that the women’s pubic hair had been painted in.
He heard Reggie exhale with relief. Then he saw her roll her eyes in disbelief.
He motioned to her that he was moving into the kitchen. She nodded her okay and followed him.
Justin went through the doorway. The first room of the kitchen had a small stainless steel table and cabinets on all four walls that were stockpiled with liquor. The al Rahman family clearly did not follow the nondrinking dictates of the Muslim religion.
He glided into the next room, where the light was on. The first thing he noticed was the enormous stainless steel eight-burner stove that dominated the room. The second thing he saw made him turn away and made his stomach lurch. He turned toward Reggie, who had seen it, too. She had gone ghostly white. Justin reached out to touch her arm but she pulled away. The skin on her face was drawn tight and her eyes seemed to sink into their sockets, her breath was coming in short, thick gasps, but she nodded at him that she was okay. He turned back to the center of the room.
Four Arab men and two women were lying on the floor in a pile. All of their throats had been cut.
He told her to wait, not to move, and he made a quick search of the rest of the downstairs of the house. There was no one, either living or dead.
He made his way back to the kitchen, took her arm and guided her back to the foyer and the bottom of the stairway.
“The Realtor says there are fourteen rooms on the second floor and twelve on the third,” he told her. “We’ll go up together. At the top, you go left, go to the end of the hallway and work your way back, room by room. I’ll take the top floor.”
“Got it.”
“Reggie, be careful. It seems like we’ve missed him, but we don’t know that for sure.”
“Okay.” That seemed to be as articulate as she could manage.
They tiptoed up one flight. At the landing, he nudged her to the left and he kept climbing. Justin followed the same plan he’d just given Reggie. He went left, to the room at the end of the hallway, nudged the door open with his foot, stepped inside. Nothing. The same with the next room he came to. And he did the same at the third door. Stepped inside to a lavish bedroom suite. The front room was empty. The master bedroom wasn’t.
Sprawled on the bed, lying on and tangled in blood-drenched sheets and blankets, was a man he was certain was Mudhi al Rahman.
Justin stepped forward to the body. There was no point in checking vital signs. The man had been shot several times in the chest and face. Whoever had killed him had been brutal and thorough.
Justin was overwhelmed by a sense of emptiness and defeat. He’d lost his witness. Lost his proof.
He’d lost.
Justin sagged. Took a step back. .
And felt a prodding at the back of his neck. He didn’t need to be told what it was that was pressed against his spine. A gun barrel. Justin closed his eyes.
“Drop the gun,” Special Agent Hubbell Schrader said quietly. “Drop it now.”
Justin followed instructions. There was no other play.
The FBI agent poked Justin again. “Move away from the bed,” he said.
Justin moved until Schrader told him to stop. There was one goal and one goal only now: stay alive as long as possible and hope that something happened to interfere with the inevitable.
The gun in Schrader’s right hand didn’t waver, it stayed pointed straight at Justin’s head, while Schrader used his left hand to toss a second pistol on the floor by Justin’s feet.
“Bend down and take it,” Schrader said. “It’s empty, so don’t get any wild ideas.”
Justin crouched and picked up the gun. At the very least, he thought, he’d have something he could throw. Not much of a chance but better than nothing.
Schrader indicated the second gun. “If you don’t cooperate I can set it all up after you’re dead just as easily. So please don’t try anything. I’m already exhausted.”
“You want it to look like I shot him?”
“Very good,” Schrader said.
“Why?”
“Paranoid cop goes psycho,” the agent said. “Driven over the edge by treatment at Gitmo. I can see the headline now. Maybe ‘terrorist cop’ instead of psycho. It could go either way.”
“It’s over,” Justin said. “It’s too late for you. They know what’s going on.”
“Do they?” Schrader said with a smirk.
“You know how it works. You got in over your head, you trusted the wrong people. If you cooperate, it’ll go a lot easier on you.”
“I am cooperating,” Special Agent Schrader said, the smirk still on his face. “And you know what drives me crazy?”
“What?” Justin asked.
“Talking. Happens in movies and television all the time. Too much talking. I never had that urge.”
“What urge?”
“The need to explain. I just like to get things over with.”
There was no warning from Schrader, it was Justin’s instinct that made him move. He didn’t get far, just managed to twist his body because he sensed what was coming. The movement saved his life, at least momentarily, because Schrader fired without another word. Justin felt the fire in his left side. It spun him around and took his breath away. His hand reached for the wound at the same time he stumbled against the corner of the room, as if somehow his fingers could stop the flow of blood. They couldn’t.
Justin didn’t look up at Schrader. He didn’t want the smirk to be the last thing he saw.
So Justin didn’t see the smirk on Schrader’s face fade when he heard the word “Freeze!”
Reggie Bokkenheuser stepped into the bedroom, her gun aimed at Special Agent Hubbell Schrader. “Put it down,” she said.
His gun didn’t waver. It stayed pointing directly at Justin. Schrader took two quick, dancer-like steps to the side, swiveled his head to the right to glance back at Reggie.
“Shoot him,” Justin said.
She was frozen.
The smirk came back on Schrader’s face. To Justin he said, “Don’t get your hopes up. She’s not going to shoot.”
“Kill him,” Justin said. “Kill him now.”
“You won’t shoot,” Schrader said to Reggie. “Will you?”
There was no movement. The expression on the agent’s face turned into a full-fledged smile. He nodded toward Justin, a brief gesture of respect, an acknowledgment of a game well played. Justin tried to gather his legs for a lunge, if he could move maybe Schrader would miss, there was a chance the next bullet wouldn’t be fatal, and Reggie would have a chance to take him out. He prepared to fling himself sideways but he knew the burning in his side would slow him down. And the smile on Schrader’s face said it didn’t matter anyway, he wasn’t going to miss.
And then from downstairs there was a crash. A door being busted open. Footsteps running, many sets.
Justin heard someone, a woman’s voice, scream, “FBI! Jay, can you hear me?! Can you hear me, Jay?!”
Schrader looked disbelieving but still the smile didn’t fade completely. He had shifted his gaze toward the noise downstairs, it was impossible not to, but his inattention didn’t last long. Justin shifted his weight, screamed when the pain came, and threw himself directly at the agent, hurled his body as best he could, but he knew he’d blown it because Schrader had plenty of time to recover and fire. The agent was going to get him in midair, he wasn’t even going to get close, then Justin heard a gun go off, waited to feel the agony again, but it didn’t come. He looked up, saw Schrader staggering backward, heard another shot, watched Schrader go down. Justin looked at Reggie, whose arm was still extended, her gun still pointed at the agent, and she fired a third time, and then Wanda Chinkle burst into the room, followed by three FBI agents, guns in hand.
“Drop it!” Wanda screamed. “Drop it now!”
Justin saw Reggie release her gun and let it fall to the floor, and then watched her being forced to her knees. Two of the agents had their weapons pointed at her, Wanda and the fourth agent had theirs pointed straight at
