Her hand closed over the arrowhead.
“Want a live cartridge” Rattle of a key. “I’ll give you one!”
With shaking fingers she tamped the arrowhead into the barrel of the pistol.
“Hey, what the hell, Robinson!” Rasp of a chain. “We’re old friends …”
The arrowhead slid down the barrel, lodged in place.
“I’ll give you the whole damn clip!”
The doors burst wide, Cain stepping in.
Trish pivoted toward him.
He saw. Turned.
She ducked under his Glock.
Raised her gun to his temple.
Pumped the trigger once.
The pistol bucked in her hand, the discharge loud and close, the powder in the blank round igniting …
And in a rush of expanding gas the arrowhead was propelled out the barrel and through Cain’s forehead and into his brain.
His head jerked back, a cry stillborn in his throat.
Unmoving, Trish stared at him as slowly his head lowered, his gaze fixed on her, the cold gray eyes registering shock and hatred and disbelief.
From the scorched hole in his forehead oozed a thread of blood.
He swayed. The Glock slipped out of his hand.
She looked into his eyes a moment longer, mesmerized, and then he fell slowly backward, ponderously, a toppled oak, and thudded on the floor.
Still she didn’t look away. She gazed down, her hands holding fast to the empty gun, her teeth chattering, shoulders jumping.
She was certain he would rise again. He couldn’t be dead, not really. He was evil, pure evil.
Nothing could kill him. Nothing could stop him. And no one could beat him, ever.
But she had.
The truth of it finally clamped down.
Over. It was over. The long night … over.
She stared down at the man with the scarred face and the bloody crater in his temple. The man who had taken Marta away-Marta and other girls.
Now there he was, a limp, bloodied thing supine at her feet, his gray gaze clouded, gloved hands harmless at last.
“Did it,” she whispered between aching gasps. “No medals for … I did it … no medals … I did it.”
Lights flickered in the lace curtains of the bedroom windows. Christmas lights, she thought vaguely-blue and red, twinkling, pretty.
Was it Christmas Christmas in August.
She found the idea funny, but she couldn’t seem to laugh.
Clinging to a bureau, she circled the body, then lurched past the master bath into the bedroom doorway.
Heat flushed her face. Smoke clogged the far end of the hall, glittering with a dance of embers. She wondered about Ally. Had to check on Ally …
She took a shambling step forward, and a gruff masculine voice ordered, “Freeze!”
The command came out of nowhere. She blinked, uncomprehending.
“Drop your weapon, drop your weapon!”
Then she saw him-a uniformed figure halfway down the hall, his gun aimed at her.
A cop. And the red-and-blue lights … patrol cars. Of course.
She released the Glock, then just stood there, knees shaking, as the man warily advanced, his features taking form out of the gloom.
Hairless head. Steel-rimmed glasses. Sergeant Edinger.
He recognized her in the same moment. “Robinson …”
Languid ripples trembled through her. The hall rotated slowly, a world on its axis, as Edinger approached at a run.
Her eyesight was doubling. With effort she focused on his face. She had something to tell him, something important.
“They’re not,” she whispered. “They’re not …”
“Take it easy, Robinson.”
“They’re not all … in L.A.”
There. She’d said it. She hoped he understood. And remembered.
A hum filled her head, growing in volume, and with the hum rose a sea of white spangles, brilliant and clean.
She dropped away into the hum and the white. If an arm reached out to break her fall, she didn’t know it.
80
Her eyes opened, and she was on a gurney being trundled out the front door of the Kent house, into the night air.
Hoses ran from the oxygen mask on her face and the I.V. drip in her arm. “Watch it,” someone said as she was carried down the flagstone steps. “Don’t tangle the lines.”
You’re a mess, Trish, she thought blearily. First week on the job, and already you’re burned out.
Lightbars pulsed around her-four patrol cars, two ambulances. Parked alongside the smashed front wall, a fire truck.
Barbara Kent, coughing weakly into a mask of her own, was lifted into the first ambulance on a stretcher. Philip and Judy Danforth, shell-shocked and sooty, were already seated on a bench in the rear.
But where was Ally Trish craned her neck, didn’t see the girl.
“Relax, Officer.” One of the medics. “You’ll be okay.”
“Ally,” she murmured through the mask, but no one heard, and perhaps she hadn’t said it at all.
A stretch of blankness, a missing beat. She was jostled alert as the medics latched the gurney into the back of the second ambulance.
Blood pressure cuff on her arm. “Start her on dopamine.”
Quick hands rummaged in a cabinet near her head. Among the boxes of gear she made out a peculiar rolled- up thing like a tarp.
Body bag. That’s what it was.
Cain’s voice drifted back, promising to put her in a bag like that.
She shivered. One of the medics spread a blanket over her legs, leaving only the left calf uncovered. He was cutting away the bandages.
“Looks like gunshot trauma. Why aren’t we rolling”
“Got another passenger. Here she comes.”
A stretcher came through the rear doorway and slid onto the bench across from Trish.
Sideways glance, and there she was-Ally, masked and I.V.’d, eyelids fluttering like moth wings as she slipped in and out of consciousness.
“Hey, partner,” Trish whispered.
The girl rolled her head, brown eyes widening.
“Trish.” Ally caught her breath, and Trish saw stripes of tears glistening on her sooty face. “When the van blew up, I thought … I thought you were …”
She didn’t finish, and didn’t need to.
“Came dose,” Trish said. “By the way, thanks for the good-luck charm. It really worked.”
Smile. “You can keep it.”
“I-uh-sort of gave it away. To a mutual friend.”
