his right eye and he felt the burning sensation in his kidney. He nearly gasped aloud. Oh shit! Now he knew why Warren had showed up. The overdose of lysergic was shutting down Jack's systems.

Not yet, he begged silently.

He shook his head and forced himself to focus. He needed a single swipe to topple his enemy, but he couldn't risk that Randolph's involuntary jerking would release the hair trigger of the gun and discharge the weapon. He nudged the knife closer to where the man stood, still shielding himself with Livvie's body.

Randolph crouched, dragging his captive down with him until they both squatted on the floor. 'Get it,' he ordered, shoving Olivia forward so that she could grasp the knife where it had landed mere inches from her feet.

Instinct shouted that this was the moment. Would Olivia know what to do? Jack caught her eye, gave her a silent message. Without considering the consequences, he leapt forward and caught Randolph under the chin. A sharp blow to the throat with an elbow toppled him.

Olivia flung herself flat on the floor while the gun discharged, loud as a cannon shot in the vast, vaulted room. The robe slid off her shoulders and fell to the ground. She lay on her stomach, knees curled up beneath her, arms straight out for balance. She stared at Jack over her arm, her face reflecting horror and shock.

That she witnessed him like this – carnal and primed for the kill – wounded him.

Jack's forearm pressed against Randolph's throat and he waited to hear the distinct crunch that signaled the crushing of the small bones of the neck. Her eyes wide with shock, Livvie stared as he tightened his strangle-hold