Monk picked up the phone and flicked the speaker switch just as the hit man was about to step out of the stairwell into the hallway that Archie was patrolling.
“Archie, this is Adrian Monk.”
Both Archie and the hit man looked up at the sound of Monk’s voice. It’s instinctive when you hear a voice on a public address system, but if you think about it, it makes no sense. What do we expect to see? God floating over our heads? Then again, if Archie didn’t listen to Monk, that was exactly what he’d be seeing.
“You are in mortal danger,” Monk said. “The hit man is in the stairwell and he has a gun.”
What happened next happened amazingly fast. Archie turned towards the stairwell at the same instant that the hit man stepped out. Before Archie could react, the hit man shot him twice in the chest with the same cold efficiency he’d displayed when he killed Conrad Stipe.
The hit man looked up at the monitor and brazenly showed us his face.
I recognized him from one of the sketches Disher had showed us of the customers who bought Confederation uniforms.
He smiled at us, turned, and headed for the stairwell again.
I knew there could be only one reason he would risk showing us his face. He was going to kill us and take the tapes.
“We have to go, Mr. Monk,” I said. “He’s coming for us.”
I grabbed the keys again, ran to the revolving door, and unlocked it. But when I looked back, Monk was still at the guard’s desk. He hadn’t moved.
“Mr. Monk, hurry up,” I said. “He’ll be here any minute.”
Monk shook his head. “I can’t go through that door.”
“You’ve done it before,” I said.
“There were people to fill the empty spaces and the timing was precise. We don’t have those people tonight. Even if I tried, I’d never get through it before he gets here.”
“If you don’t go through this door, you’re going to die,” I said. “It’s just a revolving door. You can survive this. You can’t survive a bullet in the head.”
“Go, Natalie,” Monk said. “Call the police. I’ll stall him as long as I can.”
“I’m not going to leave you, Mr. Monk.”
Monk glanced at the screen. I couldn’t see the monitors from where I was, but I could imagine what he saw. The hit man was getting ever closer, moving slowly and methodically down the stairs.
“You have a daughter who needs you, Natalie,” Monk said. “I have no one.”
“You have me,” I said. “I need you.”
“Run,” he said.
I didn’t want to go, but he was right. I had to.
“Please, Mr. Monk,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “Come with me.”
“I can’t,” he said. “It’s who I am. You have to go now, Natalie. He’s almost here.”
I pushed through the revolving door and ran across the street to my car, dialing 911 as I went.
But I couldn’t get a signal.
I tried again. Still no good. I looked back at the Burgerville lobby as I got into my car.
The hit man came out of the stairwell and walked up to Monk, who said something to him. The hit man replied.
I couldn’t sit there and watch Monk get killed. I had to do something. So I started my car and peeled out of my parking space.
As I was closing in on the lobby, the hit man raised his gun and pointed it at Monk’s head.
That’s when I jumped the curb and plowed through the plate-glass window. Monk and the hit man dove out of my way. I smashed into the security desk, decimating it in a shower of wood and sparks.
I looked out of my driver’s-side window. Monk was on the floor, dazed but alive.
“Get in!” I yelled.
Monk hesitated and stared at all the shattered glass. “You broke the window. It’s in a million pieces.”
“Forget about that,” I said and glanced out the passenger side of my car.
The hit man was dazed but okay, too. He stood up and started looking for his gun, which must have flown out of his hand when he fell.
The gun was a few feet away from him, not far from the potted palm. He walked over to get it.
“Get in the car!” I yelled to Monk.
“Who is going to clean this up? Who is going to put all of this back together?”
I looked back at the hit man. He bent over and picked up his gun.
“For God’s sake, Mr. Monk, please get in the car,” I said. “Or we’re both going to die.”
Monk picked up a piece of paper from the floor and used it to start sweeping up the glass.
“This will only take a minute,” he said.
I looked back at the hit man. He was standing beside my car now and aiming his gun at Monk.
First Monk was going to die, and then me. I couldn’t watch this happen. I closed my eyes and said good-bye to my daughter. She was too young to have lost both of her parents. But she was strong. She’d make it somehow. She was a Teeger.
There was a loud bang, which I found odd, considering that the hit man had a silencer on his gun.
When I opened my eyes, Monk was still alive, brushing up the glass, and the hit man was lying across the hood of my car, staring at me with dead eyes.
Who shot him?
I looked to my right and saw Archie Applebaum standing outside of the stairwell, his gun held in both hands. The two bullet holes in Archie’s shirt were bloodless and I could see the blue of the Kevlar vest that he wore underneath.
Archie lowered his gun and staggered
