sprig hung up against his ankle, and he grabbed it, stepping past then carefully releasing the tension. Through the patchwork of underbrush, his eyes picked up the faintest movement against the mud, a dark boot rising out of view. He straightened, but the foliage blotted out any movement ahead.
His stalker's instincts froze him. Someone else moved to his left just a few feet away-Tim sensed a vibration or the heat. With excruciating slowness, he pivoted to face his pursuer, his heels soundless in the mud. He lifted his. 357, dodging leaves on the rise. In the silence between the brush of leaves and the scratch of crickets, he heard it.
The faint yet undeniable click of a hammer cocking.
Behind him.
His body reacted before the sound registered as a thought. He spun, and as his own gun jerked in his grip, he saw the flare from a muzzle illuminating Walker's face, floating as if detached among the leaves. The gunshot, compounded, seemed unreasonably loud.
Chapter 66
Before Tim could comprehend that the explosion came in surround sound-from in front of him, behind him, and his own hands-a hot streak ripped his neck. His recoil spun him around to see Caden Burke drop to the mud howling and gripping his shoulder. Walker Jameson grunted-Tim's bullet had struck home-and a Redhawk six- shooter spit from the bushes, knocked loose. Walker's furious retreat sounded like a beast fleeing.
Tim couldn't go after him right away because he still had Caden loose and who he guessed was Wes up ahead. Putting his knee in Caden's back, Tim frisked him, pocketing his Ruger and a quaint switchblade. Walker's shot had missed Tim and embedded in the ball of Caden's shoulder, pulling Caden's shot off center and inadvertently saving Tim's life. When Tim cuffed him, Caden screeched with pain.
Tim scrambled back to reclaim the Redhawk. The stock was still warm and felt familiar somehow, molded to his hand. He stiffened at a sudden footfall, turning to source the noise. With a whooshing of leaves, Wes charged out of the brush-he'd circled during the commotion and come in from the west. Tim went airborne, extended in a sideways dive, using Walker's Redhawk to sight on Wes's substantial critical mass. A slow-motion clarity came over Tim as it often did in a close exchange. He saw the black hole of Wes's mouth looming behind the smaller black hole of a handgun muzzle. The moonlight's sheen on the glossy leaves misted from the waterfall. Caden bucking against the cuffs, snarling with pain and a sort of dumb puzzlement. Tim flashed on Tess, made to sit at gunpoint on her bed, made to wait as Wes Dieter-the man at the receiving end of the Redhawk that Tim now clutched-pressed steel to her temple. Her last-second, turned-head recoil before the shot, when fear turned to dumb instinct. Tim's finger tensed, and the trigger inched back, hammer ready to fall on one of Walker's titanium bullets. At the last instant before he struck mud, Tim moved the barrel three millimeters left and put a bullet through Wes's forearm.
Wes's gun spun from his limp hand, and he shrieked, plopping in the mud wallow, his gun echoing the splash an instant later. Tim retrieved the gun, cinched Wes's good wrist to his ankle with plastic flex-cuffs, and sprinted off after Walker, feeding Bear the update a mile a minute through the radio. Across the dark preserve and through the netting, he could see a line of blue and red lights moving in from the south.
Leaves and thin branches whipped Tim's face. He hurtled over a slope, and the netting appeared, blindsiding him and cradling his full momentum to a stop. Tim could see Bear at the parking lot, shouting at the incoming units to spread out. Working his way along the netting, Tim shoved into it at intervals to test its tension. Finally a shove yielded no resistance and he tumbled through, landing on the flat, sparse wetland outside the preserve. The net had been sliced cleanly through. Within a few acres' sprint lay Lincoln Boulevard and scores of side streets, the freeway a brief stretch beyond. The wind snapped the netting angrily behind Tim.
He focused on the dark sweep of earth, looking for any movement. Its lights off, a car peeled out from the wetlands border, too dark for Tim to discern its make or model. It turned a corner, and Walker was gone. Tim ran his hand along the slit in the netting, and it came away sticky. He raised his fingertips, and the moonlight brought the drops of Walker's blood visible.
He radioed Bear the car's approximate location and told him Walker was wounded. By the time he walked around to the building's entrance, Game had been cleared of clients and the area was swarming with deputies, cops, and ambulances. Thomas and Freed had already retrieved Wes and Caden and turned them over to LAPD, a pair of cops keeping the hit men company in their respective ambulances. Xavier glared at Tim from the back of a departing black-and-white.
Crossing the parking lot, Tim heard a pattering and looked down. Dime-size drops on the asphalt. He touched his fingertips to the ground, and they came up red, his prints marked with his own blood above the smeared stain of Walker's. He patted himself down, searching for the entry wound with no luck until a paramedic clamped a gauze pad to the side of his neck and tried to lead him to the rescue vehicle. Tim took over the pressure clamp and said, 'Just a second,' breaking toward Tannino and a cluster of deputies. The paramedic followed, voicing his concerns.
Tannino said, 'We're spreading out through the area, two choppers en route. The roadblocks are up, but we've got two freeway entrances within blocks. How bad's he injured?'
'Not bad enough that he couldn't haul ass out of there.' Tim readjusted the gauze on his neck; it was getting soaked through. The paramedic tugged at his arm, and Tim gestured he needed more time. 'But there's enough blood that he'll need some aid and a hole to curl up in. Work the news outlets, the hospitals, the drugstores. I want to know if there's a break-in at a veterinarian's. Our nose is on the trail, we're hot on his ass, and he's injured. We keep charging at him and closing down options until he's cornered. Now is the time to be relentless.'
'You got nothing on the vehicle?' Freed asked.
'It's a standard car-Toyota, Honda, something. It could have been that stolen Camry. Remember, he doesn't know we're eyeballing it.'
'The Camry just popped up in long-term parking at LAX. The driver's seat was soiled with ash. Word came in just before we left the post.' Freed let the disappointment sink in. 'Think he was faking that he went out of town?'
'No, he just left the car where we wouldn't find it for a few days so we'd be chasing our tails on the lead. Which of course, we were.' Tim bit his lip, tamping down his frustration and pondering his next move. 'The parking- lot ticket should be in the car. Check when he pulled in to the lot and see if any other cars were stolen out of there in that time frame.'
'Guerrera already handled it. None were. It's a pretty secure lot.'
'Goddamn it.' Tim hadn't realized how much he'd staked on getting a vehicle ID.
The paramedic quietly urged him, 'You need to let me take a look at that.'
'Okay.' Tim handed Tannino Caden's Ruger and Walker's Redhawk.
Tannino hefted the Redhawk. 'Walker's?' He took a look at the wheel and said, 'There's three bullets missing. You reported to Bear that he only fired once.'
'That leaves one unaccounted for. I fired the bullet that injured Wes Dieter.'
Tannino's dark brown eyes peered out beneath his bushy eyebrows. A few of the deputies bristled uncomfortably. 'You used Walker's gun on Dieter?'
Tim nodded and let the paramedic lead him over to the rescue vehicle. He sat on the tailgate.
'You are a lucky son of a bitch,' the paramedic said after a cursory examination. 'You just got grazed. A few stitches, is all. About a centimeter to the right, you'd be geysering.'
Tim shouted at Bear to seize Wes's computer as evidence, and the paramedic said, 'Can you hold still, please?'
Thomas jogged over from Caden's ambulance, his concern fading once he saw the paramedic readying a needle. 'You awright, Rack? Shit, you scared me a moment there.'
'You're making me nervous, Thomas.'
'What do you mean?'
'Since you gunfaced me.' Tim winced against the pinch of the needle. A few seconds' hitch and then numbness spread through the wound. 'We don't like each other much, right?'
Thomas's Adam's apple jerked, and he smoothed his mustache and looked away. 'No, I guess not.'
