opposite foot, managing to land it between his wrist and elbow.
Kuhl’s fingers opened, dropping away from the knife handle. Lurching forward, his head bowed, blood and saliva pouring from his mouth, the Killer propped himself on his knee, tried to thrust himself to his feet, failed, and started to topple forward.
Ricci caught him by the front of the shirt on the way down.
“Here, murderer,” he said, the knife still sticking out of his thigh. “Here’s a little help for you.”
He hauled Kuhl up onto his rubbery legs, simultaneously turning him toward the terrace, forcing him backward, standing him up against the glass doors, using his own weight to prop Kuhl’s limp, weakened body against the doors as he reached out over his shoulder, slid one of them partially open by its handle, and again pushed him backward — through the opening now, into the wind and rain, back and back and back across the terrace to the guardrail.
The rain swirling around them, lashing them, washing their blood down onto the terrace floor so it mingled together in flowing, guttering cascades that went spilling over the lip of the terrace into the drop, Ricci held the Killer up and looked into his face, shaking him hard, his fists around the bunched wet fabric of his shirt, holding him, holding him there against the iron guardrail above the vertiginous, storm-swept plunge of the canyon and staring into his eyes for one last, long moment of time.
“You son of a bitch,” he said. “You son of a bitch, we did this to each other.”
And pushed him over into the abyss.
Thibodeau had heard the crashing in the room on the cabin’s second floor and wondered what in the name of everything holy was going on.
Upstairs now, working his way down the hall past Derek Glenn, Julia being hustled out of the cabin behind him, it was the room’s sudden dead silence that had gotten his mind racing everywhere at once.
Thibodeau tried to push in the door, found it blocked, and ordered the men behind him to put the ram to it.
Moving through the splintered doorframe into the room, he noticed two things that made his eyes grow wide.
The first was Ricci sitting on the floor, rain blowing over him through an open terrace door. He had propped himself back against the wall, a wide pool of blood under his right leg, a slick reddened knife on the floor beside him.
The second thing Thibodeau noticed was that he was alone.
Thibodeau put away his questions for the moment, rushed across the room, and crouched over him.
“You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, gonna need something to stop the flow,” he said. Then he saw that Ricci had gotten open the tac pouch on his belt and was struggling to fish something from inside it. “What’re you looking for in there? I can help you get it out…”
Ricci looked at him, hesitated a beat.
“Wound-closure gel,” he said, nodding for him to reach inside.
THIRTEEN
Entering her dining room, Ashley Gordian glanced up at the wall clock above the Sword op’s head and was amazed to see that morning had turned into afternoon. What sleep she’d gotten since Julia’s disappearance had come only when she let her guard down against it, and in each instance she hadn’t kept her eyes shut for long. Ten minutes here, fifteen there, she wouldn’t let herself yield to more than that. Ashley’s reluctant sub-missions to fatigue had felt more like automatic power-downs than true periods of rest — the physical equivalent of going offline for system maintenance, she supposed — and between them she had lost all sense of time’s orderly progression. Yet afternoon it was. The hands of the clock had moved on since she’d last been in the room… even if the Sword op hadn’t since she’d last entered it.
Seated below it at a mahogany lowboy he’d been using as a workstation, his shirt sleeves rolled up, he was hunched over the laptop computer in front of him, staring at the screen. Ashley wasn’t sure of his name; his ID tag was on his jacket, and his jacket was slung over the back of his chair. There were so many of her husband’s security people around the house and its grounds giving everything of themselves, working well past their scheduled shifts, defying exhaustion in ways she couldn’t fathom. Some were men and women Ashley recognized, others were people she’d never seen until a day or so ago, but all wore the same look of implacable resolve on their faces. Her admiration and gratitude went beyond words, and she’d provided whatever assistance she could, making them as comfortable as possible, bringing them food and drinks to keep them going, little things that made her feel useful in a way she paradoxically thought almost selfish. She needed to do something, needed to participate, even though her participation hardly seemed to measure up to their efforts. The alternative was to succumb to the crushing sense of futility and helplessness that always seemed to be lurking just past the next moment.
Now she stepped over to the op, noticed the remains of a pizza crust on a paper plate at his elbow, and placed a hand on his shoulder to catch his attention.
“I brought you this slice hours ago,” she said, taking the plate. “You look like you haven’t budged since.”
He glanced blearily up at her from the screen.
“Hasn’t been that long,” he said. And paused. “Has it?”
The puzzled expression on his face made Ashley smile in spite of herself.
“Why don’t you take five,” she said. “I can set you up on—”
She broke off, a stir in the adjoining living room turning both their heads toward its entrance. Everyone in the makeshift command post was suddenly moving, exchanging hurried questions and answers, bringing cell phones out of their pockets.
Ashley felt sweat slick her palms, felt her legs tremble beneath her. Whatever news had broken and spread through the command center like a wave was critical, good or ill, and the op beside her could not hide his recognition of it.
“Mrs. Gordian.” He was suddenly on his feet beside her, motioning toward his vacated chair. “Ma’am, why don’t you wait here while I—”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m okay, really. Let’s just get in there.”
She rushed toward the living room, almost running into Megan Breen as they converged on the entry from opposite sides.
Megan was gripping a cellular in her hand, tears streaming from her eyes. It was the first time Ashley had ever seen her cry, and the realization seemed to bring her heart to a standstill.
Then she noticed the smile beneath her tears, wet with her flowing tears, and took what she would always remember as the deepest breath of her entire life.
“Ashley—”
“Meg—”
“Julia’s on the phone,” Megan said, and held it out to her. “She’s on the phone, they’ve found her… and she wants to say hello to her mother.”
The Sedco oil platform. Offshore Gabon. Roger Gordian stood behind a podium in the glare of high-mounted kliegs, grim eyes staring from faces where smiles were to have held, silence around him where festive music was meant to have been played.
In each of his pants pockets was a folded sheet of paper. On each sheet, a different speech: the one near his left hand a scripted concession to madness, the other written in stubborn, unrelenting hope of its defeat.
Gordian glanced at his watch, then back at the solemn faces lined in rows before him.
Moments to go, and bitterness sat at the back of his tongue.
He would mouth the words that needed to be spoken. For his daughter’s life, for the slimmest
