“Jesse’s dead. They’re all dead! It doesn’t matter anymore, that’s what you said!”
It was quiet except for the ping of the tracking device in Gibralter’s hand.
“Did you? Did you kill Pryce?” Louis demanded.
“I made a permanent sacrifice,” Gibralter said.
There. He had his truth. Louis shut his eyes, turning his face upward. The snow was cold and wet on his face. It was a moment before he could bring himself to speak again.
“You coward,” he whispered. “You were afraid and you killed him. You fucking coward.”
“Pryce was the coward,” Gibralter said. “He didn’t have the guts to do what had to be done. He didn’t understand that our strength comes from our unity.”
Gibralter’s chuckle drifted to him. “You’re learning, Kincaid.” He tipped the gun barrel, motioning him to move on.
Louis didn’t’ move. There were still too many questions. “How did you find out he was on to you?”
Gibralter didn’t answer.
“How?” Louis shouted.
“I was lucky. I got a call I never should have got.”
“From who? Who told you what Pryce was doing?”
“Steele’s secretary,” Gibralter said. “She called the station and Dale transferred the call to me. She said she was calling to say she had to change the time of Pryce’s appointment for December third.”
Louis stared, stunned.
“I told her I’d pass the message along.”
“You killed Pryce on the basis of that?”
Gibralter shook his head. “I suspected he was turning before then.”
Louis waited. Gibralter seemed to be trying to decide how much to explain.
“He was looking for a job. I got calls for references,” Gibralter said. “I didn’t think much of it at first. Pryce never seemed to really fit in here.”
“It had to be more than that. What else tipped you off?”
“Dale.”
Louis shook his head.
“It’s not what you think,” Gibralter said. “Dale didn’t know what Pryce was up to. He was just pissed that Pryce was messing up his files. Dale came to me, it was around Halloween, asking if he could put locks on the file cabinets to keep everybody out. He was mad at Pryce, said he never put things back. He showed me a file Pryce had left a mess.”
“The raid file,” Louis said. “Pryce made a copy.”
Gibralter nodded. “I started watching him after that. I followed him one day when he went back to the Eden place. I checked evidence and knew he’d been in there. I saw that the seal on the Hammersmith bag was broken.”
“You knew he found the throw-down,” Louis said.
“Yes, but he didn’t take the gun. He wasn’t as smart as you.”
Louis was shivering hard and clenched his teeth together to keep them from chattering.
“Walk,” Gibralter demanded.
“What about Ollie and Lovejoy?” he said.
“What about them?”
“Did you kill them, too?”
Gibralter stared at him, his breath visible in the beam of the flashlight. “Do you believe in fate, Kincaid?”
Louis didn’t answer.
“’There is no armor against fate. Death lays its icy hand on kings.’”
Louis recognized it as part of the quote Gibralter had delivered at Ollie’s funeral. It hadn’t meant anything to him then. But now, here, the words sounded cowardly, like an excuse.
“Fate?” Louis said. “It was their fate to die?”
“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction,” Gibralter said. “Things were set in motion that day at the Eden cabin, things that no one could stop. Is that fate? I don’t know. All I know is things must come to their inevitable conclusions.”
Louis turned and walked on, the cold inside him growing as his thoughts turned to his own fate. Gibralter planned to kill him tonight. He knew too much, just like the others. He felt the cold steel of his empty gun against his skin.
He stopped again.
“Kincaid, you’re getting on my nerves,” Gibralter said.
“You’re going to kill me, aren’t you,” Louis said.
“Get moving.”
“What are you waiting for?” Louis yelled. “Why don’t you just shoot me right now!”
“What, and make you a fucking martyr in her eyes?”
Louis swung his flashlight to Gibralter’s face. Gibralter moved but not before Louis saw the tightness in his expression.
“Who? Zoe? Is that — ” Louis demanded.
“Her name is Jeannie!” Gibralter interrupted, pointing the gun at Louis’s chest.
Louis held his breath. Gibralter slowly lowered the gun.
“You’re going to take a bullet in the back tonight, Kincaid, but it won’t be mine,” Gibralter said. “Now move!”
Louis walked on through the drifts, his mind churning as he realized what was going to happen. Gibralter knew he would have to face an investigation when this was over. Any bullet found in Louis’s back would come from Lacey’s gun. Gibralter would make sure of that. He had thought of everything. Every maneuver was designed, every move thought out three steps ahead. How could he get the advantage?
He had seen something in Gibralter’s eyes when he had said her name. It was small, almost undetectable, but it was there. A weakness, a fissure, a way in.
“Zoe,” he said.
From behind came only the crunch of boots on snow.
“Zoe,” he repeated, more loudly.
Silence.
Louis gave a small laugh as he walked on. “She likes to be called Zoe. You didn’t know that, did you?”
“Shut up.”
Louis’s heart was hammering but he knew he had to get Gibralter off balance. “Zoe,” he said loudly. “That’s what she wants me to call her when we make love.”
Silence. Louis drew in a harsh breath of cold air.
“You know what Zoe told me? Zoe told me you haven’t been able to satisfy her in years.”
“Stop!”
Louis stopped.
“Turn around.”
He faced the light, squinting.
“You want to play games?” Gibralter asked.
Louis could not see if the gun was pointed at him.
“You know what an end game is, Kincaid?”
Louis remained silent, his hand going up to shield his eyes against the light.
“The end game is the final strategy in chess,” Gibralter said. “It’s when most of the pieces are lost and the king is forced into action. Amateurs thing the king can be taken at this point. But in the hands of a master, the end game can have any number of outcomes.”
