At the same instant, someone walked up behind him, someone who must have been waiting along the side of the house. Taylor felt the prod of something hard and cylindrical beneath his ribs. His hand froze, fingertips brushing the butt of his pistol.
“Drop it.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Taylor said. “Do you know I’m a federal officer?”
“We know who you are.”
Okay. If he wasn’t already dead, the odds in his favor were improving. He gingerly drew his weapon and dropped it to the grass.
“Walk,” a man’s voice ordered. A toneless, empty voice. Accented? Seeing that there was a chance he might survive this, Taylor started taking mental notes.
The woman was scrambling to throw open the trunk of the Chevy. Brown hair, Caucasian, five-six or -seven, medium build, mid to late forties. He didn’t know her. Did he? “Hurry!” she urged. “For God’s sake, hurry up!”
A motor gunned from down the street. Varga’s blue sedan roared up behind the Chevy, blocking it in. She must have seen what was happening, because she jumped out, drawing her weapon on the man who held Taylor.
“Halt. Fed —”
Before she could finish identifying herself, the woman by the rear bumper of the car opened fire. The bullets hit Varga squarely in her chest, the white silk of her blouse turning red as she dropped to her knees. She discharged her weapon harmlessly into Will’s lawn and sagged forward onto her face.
Taylor saw it out of the corner of his eye, and it was the last thing he saw; he had whipped around, grabbing for the gun, trying to disarm the man behind him, when there was an explosion in his head.
Hanabi. A brilliant chrysanthemum burst of purple and red lights. Bloodred stars like chrysanthemum petals drifted, twinkling through the night. The lights went dark.
* * * * *
Will was in Orange County talking to Deputy Brown about the recent suspicious movements of the Phu Fighter gang leadership when the call came through.
Assistant Director Cooper came up as the Incredible Hulk on Will’s phone screen.
Will made a face and stepped outside to take the call.
“Where are you?” Cooper bit out.
Sure he was about to get his ass reamed for taking time off to pursue his own investigation, Will hedged, “On my way back to LA.”
“There’s been a shooting at your residence.”
The phone nearly dropped from Will’s nerveless hand. “Who?” a weird, flat voice asked on his behalf.
“Denise Varga. She was shot to death in the street outside your house a few minutes after eight. Apparently she was on the way to pick up your partner.”
“MacAllister?” Will managed the force the question from his locked-tight throat.
“Missing. From a neighbor’s account, it sounds like he may have been abducted.”
“Abducted?”
“His disabled vehicle is sitting in your driveway. Any idea what he was doing at your place?”
“He spent the night.”
“Something wrong with his house?”
Frost crackled in Cooper’s voice. And no wonder. One agent dead. Another — Jesus. Let him be okay.
Will thought rapidly. “I told him to stay at my place while Ventura PD investigated the bomb threat he received. Did my neighbor say if Ta — MacAllister — was injured?”
“She believed he was knocked unconscious and thrown in the trunk of a brown Chevy. I thought it had been determined that there was no bomb threat, that it was just a practical joke?”
“I never bought the practical-joke theory. I think this bears me out.”
“Report back here. Out.”
* * * * *
“Why didn’t you tell me the truth?” Will demanded. His face was white with fury, his eyes almost black. He looked at Taylor with condemnation, dislike. Never, not once in the four years of their partnership, had Will looked at him like that. Like Taylor was a stranger.
Not even when they had been strangers to each other.
“I…tried.”
“You didn’t try. You never said a word about it. You let me believe that you were different. That you were good. Someone I could care about.”
“I am. I am those things.”
Dread welled in Taylor. If Will stopped believing in him, if Will didn’t care about him anymore — it was like losing his compass, having his mooring torn away, like being lost at sea and no star to guide him.
“You disgust me,” Will said.
Taylor was shaking his head, childishly insisting this wasn’t true. “You know me, Will. You’re just like me.”
“I’m not like you,” Will said scornfully. He was glaring at the thing Taylor held in his hand. Taylor looked down. He was holding a percussion pistol. Some of his fear lightened. Will had given him this. A magnificent gift. Smooth black wood grip carved in a snarling dragon head. A large pearl glowed in the dragon’s jaws. The pearl beyond price. No, not a pearl. An eye. A brown eye. It stared at him maliciously — and winked.
“You’re so fucking lame, MacAllister,” Will exclaimed. “You’re so fucking useless.”
He snatched the pistol out of Taylor’s hand and held the long, engraved barrel to his temple. “Here’s what you do,” he said and pulled the trigger.
A blast of dust and exhaust filtered through the cracks in the car trunk, blew in Taylor’s face, waking him. He began to choke.
Chapter Nine
Yellow crime-scene tape cordoned Will’s yard and lawn from the rest of the neighborhood and the spectators who had gathered. There was a horrifying red-brown stain at the end of the drive, where Varga had died.
The doors of Taylor’s MDX stood open, and LAPD’s crime-scene investigators were collecting and documenting evidence.
“Our theory is the perps damaged the MDX’s starter coil at some point during the night and then left the scene,” Lt. Wray said.
She was a tall, lanky redhead in an ill-fitting suit. Other than the suit, she seemed to know what she was doing. Time would tell.
“Why would they leave the scene?”
“We don’t think these were professionals. There’s every indication the shooter was
