All he wanted to do now was to get off the ride.
Slowly, he pulled the 9-millimeter automatic out of its slide holster.
He chambered it.
The unusually loud click rang in the empty night.
One last important decision: Where to place the muzzle?
Under the chin at the mandible? Aiming up through the horizontal palatine bone into the anterial cranial fossa-coroner's terms echoing back at him from hundreds of autopsies.
Perhaps he should stick the muzzle in his mouth, go for the medial soft palate uvula… Drive that two-ounce pill right up into his cerebral peduncle. Usually a sure thing, but on one or two occasions, he'd seen that path produce total brain vegetation but not death.
Maybe he should just stick with the reliable old temple shot. Put the muzzle on his inferior temporal line, just above the ear… Pull the trigger and hope for the best. Hope that the slug wouldn't ricochet around inside his cranium but leave him breathing through a tube for ten years, until he finally rotted from the inside out.
As a cop, he'd seen all of these muzzle positions fail to get the job done. His last meaningful decision.
What a dumb fucking problem, he thought ruefully.
The old homicide dicks called this dilemma 'betting the house.' Slowly, Shane brought the gun up and stuck it into his mouth. His hand was shaking. He could taste the Hoppe's gun oil on his tongue, pressed flat by the weapon. His teeth began chattering on the barrel.
'God help me,' he said quietly, his words slurring on the cold metal.
He tried to pull the trigger, but something stopped him… Some last-second doubt. And in that moment, everything changed.
Somebody came out of the dark and hit him hard from behind, knocking him forward.
The gun flew out of his hand, splashing into the water while Shane was thrown, face-first, onto the wet sand.
He felt a huge weight land on his back. A massive arm locked around Shane's throat. In that instant, he changed from a potential suicide to a potential homicide. With this change in category came a desperate will to survive.
He fought and clawed to get the man's arm off his windpipe, struggling to keep from being strangled on that deserted stretch of beach.
'This is for shooting me, and for killin' Rod, and for screwing Lisa,' Victory Smith whispered, the gasps of hot air filling Shane's ear.
Shane managed to tuck his chin down and get his hands around the grizzled arm, which was slowly choking him.
Suddenly, Victory's grip slipped.
Shane got his mouth on the weight lifter's huge forearm and bit down hard.
'Fuck!' the steroid jockey screamed, letting go.
Shane rolled out from under Smith and came up on his knees, just in time to field a left hook that caught him on top of his head, ringing his ears, starring his vision, and knocking him back into the light rippling waves at the edge of the lagoon. Shane landed on his ass in two feet of warm tropical water. Pain shot up his spine. He had come down on something hard. Instinctively, he reached down and grabbed it-
His Beretta.
As Victory Smith ran toward him, splashing water, Shane brought the gun out from under him and pulled the trigger.
The Black Talon shell casing had resisted the seawater, and the gun fired, bucking loudly in his hand. The exploding slug took Victory in the center of his simian forehead, blowing it wide, but the weight lifter kept coming… Cerebral fluid and brain tissue spilling down his pockmarked face as he ran. The muscled giant took two more faltering steps and fell toward Shane, his arms out in front of him, grabbing Shane in a lifeless hug as he landed. Shane felt Victory's heart beat twice before it stopped.
It was suddenly quiet.
All Shane could hear was the gently rippling surf and the distant sound of rustling palm fronds. He let go and pushed the huge man off, watching as Victory rolled onto his back into the churning surf. Seawater washed the sickening hole in his head, turning the swirling surf dark with blood and brain matter.
Shane staggered to his feet, then looked down at his fallen adversary. Why hadn't he just let Smith finish the job he'd already started? What had made him fight so desperately to survive?
Shane stood over the corpse, watching it roll and turn in the light surf. A lifeless ballet. The swirling black patterns of Victory's strange personality washing out of his skull into the seawater. He knew this memory would be locked in his subconscious forever.
Finally, he reclaimed himself and pulled Victory up onto the beach, dragging the two-hundred-fifty-pound man… Tugging, struggling to pull him up to the berm, where the white sand met with a ridge of low, tropical vegetation.
Shane got down on his knees and started to dig a hole, using his hands to paw up the granules until he got down where the sand was damp. Buried shells stabbed at his fingers as he dug, breaking his nails and making his hands bleed.
He could hear someone crying softly and looked around, afraid he was being observed. Then he realized he was the one crying.
He locked his mouth shut and forced himself to stop. Finally, Shane had dug a trench that was two feet deep and seven feet long; hardly big enough to hide this hulking giant for long. The first strong wind would uncover him, but Shane could dig no longer. He was completely spent. He took Victory's wallet and rolled the steroid junkie into the shallow grave, then covered him up until nothing was left but a foot-high mound of packed sand.
He picked up the murder weapon, wiped the Beretta clean on his shirt, then threw it as far as he could into the lagoon. He heard a faint splash somewhere way out there as it hit.
When Shane got back to his room, it was empty. Thankfully, Lisa wasn't there, but he saw that there was something on his pillow, glittering and colorful. He walked to it, wondering what it was, and whether Lisa had left it there.
He picked it up and stared at it in confusion. It was a two-inch round medal, with a red ribbon attached.
The LAPD Medal of Valor.
'You were the one who really earned it, so it's only fair that you should keep it.'
He turned, and she was standing just outside on the balcony.
She walked toward him, took him in her arms, and held him. Then he could feel her pressed against him. Suddenly he was kissing her, holding her head in both his hands.
But he had shot her, watched her fly backward… Watched as the huge pool of blood spread around her. Yet somehow she'd come back. Somehow she'd survived.
Alexa Hamilton was alive.
Chapter 37
I'M so SORRY, so sorry,' she said, holding him. Shivers ran through both of them. 'I thought I killed you…' he stammered. 'I wasn't hurt,' she said softly. He finally let go of her and stepped back, the joy of holding her overtaken by heart-wrenching fear that Lisa or Jody would suddenly return and that he would lose her all over again. 'We can't stay here,' he blurted. 'I've got a room up the beach. Come on…'
She pulled a high-frequency radio out of her bag and triggered it. 'This is Three. Are we clear out there?'
'Roger, Three. This is One. Come on,' a man's voice said.
'Who's that?' Shane asked.
'I'm down here with federal backup. Tony set it up… DEA guys…'
'Shit, Tony's got half the free world out looking for me.'
