He moved on, following the same trail as last time. But this time there was no one ahead of him and no one coming along behind him.
Back in the other direction, the sun crept down behind the pine trees. Darkness was slowly edging in from all sides, but there was still enough light to see the trail.
Four
The amateur was gone.
Parker stopped at the edge of the woods, peering, at first refusing to believe it, telling himself he was being tricked by perspective, by the long forest shadows that stretched now like witch fingers out across the dead plain toward the building, by the bad light of late afternoon.
But it was no trick. Where the amateur had fallen, where the dust had billowed up and then settled on him again, there was now no one. No one and nothing.
The second bullet hadn’t done the job, then. It had seemed like a good hit, but it had only wounded him. And he’d lain out there, either lying doggo or unconscious, and after a while he’d crawled or walked away.
Which way? Back into the relative safety of the woods? Or forward, on toward that building bulking out there?
Forward. There was no subtlety in the amateur, nothing in him but direct action. He would keep going forward no matter what.
But there were still questions. It all depended how badly he was hit. From the way he’d flopped out there, from how long he’d stayed lying there, the hit had to be fairly good, anyway. It was no flesh wound, no grazing of his shoulder or leg. But just how bad was it? Bad enough to have him dead now, up closer to the building? Or not quite that bad, but bad enough to force him to hole up in the building itself and not try to go any farther? Or was it so slight after all that he’d just walked away and was now lost forever?
Standing there at the edge of the woods, Parker regretted not having dug the guns up again. But there’d been no way to guess back there that he’d be needing a gun again so soon.
He faded back into the woods, hunted around, and found the body of Negli lying sprawled all over a thick and thorny bush. The little Beretta was on the ground near his hand.
Parker picked it up and broke the clip out of the butt. It was a six-shot .25-caliber automatic, and Negli had already used up five of the cartridges in this clip.
Parker slid the clip back in place, put the Beretta in his pocket, and dragged Negli clear of the thornbush. He went through Negli’s clothing, but the little man hadn’t been carrying an extra clip.
The damn fool!
Parker got to his feet and looked out again across the plain at the building over there. It was over twenty storeys high already, and from the confusion of cranes and pulleys atop the building — looking like unruly hair on the head of a Mongoloid idiot — it was apparently going to be even taller before they were done. The last rays of sunlight glinted like icicles from the windows on the first seven or eight floors; above that the windowpanes hadn’t been put in place yet.
The amateur might be in there. He might be anywhere inside that pile of brick and glass, or he might be gone from this area entirely.
Parker wanted him. He wanted that bastard the way Negli had wanted Parker. Not because there was any sense in it anymore, but only because the amateur, alive, was a loose end.
It was the amateur who had soured the sweet job, bringing in his own extraneous problems, killing for no sensible reason, taking money that should have been safe, running around wild and causing trouble with everybody, attracting the attention of the law.
There was no profit in killing him, but Parker was going to kill him anyway. He was going to kill him because he couldn’t possibly just walk away and leave the bastard alive.
But that didn’t mean he had to get like Negli, stupid and careless.
It would be full night soon, and that was bad. Night was the amateur’s ally, covering his blunders, obstructing Parker’s movements. If the thing was to be done, it should be done now.
He moved out across the dead plain, moving light and fast on the balls of his feet, watching the building, ready to jump in any direction. If the amateur was in there, and watching, and waiting for a good shot, that was all right. Parker would give him one shot to find out exactly where he was. He could count on the bastard to miss the first time.
But there was no shot. He came all the way across the plain and up to the building itself and there, was no sound, no movement.
This was the back of the building. Windows stretched away to left and right, reflecting with distortions the plain and the forest and the red circle of the sun beginning now to sink behind the western horizon. A few gray metal doors we’re snugly in place here and there along the rear wall, implying basements, furnaces, all the utilities needed for a bulging building like this one.
No sound, no movement.
But over to the right a window was smashed in. These were all permanent windows, fixed in place without any way to open them, meaning the building would be centrally the. Over to the right, one of these windows had been smashed in, and every last piece of glass knocked out of the aluminum frame.
So a man could crawl through without cutting himself.
A sound, a tiny scratch, made him look up.
Glinting like a phantom airship, slender, square, fast and murderous, a sheet of plate glass knifed down through the air at him, whistling. Highlights sparkled from the edges like reflections of ice.
Parker jumped away. With a sound like dry wood breaking, only much much louder, the sheet of glass destroyed itself into the ground, spraying shards and slivers in all directions. Silver triangles tinkled against the
