Delay him. “How do you pretend to be a normal human being when you’re so clearly not, Sam? I trusted you, I was your friend…”
“Basic math: People are either help or hindrance.” He slid a sealed envelope from his jacket, tossed it on Ben’s lap. “If you don’t want to cooperate, Ben, so be it. I’ll show my cards.”
“I’m not interested.”
“You are. Open it.”
Ben tore open the envelope, pulled a set of photos free. The images hit him like a giant’s fist, crushing his lungs, flattening every thought in his brain.
Emily. Photographed with a telescopic lens, standing in the kitchen window in the Maui house in the moments before she died. Next photo. The same. Next photo, her clicking off the phone, looking pensive, almost looking up at the camera, a frown on her face. Then a photo of the kitchen window, a bullet hole marring the glass, Emily sprawled on the tiles.
The photos spilled from his hands onto the floor. His throat thickened, his chest tightened. “Why?”
Hector laughed.
“Why did you… Why?”
“You mean who?” Hector laughed, the cat batting the dying mouse.
“You goddamned murdering bastard-” Ben yelled, but then Teach bolted from the floor, threw herself at Hector. She closed a hard grip on his throat-Ben saw the astonishment in Hector’s eyes-and Ben jumped up, grabbing for Hector’s gun. Hector wrenched free from them both, kicked Ben in the face, sent him sprawling. Hector powered his pistol into Teach’s stomach and fired.
Teach collapsed, eyes open, mouth clenched. Ben got up again and Hector slammed the pistol into Ben’s face, kicked him in the stomach, to the carpet.
Lying on the floor, Ben’s eyes locked on Teach’s. She blinked once, twice, stopped, tried to speak.
“Jackie.” Hector watched Teach, the gun steady on Ben. When she stopped breathing he prodded her with the foot. “Dump her ass in the bedroom.”
Jackie picked up Teach’s body and carried her into the bedroom.
Ben crawled to the futon. He could hardly breathe. The gun. The pillow. His only chance to get away and to kill the son of a bitch.
“I suppose it’s rude to point out I’ve taken everything from you,” Hector said. “Your wife. Your good name, your business. Your dignity.”
“Why… why?” Make the smug murdering bastard believe he’d broken Ben. He got a hand under the pillow, crouching as though he feared a kick or a blow from Hector. He shivered, spat blood. Emily. She had changed him in life, and now that he knew the truth of her death he felt changed again. Determination filled him like an ache in his bones. Not a moment’s hesitation.
“You’re going to tell me where Pilgrim is, Ben, because I know you. You’re weak. You’ll trade me the information for an easy death. You want to look under Teach’s clothes, see the cuts?”
His fingers touched the gun. Hector would shoot him as soon as he drew it, and even if he stood his ground and managed to kill or wound Hector, Jackie would attack him from the other room. The odds were dismal.
But otherwise, they would kill him and wait for Pilgrim to return. Death was doing nothing. He thought of Pilgrim’s words: Sometimes the smartest move in a fight is to retreat.
“Delia told me all about New Orleans,” Ben said, plainly, and for a moment surprise slackened the clench in Hector’s face. Ben flung the pillow straight at Hector’s head and swung up the gun that lay underneath it. The feathers exploded from the pillow as Hector fired a shot through its center. But Ben emptied the clip in Hector’s direction as he ran for the window. Hector threw himself backward and behind the kitchen counter for cover. Ben’s spray of shots pocked the counter, the wall, punctured the refrigerator, as he ran the ten feet.
Hector rose to return fire but Ben hit the window.
The closed, dusty curtains caught Ben as he jumped through the glass, the heavy fabric protecting him from the jagged shards. His momentum carried him onto the landing. Stopping or taking the time for the stairs meant death, and he rolled without hesitation, slid himself under the metal railing of the walkway, dropped one floor to the grass below.
The apartment stood at a corner, and if he ran to his right he’d be wide open, they could shoot him from the second floor. So he ducked under the walkway, ran in the opposite direction, hit the corner. He could hear their footsteps starting to barrel down the stairs.
Try to do what they don’t expect. He turned a second corner; the chain link dividing the complex from the neighboring construction was just ahead. If he was lucky they’d decide he was still running north, when he was back-tracking south on the opposite side of the building. Ben went over the fence, ignoring the barbed wire that tore at his arms, his khakis.
“There!” Jackie’s voice, from the parking lot to his right. He’d been spotted.
Ben hit the sand and ran into the maze of the construction. The building was U-shaped, as it faced the street, its unfinished sides open to the elements.
Now he looked back. Hector was at the Navigator’s wheel, plowing through a gate on the side of the fence, Jackie running behind the SUV. Drawing his pistol.
Ben dodged wheelbarrows, stacks of drywall, an idle forklift. The Navigator roared behind him. He dodged to the left, and Jackie, behind the Navigator, fired.
It was either get shot or be run down. He kept going straight, the SUV always between him and Jackie, and running through piled debris where the Navigator couldn’t go. Supposedly. He glanced behind him and the Navigator plowed through the construction junk, sawhorses and broken drywall flying, ten feet behind him.
Ben jumped up onto the foundation and headed for an interior wall that was already erected; he needed cover. He went around the wall as gunfire hit it with a low, vicious whistle.
He heard the Navigator screech to a buckling stop, then boot heels hitting the concrete. He exited the other side of the shell-a clear path all the way to the next chain-link fence on the opposite side of the lot.
More than enough room for Hector or Jackie to shoot him. But there was nowhere else to go. You can’t outrun him forever and your gun is empty. He’d counted the bullets, like Pilgrim taught him, and the news wasn’t good.
He ran, and louder than his own panting he heard the pounding of footsteps behind him.
Several yards beyond the chain link, he saw a knot of men and women waiting in the shelter of a Dallas Area Rapid Transit bus station. He launched himself onto the fence, using a pole to haul himself upward. Now he spotted a ditch breaking the land between the site and the bus stop.
He scrabbled over the fence, went head over heels, and the shots boomed, one hitting his shoe-a violent jerk rocked his foot-another shot hitting his chest like a hard kick. A third shot nailed the metal pole that lay against his stomach; it thrummed from the force as though an invisible man kicked it. Ben fell, headfirst, stayed low and rolled, went into the ditch. Water and mud, runoff from the site, smeared the bottom.
Ben sucked breath into his lungs, staggered to his feet, heard a man saying, “What the hell?” A woman screamed, and yelled in Spanish, “Gunshots, I heard gunshots.” Ben ran down the ditch, staying low, bending low to crawl through a drainage section that barreled under the street.
The crowd-someone would be calling the police. Please, God, he hoped. He eased out of the opposite end of the drain and clambered up the side of the gulley. He found himself in a vacant lot, with a large sign announcing more office space soon to come.
No sign of Hector. They might have fled as soon as they saw witnesses. Hector would not want anyone identifying him. Hector would be running.
Ben groped for his cell phone. Gone. He remembered Jackie had taken it.
Blood welled from the laces of his running shoes. The pain in his chest throbbed and he probed his flesh, half-afraid to find a bullet hole. His chest ached to the bone, as though it had taken a hammer’s blow. A tear in his shirt pocket. He found a hard rectangle beneath the hole. Pilgrim’s small sketchbook, with the drawings of the young girl, wore a bullet embedded in the leather cover.
He had to find Pilgrim, but he had to get off the streets. He was bloodied and muddied and memorable.
He ran toward a convenience store and the alley behind it.
It was a surprise to learn that homeless people had cell phones. A group of three men stood behind the store. They stopped talking, giving Ben a suspicious glare as he approached them.
