'So there's another shot. A better shot.' Walker pressed the Redhawk to the hollow of Dolan's eye. 'Do you have it here?'
Dolan tried to recoil but had little room to move. The chair slid a little, and Walker moved with it, applying pressure to Dolan's face. The glass sliding doors hissed open, and they drifted into the test suite, the monkeys sending up a racket.
'Lentidra,' Dolan said. 'Yes, it's here. But it's too late.'
'What do you mean it's too late?' Walker said.
'He's in liver failure? Sam?'
'So we give him the good shot. We fix it.'
'Viral vectors can't work if the target organ is in failure. The administration of the transgene'll just damage the liver further. Gene therapy has to start earlier-it's not a late-stage cure.'
A long pause. At the end of the line, Tim was silent; he'd been listening, too.
Walker tensed his mouth, scratched his head with the barrel of his gun. He said, into the phone and to Dolan, 'I don't believe you. Put me through to Sam's room.'
Tim said, 'I can't do that.'
Walker fired a shot across the suite-a computer monitor jumped, the bullet embedding in its side. The monkeys, bizarrely, silenced.
Tim said, reasonably, 'Everyone okay in there?'
'Put me through to Kaitlin at the hospital, or so help me God I'll kill this motherfucker.'
'I'll see what I can do.'
A few seconds later, Walker got a ring, and then Kaitlin's voice. He said, 'Kaitlin, it's very important you answer me straight right now. Did Sam's liver give out?'
'He's in a coma, Walk.' She sounded deadened, on the far side of a sobbing jag. 'I want to hear his voice. Just one more time. But they said I'm not gonna get to.'
Walker felt his forehead crinkle. 'How long's he have?'
'Morning. Maybe.'
He waited until whatever was fucking with his throat subsided. 'I'm sorry.'
An indelicate nose blow. 'You didn't do it.'
'No,' he said. 'For being a coward. Like you said.'
Her voice took on a note of suspicion. 'Where are you? What's going on?'
'Are you high up? In the building?'
'Third floor.'
'Get to a south window.'
Sounds of Kaitlin running. She jerked in a breath. 'Oh, honey.'
'When the kid comes to, tell him I said he did good.'
'Walker, they don't think he's gonna come to.'
He hung up, crouched, and lowered his head, palming the back of his skull. Dolan started to say something, and Walker raised the Redhawk so it aimed at his face. His voice came low, gruff. 'Do not say anything right now.'
Between his feet the cordless rang. He picked it up.
Tim said, 'You're a straight shooter, Walker. Here's how it is: We don't have anything to give you. You don't have anything to get. Dolan can't do anything for you anymore.'
Walker started pulling Xedral vials from his pocket and throwing them against the far wall, one after another. A few of the monkeys reacted with anxious little calls. 'How do you know I won't just kill this motherfucker anyway?'
'I don't. But you'd be killing the wrong guy. He wasn't in on Tess's murder.'
'He was in on the rape.'
'He was there.'
'Being a coward don't buy you a pass.'
'Sounds like Kaitlin just gave you one.'
Walker threw another vial, finding the tinkle of breaking glass oddly pleasing.
'You're boxed,' Tim said. 'There's no way out that doesn't wind up at a dead end.'
Walker said, 'Dead ends don't scare me.'
'You've got one move left. You let Dolan live, you walk out of there, we sit down with the AUSA and have a long talk about extenuating circumstances.'
'Like they did for you.'
'Like they did for me.'
Walker laughed. 'Somehow I don't think I'll get the same treatment.' He set down the phone and turned to Dolan. 'All you fucking people. When the chips are down, you hide behind them.'
Dolan said, 'You're right. But I had nothing to do with killing your sister. And I never would have. Stop and think what your sister put her life on the line for. I didn't see it until I came in here tonight. Sam was going downhill fast. She risked everything that mattered to her to give him something to die for. This drug my father and brother were trying to bury, she was gonna ransom with her own blood. For three hundred thousand people. This could be what Sam did with his life. Which is a lot more than my brother did with his. Or my father's doing with his fucking companies. With my company. Tess died trying to get the right AAT vector to the market. Now I'm the one who knows what it is and how to do it.' His jacket had fallen open, and a few wet splotches appeared on his T-shirt at the stomach. He bucked his head to wipe his nose against his shoulder. 'Just give me a chance to set things right. Give me a second chance.'
Walker killed the cordless phone. 'No one ever gave me one.' He leaned forward. Dolan recoiled, but Walker just reached into Chase's leather jacket and removed the cell phone from the inner pocket and set it on the counter. 'People like me end up answering for your mistakes. We work your jobs, we take your falls, we fight your wars.' He released the wheel of the Redhawk and spun it, watching the primers blur into a ring. 'Assholes like you make big fucking messes. But it's guys like me gotta clean 'em up for you.'
He jerked his wrist. The cylinder slammed home, and the gun stilled, its sights centered on Dolan's forehead. A dark voice spoke to Walker, a distant song.
A temptation, not a curse.
A return to what had always been natural.
A cold wind riffled the vinyl SWAT jackets and blew a swirl of trash into a minicyclone at the bus stop. Behind the three-vehicle-deep barricade, the crisis negotiator paced back and forth, tapping a black cordless against his thigh, the members of his team giving him space. At the makeshift command post behind two giant armored personnel vehicles, Tim and Bear huddled with Miller, Tannino, and the LAPD SWAT lieutenant. The other ARTists were arrayed around the building and in the stairwells, their olive drab flight suits standing out among the SWAT members with their black balaclavas, goggles, and Colt CAR-15s. Snipers from SWAT's D Platoon had rolled, regarding the various entrances through the three-by-nine scopes of their bolt-action Remington 700. 308 cals. The firepower assembled on site reminded Tim of a military operation; they were equipped to take down a small army.
Still pacing, the negotiator raised the phone to his face. Tim watched him walking and waiting as the phone rang and rang.
'What the hell's he doing in there?' Tannino said.
A movement on the blocked-off stretch of Wilshire caught Tim's eye. A blue-and-white ambulance motored up the center of the empty street. He watched it as the SWAT lieutenant and Miller crunched endgame scenarios. The ambulance approached the LAPD officer working the sawhorses a half block up. Tim pivoted, regarding the two fire department rescue vehicles parked on the far side of the fire engine.
'Who called for a civilian ambulance?' His question went unanswered amid the banter, so he repeated it, louder.
The lieutenant said, 'No one. Ours are right there.'
The cop waved the ambulance through. Tim said, 'Then you'd better have someone stop that vehicle and ID the driver.'
The lieutenant spoke into his radio, and two black-and-whites lurched forward, halting the ambulance's
