gold.
Holt's voice reverberates through the arm that chokes him. 'My show now, kids. I'll absolutely kill him. Drop the guns. Lie down. Be good boys and girls. Now/.'
John's hand is still in his pocket and he knows it's still in his pocket but there's nothing getting to his brain or lungs and the world is getting fuzzy, warm and distant. He tries to focus on the agents but can only see the bullets right in front of his eyes. Are they starting to rotate? Then there's a roaring, percussive cluster of blasts and John feels his flesh shudder with the impact, feels the crack and splinter of bone around his face and the sudden splatter of blood into his eyes, and the terrible surge of something weighty and pressurized exploding. John falls thinking, so this is how it feels. You fall. Just like I thought. The next thing he knows he's on his back staring up at a clear blue sky and there's a warm breeze on his face and the air is rushing back into his lungs and someone is screaming call the ambulance, call thefuckingambulancejosh while her fingers dig into his neck. He can smell something metallic and wet on his face cooling in the breeze. A lot of it. But he realizes that he still has his hand on the gun. He grabs Sharon's arm with his free hand, climbs to his feet and finally draws it. It doesn't take him long to find what he's after. To get the sonofabitch in his sights. No. Because Holt is right there at John's feet with a blank look in his eyes and a big black hole between them, just above the frame of his glasses, another one in the middle of his forehead and another one an inch from that John feels himself swaying. He tries to follow the sight of the automatic passing back and forth across Holt's chest.
'Easy, John,' someone is saying. 'Easy, John. We got him, You did your job. It's over.'
He stands there and for a moment feels above it all, sees himself from above looking down at himself standing over a dead body and pocketing his gun, looking down at a young man sprawled on the gravel with an automatic beside him, at a woman with dark hair and blood on her blouse and a lithe little guy with a pale face and a telephone in his hand, speaking but making no sound.
I'm still alive, he thinks, but I've gone to hell anyway.
A few moments later a red Jeep flies over the rise and skids to a stop. Valerie Holt stares at him from the driver's seat. Fargo sits next to her.
The sight of her brings John back to himself. He strips off his coat and covers Holt. He steps to meet her as she breaks into a run. She pulls up just short of him and glares at Dumars and Joshua. Then she brings her full attention to what lies on the ground.
'Oh,' she says. 'No? No.'
John sees her confusion turn to horror as she raises her eyes and beholds his face. He tries to guide her to the Jeep but she slugs and kicks her way past him. Joshua and Dumars converge, badges flashing. Then Joshua is barking his Bureauspeak while he and Sharon defend their prey. Fargo joins in, helping them drag Valerie back to her vehicle. Her arm trails out, hand open and fingers stretched, reaching back toward her father. As they pass John, Valerie fixes him with an utterly comprehending stare and Fargo adds his own malevolent gaze. 'We have a date now, friend,' he says.
John stands there, watching them stuff Valerie back into her Jeep. The tablecloth skids across the gravel in the wind. The silver domes and china lie on the ground like old treasures. Susan Baum still sits at the table, silent, shivering and unseeing beneath the monumental bronzes of the Holt family.
Fargo drives the Jeep away.
You did your job.
A while later a helicopter descends toward Top of the World in a lazy spiral and three Bureau sedans trail their way up from the road below.
John is sitting on the stone bench next to Baum when the cars make the summit. Though he has an arm around her shaking body and though he mutters words of comfort to her, John feels nothing but darkness inside. And as he gazes out at the autumn splendor of Liberty Ridge, he sees nothing but darkness there, too.
CHAPTER 41
Late that afternoon he packed up his things and set them on the breakfast counter of the cottage. Not that he had much: his personal effects, the clothes that he and Valerie had bought, half sack of dog food, his birdgun and a couple. boxes of shells. He stood for a while in the little kitchen and looked out at the lake watching his dogs in the water fighting over a ball. He slipped shell into the shotgun, let the action snap shut and put on the safety, leaving it on the bar, pointed toward the door. He took the. 45 from his coat pocket and set it on the bag of kibbles.
For the third time that day he walked across the meadow to the Big House. But for the first time, Lane Fargo was not there to turn him away at the door. He brushed his way past one of the cooks and walked down the tiled entryway, beneath the big timber beams, past the wrought iron candleholders and the oil paintings of the rancho days.
Valerie was in the living room, sitting before a small fire that flickered in the cavernous fireplace, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and a cup of something on the rough-hewn table in front of her.
If she saw him come in, she didn't show it.
'May I?' he asked.
She looked at him for a long time, then nodded. He walked far around her and sat on a steerhide sofa on the other side of the table.
'Is there anything I can get you?'
She looked at him again, shook her head, then returned her gaze to the fire. 'Mom doesn't comprehend. I tell her, but she doesn't get it. Says, 'oh, no-wait 'til Vanny hears.' '
John sat there for a long while, listening to the pop and hiss of burning wood. He watched Valerie in profile, her unblinking eyes vacantly attuned to the embers.
'Agent Dumars explained it to me,' she said, without expression. 'Who you are. What Dad did. I didn't understand why. I didn't understand why you did what you did to him.'
'Did she tell you about the woman?'
'Jillian?'
'Rebecca.'
'She didn't mention a Rebecca.'
'She worked for the paper when I did. We were in love. She went to get Baum's car in the rain and your father shot her.'
Valerie turned her head slowly to John. 'It was your girl he killed, then.'
'That's right.'
'So you killed him.'
'No. Joshua did. I thought… we wanted to arrest him. For Rebecca.'
'Oh, it all makes sense,' she said flatly, turning to the fire again. 'All makes sense.'
'I don't-' But John didn't finish the sentence. Instead he watched a shadow move way up on the stairway landing of the second floor, just a little motion between the bannister slats reflected on the wall from the fire. Then nothing moved at all. 'I don't… I know you can't forgive me, ever. But I want to say a few things. Will you listen to me, for just a while?'
She shrugged beneath the blanket, but didn't look at him.
'First, I want you to know it wasn't supposed to happen the way it did. If I'd have known how it would end, I wouldn't have done it.'
Valerie half-nodded, her chin lifting just a little, but never coming back down. 'Not even for Rebecca?'
'No.'
'Why. She was your reason.'
'I never set out to get anybody killed. I… I worked awfully hard to make sure that wouldn't happen. I worked hard to make sure we had the right man and that they could arrest him. And I never set out to fall in love with you. 'Then came the other half of Valerie's nod, a little downturn of her chin. She shivered and pulled the blanket tighter.
'It doesn't change anything,' he said. 'But I want you t know it.'
