spotted me? Or guessed?
His next step carried him out of view, directly overhead, the landing blocking him from sight. I realized I was holding my breath, and I couldn't now exhale. My lungs burned. His shoe padded down onto metal. And then again. Through the gap I saw the gun come into view first, and I nearly gave in to panic and bolted. But it wasn't pointed down at me; it was drifting five feet above the stairs. His hands slid into view, his wrists, his forearms. He was aiming up the path, breathing hard. His loafer set down on the top step, no more than six inches from my eyes. I could smell the bitter tint of blood on the soles. His other foot touched down on the second tread, seemingly in slow motion.
My hands floated in front of my face, half raised, quaking in the darkness. I watched his heel drop flat, a millimeter at a time. For an awful instant, I froze up. But then everything inside me broke free in a burst of terrified fury. Reaching through the steps, I seized his ankles and ripped them toward me as hard as I could.
He bellowed, tumbling violently, and then his torso struck metal with a clang and a gunshot exploded, amplified off the surrounding metal. He lurched down a few more steps on his face and chest before rolling over and jerking to a halt, his hand dangling into view off the side. He grumbled something unintelligible, and then the night gave over to the crickets and an odd sucking sound that came at uneven intervals.
I stayed crouched, frozen, waiting for who knew what, until I saw the dark drops working their way through the steel mesh of the bottom stair and tapping the dirt below. I crept out.
He'd wound up in a leaned-back sitting position at the base of the stairs. His eyes rolled to and fro, straining, the whites pronounced in the dull moonlight, but as I tentatively approached, they tracked over and fixed on me. He had a tiny hole in his side at the base of his ribs, the tear in the white shirt no bigger than a penny. The surrounding fabric had darkened, the blotch the size of a Frisbee. His right hand, bent unnaturally, clutched the Glock. His finger remained threaded through the trigger guard. His chest lurched, and his lung gave off that sucking sound, fluttering the torn cloth at the edge of the bullet hole.
The right lapel of his sport jacket was flung back, a band of moonlight falling through the crisscross stairs to illuminate the revealed badge at his belt, with that all-too-familiar number.
LAPD 1117.
His hand firmed around the Glock, and I tensed, but he couldn't seem to lift his arm from his side to aim it at me. The ledge of his brow lowered with exertion. He jerked his head, and one of his legs stiffened, and the gun fired down into the dirt. And again. And again. The reports rolled off across the hills, across the blanketing trees and hidden missile silos. The recoil from the next shot knocked the gun from his hand. He looked down at it helplessly, tears mixing with his sweat.
The next sucking sound from his lung was fainter. His legs twitched, and then the fabric no longer fluttered at the edges of the hole in his shirt. His stare stayed fixed on me, every bit as alive as it had been moments before.
I had sunk to one knee before him, as if in fearful worship of the act I'd just committed. Through the roar of my thoughts, I could feel nothing.
Bolted to the wall to Valentine's left, Khrushchev's words addressed the bloody aftermath: WE WILL BURY YOU.
A loud hum sounded, breaking my trance, and I jerked back, tripping over my heels. Cautiously, I rose. It came again, vibrating Valentine's shirt pocket.
I approached his body with trepidation; my nerves were sandpapered raw. Keeping my head pulled back, I reached over and tugged a Palm Treo from his pocket.
A text message read:
YOUR CASH AT USUAL DROP POINT.
WE'RE MOVING IN NOW.
THIS MESSAGE CHAIN WILL ERASE IN 17 SECONDS.
16.
15.
Moving in where?
A chill crept across my bruised shoulders. The message was a reply. Furiously, I clicked back to the original note Valentine had sent:
HE'LL BE OUT OF HOUSE AT 8:00.
MULTIPLE UNITS WILL RESPOND TO A FAKE BREAK-IN CALL TWO DOORS UP TO DRAW PAPARAZZI AWAY.
SHE WILL BE ALONE.
Chapter 52
Stunned, I stared at the glowing screen, words disintegrating into letters, my brain lurching to comprehend and shield myself at the same time. The message vanished, a crumpling sound announcing the autoerase, but the letters seemed to remain, floating in the darkness. They became words again, their meaning shattering my paralysis.
I caught up to myself ten feet down the dirt path, sprinting, dialing my wife on a dead man's phone. The Glock was shoved in the back of my jeans, the documents crammed in my pocket, digging into my thigh. The sole reception bar blinked out every time I pressed 'send.' By the time I hit the dirt road, the screen showed a satellite dish rotating haplessly--nothing.
Without slowing, I dug out the throwaway phone, held it in my other hand, glanced from one screen to the next. No signal from either, not up here in the hills at the fringe of the Topanga State Park.
The cell-phone clock read 7:56 P.M. Four minutes and they'd be clear to breach our house.
The ground was a confusion of ruts and mounds, and I stumbled in the dark, going down and skinning my palms, the phone and Treo skidding from my grip. I groped, found the throwaway, and after a few seconds of searching gave up on the Treo--the incriminating message had autotrashed anyway, and the reception was just as crappy. Clutching the phone, I kept sprinting, holding the damn lit screen in front of my face as I hurtled forward in the blackness, letting my legs figure out the terrain on their own.
SHE WILL BE ALONE.
No signal. No signal. No signal.
A light rain had opened up, softening the ground that kept duplicating itself beneath my feet, a potholed treadmill. The same hillside kept whistling by. Wheezing, drenched in sweat, I was stuck in a horror-movie loop.
Finally the yellow gate cut the dark, and I flew through, clipping the post with a shoulder, the collision spinning me in a half circle and depositing me on the hood of the BMW. I leaped into the car, peeling out, heading toward home, toward cell-phone coverage, the crappy throwaway clenched in my wet hand so I could steer the curves and watch the signal.
At last it gave me a bar. It wavered but came back, and the call went through. It rang and rang, and finally--
'Ari!'
'Patrick?'
'They're coming for you! Get the hell out of the house!'
But she couldn't hear me now. 'I just got out of the shower. I moved the pickup around back for you to use from now on, so get rid of the stolen car before you come back here. But listen--you're not gonna believe what I taped together.' Sirens wailed faintly in the background. 'Hang on. This is weird.'
Her breathing shifted as she hustled down the stairs, the noise of the sirens growing louder.
I was shouting, as if volume, not reception, were the problem. 'They called in a diversion up the street so the paparazzi will follow and leave our house open. Grab the gun and get out of there. Go to the cops. Ari? Ari!'
Oblivious to my yelling, she continued, 'All these cop cars passed our house, but they're not coming here. Looks like they're up at the Weetmans. I wonder if Mike got framed for killing a movie star, too.'
The signal cut out. I looked down at the phone in disbelief. A horn blared; I'd drifted into the wrong lane. Screeching over, I veered off the road, kicking up a plume of dirt, then overcompensated again, wobbling back across the center lane and narrowly missing a Maserati. I righted the BMW, skidding around a rain-slick turn and leaving the clutch of the hillside.
Two bars. Now three.
