He stepped back, pulling out the knife, and readying it for another plunge.
Hunter didn’t fall.
He didn’t even react.
He just swayed with the motion of the ship.
Cain wasn’t one for swearing, but he couldn’t stop himself.
‘What the fuck?’
Then he saw it, the thin wire supporting the man, and he followed it up to where it was fixed to one of the overhead cranes. He looked at the back of the corpse’s skull, saw where he’d recently jammed his Bowie knife through it.
Down on the deck, the other black-suited figure sat up and pointed his gun at Cain’s face.
‘Drop the knife, Cain,’ Joe Hunter snapped.
Chapter 47
Using a friend in that way seems callous, but I believed that given the choice, Hartlaub would have said to go ahead. He’d given me his life, and now the means to draw Cain into a trap. The idea had come to me when I’d shouted my challenge at Cain. He was the type who couldn’t refuse an easy kill when my back was turned. I’d seen the winch and the hook and had fed it under Hartlaub’s armpits and hauled him off the deck. I’d positioned him so that he looked like a man stooped in grief, and it seemed to have done the trick.
It was difficult lying there among the dead, waiting as Cain crept forward, and more than once I’d wanted to leap up and shoot the bastard before he could reach Hartlaub. The ruse would only last so long, and I hadn’t honestly thought he’d spring on to my dead friend’s back like that. I’d waited, held myself lax, ready for my moment.
And then it had come.
‘I told you to drop the fucking knife,’ I said.
Cain shook his head sadly as I came to my feet.
I stood with my feet planted, one slightly in front of the other, toes turned inward to grip the deck, the butt of my SIG supported in my opposite cupped palm. Only ten feet away, I could shoot Cain in either eye without stirring his lashes.
‘That wasn’t very sporting,’ Cain said. ‘Tricking me like that.’
‘It isn’t a game.’
‘Oh, but it is. Don’t say you don’t agree. I know what you’re like.’
‘No, Cain. You don’t. You can’t begin to imagine what it’s like to be me. You aren’t human.’
‘I’m not?’
‘No. A human has a soul. Your soul died the day you picked up a blade and became Tubal Cain.’
‘Maybe. But we’re alike in so many other ways.’
‘I’m nothing like you are, you murderous bastard.’
‘Sigmund Petoskey. Kurt Hendrickson. Need I continue the list?’
‘They deserved everything they got.’
‘Where’s the difference? You enjoy killing, I enjoy killing. There’s this Hemingway quote I’m fond of. It goes something like, “Those who’ve hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else.” That’s us, Hunter. We’re both hunters of armed men. We are alike.’
‘No, Cain.’ I shook my head. ‘You don’t care if they’re armed. You hunt anyone… including defenceless women.’
Cain’s gaze slipped to the rail. ‘Aah, I see now why you’re pissed with me. But I had nothing to do with that. Jennifer chose her fate. She jumped overboard, I didn’t push her. You can’t blame me for that.’
‘I can,’ I said. ‘And I will. Now drop the knife.’
He dropped the Tanto.
‘And any others you’re carrying.’ I wiggled the gun barrel to show him I wasn’t taking no for an answer. ‘Take it real easy, Cain. The rain’s making my finger a little slippery on this trigger.’
He sighed, then dug in his pocket and pulled out what looked like a Stanley knife. He tossed it away from him.
‘Anything else?’
He shook his head. ‘You can search me if you want.’
‘Isn’t going to happen, Cain.’
‘So you’re just going to execute me? Just like that?’
‘Yes.’
I held the gun steady, aiming for the point directly between his eyes. Give him his due, he wasn’t a coward like many notorious killers turn out. He didn’t flinch, just stood there. Maybe I’d been correct: what did a man whose spirit had already been slain have to fear? I drew the moment out, and finally I noted his gaze slip slightly.
‘So what are you waiting for?’
‘Before I kill you I want to tell you something you might not want to hear.’
‘Oh, God! Save me the sermon, will ya!’
‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to play psychiatrist. You’re a sick-headed bastard, we know that already.’
Cain snorted, but the derision was tinged with humour.
‘John’s dead,’ I stated.
The words sounded wrong even to my own ears. But it explained Walter’s reticence every time my brother’s name was mentioned, and why John hadn’t come to bait a trap as I’d requested. I’d denied what common sense had been telling me all along, but to voice those thoughts was still an alien sensation.
‘Liar. I’ve been speaking with your old pal, Walter Conrad. He told me that John was on his way.’
‘He was lying to you, Cain. The way he’s lied to me since Jubal’s Hollow. You remember what you did to my brother there? How could he survive that?’
‘The medics saved him, the way they saved me.’
‘So why isn’t he here?’
‘Because Conrad sent you instead.’
‘We’ve both been played along. John’s dead.’
‘You’re only saying that so that I stop chasing him.’
‘No, Cain,’ I corrected him. ‘That isn’t necessary. Not when I’m going to kill you. I’m telling you so that you realise what a total fuck-up all of this has been. You’ve been chasing a trophy that you’ll never get your hands on. All the pain, all the suffering that everyone has gone through, it’s been for nothing.’
‘Lies.’
‘Truth,’ I countered. ‘You’re going to Hell with the knowledge that you’ll never get to John. You already missed your opportunity.’
‘Nooooo…’
Everything about him changed in that instant. His shoulders rounded, his head dipped, and he flicked out with his right arm. From his sleeve projected the item I was certain he’d disclose at this last moment. The fiendish bastard had been busy during his downtime aboard the ship, whittling and paring the rib bone taken from the ship’s captain. Cain had planned to spear me with it, the way I’d rammed a rib bone through his trachea back at Jubal’s Hollow. Well, I’d also something to pay him back for: my brother.
I allowed him a moment, and he took it. He launched himself at me.
Calmly, I shot him.
His forearm was shattered, and the horrifying weapon went spinning across the deck alongside chunks of his arm.
Cain kept on coming, teeth bared like a wild beast’s.
I shot him again, this time through his left thigh.
He staggered against the rail. Clawed hands held him upright. He twisted to look at me, his eyes squinting as
