“Third degree?” echoed Sheriff Ellis, sitting in the command trailer with Sandra Souther. “
“Understood. I’m looking at the thermal image, but there’s no separation. Either the wife or Major McDavitt is in the line of fire.”
“Danny said Shields is sitting down. If you can’t see him on the thermal, blow the windows and take your chances.”
“Will do. Be cool, everybody…I’ll say when. Scoping now…”
“Damn it, Billy Ray,” cursed Ray Breen. “Let my men take this bastard out. This is exactly what we train for.”
“Negative,” said the sheriff. “Carl has the call. Acknowledge, Ray.”
Ray clicked his radio twice.
Warren held his wife’s Motorola Razr high like a trophy. The silver flip-phone had obviously been open while in her pocket, and Danny was sickeningly sure that this Razr was her clone phone, the one she used exclusively to talk to him.
Warren lowered the phone and looked hungrily at its screen. “You’ve had your hand in your pocket all day. Even when you were taped up. That was one too many times.”
Laurel was wavering on her feet. Danny wished she would faint and give Carl a clear shot.
“Let’s see who you’re trying to call,” Warren said, working at the tiny keys. “Or were you texting somebody?”
As Laurel’s eyes found Danny’s, Warren’s thumb stopped working at the keypad. He looked up at his wife, and a shudder went through him. Then he stuck the barrel of his gun into Laurel’s belly. “I knew that wasn’t my baby.”
“Warren?” Danny said softly. “Buddy?”
Shields laughed strangely, then tossed the cell phone to Danny. Danny caught it and looked down at the screen, which displayed a message beneath SENT MESSAGES. On it were five words written in the pseudo- shorthand of cell phone messaging:
U haf 2 kil hm!
“You have to kill him,” Danny said as though reading the message aloud, but he was speaking to Carl Sims.
“I guess there’s only one thing left to learn,” Warren said. “Who fathered the bastard in her belly.” Keeping his pistol pressed firmly against Laurel’s stomach, he reached down with his left hand, moved his computer mouse, and clicked a button.
“Warren, don’t,” Laurel begged in a voice close to breaking. “Don’t look.”
But he did. He stared at the screen like a man witnessing his own death. “No. Goddamn it…it can’t be.”
Danny expected the gun to swing toward him, but instead Warren clicked frantically at the mouse. “It’s not here! Doesn’t he fucking sign anything?” He swept the monitor off the desk with a crash.
“It’s over, Warren,” Danny said with relief. “You can’t find out what you want to know. Not tonight. Put down the gun, man.”
Shields stared at Danny as though reality had finally sunk in. After hours of insanity, he was no closer to learning the truth than he had been at the beginning. A glimmer of real hope sparked in Danny’s heart-
Then his cell phone began to chirp.
Warren’s eyes dropped to Danny’s pants.
As Danny cursed himself for forgetting to silence his phone, Warren seized Laurel’s neck in the crook of his elbow and dragged her around the desk with his gun jammed into her stomach. When he reached the point where Danny stood between him and the windows, he threw Laurel to the floor.
“Put up your hands!” he said, aiming at Danny’s chest. “I don’t want to kill you, Major, but I need to know what the sheriff’s telling you.”
Danny put up his hands.
Warren patted Danny’s pockets with his left hand. When he found the cell phone in the back pocket, he shoved his pistol hard beneath Danny’s sternum and fished out the phone with his other hand. Then he backed away, taking care to keep Danny between him and the windows, and flipped open the phone.
Warren didn’t yet understand what had happened with the phones, but he would in seconds. Danny prepared to dive onto Laurel, which would clear Carl’s line of fire and shield her from Warren’s revenge.
“Danny?” Warren said softly. “Look at me.”
Danny knew he should dive, but now that it had come to this, he found himself unable to do it. He had betrayed this man. And he couldn’t consign him to the grave without accepting responsibility for what he’d done.
Warren’s gaze cut through him like the eye of God, to the darkest reaches of his soul. Danny sensed no judgment in the gaze, though, only grief. A profound sadness that a man Shields had believed to be noble had turned out to be merely, even terribly, human.
“It was you?” he asked. “All along? It was you?”
Danny nodded once.
Warren flinched as though Danny had shoved a needle into his heart. “Why? Can you tell me that?”
Danny saw no point in speaking anything but the truth. “I love her.”
Shields seemed to take this explanation with equanimity. He looked down at Laurel, who watched him fearfully from the floor. It struck Danny then that there were four of them in the room: the woman; two men; and the unborn child, who might belong to either man. Perhaps the same realization struck Shields. Whatever emotion came to him, he could not endure it. He screamed something unintelligible, then swung the pistol at Danny’s head. Danny leaped out of its path, lost his balance, and rolled onto the floor. He’d planned to cover Laurel with his body, but she was too far away now. He clapped his hands over his ears and tucked into a fetal position, facing away from the windows.
Danny closed his eyes and prayed for death to take the right man.
Carl stared at the thermal imager like a snake watching a transfixed bird. Every atom of his instinct told him that the only red blob still standing represented Warren Shields. A moment ago it had been twice its current size-
“Blow the windows,” he said into his headset.
He put his right eye to the Unertl scope, closed it against the coming flash, and squeezed two pounds of pressure out of the rifle’s three-pound trigger.
The dim rectangles of the study windows flashed white in his left eye, and bright yellow light spilled across the lawn. Carl glassed the study with robotic efficiency, searching for Dr. Shields-
Searing flashes lit up the interior of the Shields house, then detonations like impacting mortar rounds rolled across the lawn.
Carl jumped to his feet and started running.
Even with his hands over his ears, Danny heard the shattering concussions of the grenades. When he felt confident there would be no more, he scrambled over to Laurel, who lay motionless on her back, her eyes closed.
“Laurel! Can you hear me? Are you hit?”
She didn’t respond. Blood was seeping through her top. She’d been hit in at least four places, the wounds widely dispersed. How was that possible? He’d heard only one rifle shot after the windows went down.
