'I almost got you,' he muttered sullenly.
'If you hadn't grabbed that damn beer bottle…' He sighed.
'I couldn't afford to let you cut me. I couldn't afford to leave any blood at the scene. But it doesn't matter. I've got you anyway. I've got you.' They reached the ninth-floor landing, and suddenly the gun pressed harder into her back.
'Okay, this is your last stop.'
'You've lost count. We want the tenth floor.'
'My math is fine. You'll die right here. I'm close enough to Hickle now. And I'd rather have the police find you one story below-like he got the drop on you while you were coming up. Now turn around slowly.'
Abby obeyed, wishing they'd climbed one story higher. She'd wanted a little more time.
'I'm impressed, Paul,' she said softly.
'I didn't think you'd have the nerve to face me.'
The flashlight illuminated his features from below, casting the hollows of his eyes into harsh relief. He was smiling.
'On the contrary, I've been looking forward to it. So do you want it in the head or in the heart? Considering our relationship, I think the heart would be more appropriate.'
'You're not going to shoot me,' Abby said softly.
'No? What's stopping me? Sentiment? Affection? I don't traffic in those weaknesses. If you didn't know that by now, you'll have to learn it the hard way.' He studied her, a connoisseur admiring a prized acquisition, then lowered the gun to target her left breast.
'In the heart, then.'
He squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
No shot, no recoil, not even the click of a misfire.
'Sorry, Paul. That gun isn't any good.' In one smooth motion Abby lowered her hands, plucked the Smith from her purse, and aimed it at his face.
'This one, on the' other hand, works just fine.'
Hickle crouched by the window, his muscles stiff with tension, his gaze still fixed on Abby's balcony.
She wasn't there, and he was beginning to think she would never be there. Maybe she was spending the night someplace eke. Or maybe he'd misunderstood Travis, maybe he'd been watching the wrong window all along, in which case he had failed again… 'No way,' he whispered angrily.
His voice came back at him from the far corners in a ripple of echo, and then behind that echo he became aware of other sounds.
Voices.
Faint but unmistakable, drifting through the vacant corridors to reach him where he crouched.
He was not alone.
Travis pulled the trigger again and again, willing the gun to fire.
Abby watched him, a sad smile on her lips.
'Are you done, Paul?' she asked finally.
Slowly he lowered the pistol. He blinked, and for a moment he found it difficult to form words.
'How'd you do it?' he whispered.
'How'd you-what did you-' He couldn't complete the thought.
'Its simple, really.' The.38 in her hand never wavered. It was targeted at his chest.
'I knew if you'd framed Howard, you'd want to use his gun tonight-a gun traceable to him. I gambled that it was the one you'd bring.'
The one he would bring. The one… But he'd brought two guns. There was the Beretta in his shoulder holster-Even as he thought of it, Abby shook her head in a warning.
'Don't try, Paul. I know you're carrying a backup, but you can't draw fast enough. You've seen me at the firing range. I'm quick when I have to be.
And I will shoot you.'
He studied the hard set of her mouth, the coldness in her eyes. She wasn't lying.
'Anyway,' she went on as if there had been no digression, 'when I found that gun in the nightstand, I had a bad feeling about it. Thanks to you, I had Howard Barwood pegged as Hickle's accomplice. It didn't seem like a good idea to leave him with a fully functioning deadly weapon, so before I left, I took the gun apart. The Colt 1911, you know, is one of the few models that can be detail-stripped without the use of tools.
When I put it back together, I left out the firing' pin.'
Travis heard everything she said but couldn't quite make sense of it.
'You didn't disable Hickle's guns,' he whispered.
'No, because the next time he used them for target practice, he would have discovered the tampering. But Howard's gun wasn't being used at all. He hadn't even lubricated it.' Abby smiled.
'At the hospital, I intended to let you know what I'd done, but that nurse interrupted us. Lucky for me, huh?'
'Lucky,' Travis echoed.
'I've always been a fortunate gal. Now, shall we go downstairs?'
Travis was suddenly too exhausted to move.
'What for? What's down there?'
'Nothing yet, but after I call a friend of mine at the LAPD, we'll have some company. Go on, Paul.'
'Why don't you just shoot me right here?'
'It's a temptation. But I think I'd rather turn you over to our system of justice, risky as that can be in LA.
I actually look forward to visiting you in prison. But don't get your hopes up. They won't be conjugal visits.'
A surge of helpless anger shook Travis like a fever chill.
'You bitch. Fucking bitch.'
Abby frowned.
'That's not very nice. I may have to edit that part out.'
'Edit…?'
'I've been running the recorder in my purse ever since we entered the building. Switched it on when I was rummaging for my flashlight. I've got your whole confession on tape.'
On tape. She'd thought of everything.
'Get moving,' Abby ordered, but Travis still did not obey. The full reality of what she'd done, how she'd handled every detail, was finally real to him.
'You set me up.' He said it slowly, almost in righteous indignation.
'You played me. Asking for my help, telling me how we couldn't call the police, getting me to talk. You put on an act and sold it to me, sold it all the way.'
Abby shrugged.
'That's my job, Paul. Its what you trained me for-or did you forget about that?'
'No.' Travis's anger was spent.
'No, I didn't forget.'
Then his gaze drifted upward, and in a softer voice he added, 'But maybe there's something you forgot.'
On the upper landing, amid the shadows, the long barrel of Hickle's rifle was slipping through the bars of the banister to draw a bead on Abby's back.
Abby saw Travis's gaze tick upward and the almost imperceptible change in his expression. He said something, but she didn't register the words, because she was too busy processing what her eyes had shown her and seeing all the implications as clearly as if she could see the red stamp of Hickle's laser on her back.
The rifle cracked a split second later, but she was no longer in the bullet's path.
Diving for the floor, she hit the concrete hard as the shot flew over her head and clanged on the steel handrail of the banister. A second shot was coming, but before Hickle could adjust his aim she snap-rolled through the landing's open doorway into a dark ninth- floor hallway.
