‘You. You’re nothing. I’m a certified hero, you understand me?’
‘Absolutely. You sound like a tough and smart guy. I need your help if we’re going to catch whoever hurt Allison,’ Miles said. ‘You already took out Sorenson, and I think he’s the bad guy. Let’s make him talk.’
‘Unless you killed her, and the guy in the tub’s the good guy, and you’re not. How do I know?’
‘But I have the note, and he doesn’t,’ Miles said.
The guy considered. ‘You said you’re a patient. What’s the matter with you?’
‘Nothing much.’ His standard answer, given before he could think. The gun stayed close to his skull.
‘Define much. Tell me how crazy you are.’ He prodded Miles’s temple with the gun.
‘A dead guy follows me around,’ Miles said. ‘I killed him. By accident. I didn’t mean to. But I can’t shake him.’
‘I’m not crazy,’ the voice said with pride. ‘Not at all, not anymore. They fixed me.’ The gun’s barrel came off Miles’s head. ‘I’m better than you, I’m made of iron now-’
Miles lashed out hard with his hand, caught the guy solid in the chest. He stumbled back and Miles tackled him low, hit him hard in the guts twice. The guy bent in half, collapsed. Miles pried the gun from the guy’s hands, stepped back, keeping the Beretta trained on him. Miles fumbled for a lamp, flicked it on.
The gunman was just a kid, in his early twenties. His hair was military short, a dark burr, a face crafted of angles – sharp nose, razors for cheekbones, a pointed jaw. Two light patches of scarring scored his cheeks, the bridge of his nose bent slightly from an old break. He gasped for breath, glared at Miles with dark, scared eyes.
Miles aimed the gun at the kid’s legs. He hadn’t held a gun since he shot Andy. His hand started to quiver and he steadied the gun with a double grip. He concentrated on the weight of the steel in his palm, heard Andy’s snicker behind him.
‘Goddamn,’ the kid said. ‘Are you going to cry?’
Deep breath. ‘Stand up. Hands on top of head,’ Miles said. His voice cracked like a teenager’s. He couldn’t freak now, he couldn’t lose it now.
The kid obeyed, swallowing in air.
A step at a time. Miles patted down his pockets and jacket. The kid wore jeans and a denim jacket that still had the store tags on them. He wore slip-on sneakers, navy-colored. No wallet, no money in his pockets. No other weapon. A bracelet ID, the kind used at a hospital. Miles stepped back, kept the gun level. ‘Take off the bracelet. Toss it to me.’
The kid, with humiliation hot in his eyes, wrenched the bracelet free and threw it at Miles’s face. Miles caught the bracelet. It read RUIZ NATHAN, carried a nine-digit number on it, the term FROST-C.
‘Shoot him if you want,’ Andy said from the corner of the room. ‘Build yourself an entourage.’
‘Shut up,’ Miles said.
‘I didn’t say nothing,’ Nathan Ruiz said, his breath back in his lungs. ‘Man, you better shoot me now because I’ll kill you when I get the chance.’
‘You’re a very angry person.’ Miles lowered the gun, aimed it away from the kid, ejected the clip, cycled the round out of the chamber. He put the clip and the bullet into his pocket. Now his voice sounded calm.
‘That was stupid,’ the kid said. ‘You should have killed me. You don’t want to piss me off.’ Hot, hard fury was in his eyes, but a waver in his voice hid behind the bravado, and he didn’t charge at Miles.
‘I’m not going to shoot you and you’re not going to shoot me. You’re her patient, too, I think.’
He stepped back, bumped a coffee table, moved around it. He noticed a lipstick-red cell phone sitting on the table.
‘I went through his pockets.’ Nathan jerked his head at the bathroom. ‘He had Allison’s phone.’
That didn’t bode well. Miles jiggled the broken bracelet. ‘What’s Frost?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t sit around pondering the meaning of my ID bracelet.’ But Miles didn’t believe him; the kid’s gaze returned to the floor.
‘Why are you waiting for Allison in the dark with a gun?’
No answer.
‘I can haul your ass straight down to the police, Nathan.’
‘I took it from that guy – you said his name was Sorenson. Hit him over the head when he came in the back door.’ Now he stretched an empty hand toward Miles. ‘Give me the gun and the clip back and we’ll part ways.’
‘No. We’re going to talk to Sorenson. Together. Find out what he did to Allison-’
Then they heard a click from the front door lock. Not a key sliding into it; a pick, working the mechanism. Miles knew the subtle difference in the whisper of metal forcing metal.
Someone was breaking into the house.
ELEVEN
‘Allison?’ Nathan turned toward the door.
‘It’s not her,’ Miles said. Jesus, he’d unloaded the gun, that was stupid. He knocked over the lamp, fumbled for the clip in his pocket. ‘Get in the back bedroom. Lock the back door.’
Nathan Ruiz muttered, ‘The guards can’t find me, they can’t know she helped me-’ He spun on his heels, ran out onto the balcony, jumped over the railing. Miles grabbed at him and missed. Ruiz tumbled fifteen feet, landed in dirt and gravel, slid into the pinon trees, scrambled down the hillside that led to Cerro Gordo. Making a panicky, noisy escape.
The front door opened. Miles saw a tall figure in the spilled light from the toppled lamp, male, thickly built. Miles, retreating against the railing, saw a gun tracking his path.
Miles vaulted off the balcony. He heard the awful vroot of the silencer; the heat of the warped bullet passed above his shoulders, jetted near his scalp. He screamed.
He landed, twisted into the gravel, tumbled down against a pinon trunk, wrenched himself free. He sat on his butt and skidded down the rest of the way, down from the private driveway and the house onto the unpaved stretch of Cerro Gordo.
He heard the sound of a second muffled shot in the blackness above his head. To his left, feet pounded gravel; Nathan, panting as he ran. Follow him, and maybe they catch you both. So Miles bolted to the right, running hard and clean, zigzagging on the darkened road.
He heard a pursuer following him off the balcony, sliding down the pebbled slope. To his left lay a patchwork of houses, yards, undeveloped land. He jumped over an adobe wall, fell down into a side yard, ran past a kitchen window where light gleamed and children pleaded for chocolate ice cream for dessert. Over another fence, down a strip of driveway, the sound of his pursuer drawing closer.
Miles vaulted over a few more fences, then he ran into an open stretch of darkness. Armijo Park, he’d noticed it on the hike up Cerro Gordo. Flat, plenty of room for dogs to frolic, kids to run and play tag and football. He ran across the parking lot, caught his leg on a chain that fenced the park, sprawled on the grass. He could hear the pursuer and now a searchlight sparked from an approaching car, sweeping across the park.
He got up and ran, hard, not in a straight line, trying to dodge the circle of light that hunted him past the fence, past the playground, past the swings and slides. The clouds covered the sky and the gurgle of the Santa Fe River rose in the breeze. Usually the river ran dry or with the barest trickle, but now it surged with the recent heavy rains and snowmelt.
Get across the river, hide in the neighborhood, hunker down… Then his shoes hit the smooth glass of polished stone and he remembered the river still had to be across the street and below him, at least fifty feet, and he skidded into empty air.
Dead. Dead in a straight drop to rocks and then he crashed through a web of tree limbs. He grabbed at a cottonwood branch that smacked hard into his back, missed, fell, hit another one, rolled along its edge, arms flailing, fell again, thinking in a crazy jag, This’ll smash out my brains and I’ll be fixed.
But the next branch caught his weight, held, then cracked with a slow groan, and he let his weight slide down the creaking bough. Listened. No sound of a man still giving chase. The spotlight danced above him, a car
