Holy God, what was I doing here? What was she?
I was about to follow her, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t step over the bones of the men we’d just killed.
“What are you waiting for?” she snapped at me.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t help picturing the guards’ wives and children, their mothers and fathers.
The smashed-up computer lay in a heap beside one of the bodies. I strode over to it and lifted the webcam. The little red light was still on, but I didn’t know if it was still sending images.
“This is your fault,” I said to the camera. “You put these people here. You asked them to die for you. You-“
Something smashed the camera out of my hand. It was a scorched human skull.
“For God’s sake!” Annalise hissed. “This is why you’ll never be more than a wooden man, Ray. You’re too fucking soft. Don’t talk to the targets. Don’t taunt them. Don’t be their fucking friends. It just makes things harder. Be a fucking professional. Treat them like objects.” She held up the skull and waved it in front of my face. “They’re glass figurines, Ray, and nothing more-some are very pretty, some not so much. But it’s your job to break some of those figurines, and you can never tell right away which ones that’ll be.”
I stepped away from the skull. “Don’t-“
She stepped toward me, and for a moment I thought she was going to rub the blackened bone against my face. “Does this bother you? Get over it. This is what we do. We make corpses. And maybe, if we make enough of them…”
She broke off. Her hand was shaking. She let the skull fall to the floor and cradled her hand against her chest. Her pain must have been intense. She scowled at the floor. I saw anger in her expression, and resentment, too. And regret.
The overhead sprinkler system turned on. I looked up to see water dousing the flames Able had blasted onto the ceiling. Annalise and I stood in the downpour while brilliant sunlight shone through the broken window.
“Boss-“
“Could you kill a priest, Ray? Could you kill a priest who only wanted to help terminally ill children? Could you kill a mother who was trying to protect her kids? Could you kill a five-year-old girl whose only crime is that some idiot adult cast a spell on her? I could. I’ve done all those things.”
“Annalise-“
“You’re good at this, Ray. You’re good at this job. And the society needs good people, more than ever. But you’re useless if you stop right before the finish line to moralize. We have a planet full of people to save. Get it? If someone gets between you and your target, there’s a planet full of people who will die if you can’t bring yourself to do your job.”
She clamped her mouth shut and turned away. I had the impression that she had a lot more to say, but she had to hold it back. She sealed it all off with anger.
Suddenly Annalise seemed very human to me, despite the grotesque injuries to her face. And she was right. If we stopped now, more little kids were going to die. Charles Hammer needed killing.
She marched into the hall. “Come on. We have to search the house.” I bent and touched one of the unfired Uzis. It was, as expected, cool to the touch. I lifted it and draped the strap over my neck. It was a weapon, but it didn’t make me feel any more confident about the coming fight.
I followed her into the hallway. There were three doors along the far side. I charged into the first one. It was an empty bathroom. Annalise opened the next. It was a laundry room and pantry. Farther down the hall was the kitchen, complete with gas range and walk-in fridge. Beyond that was a set of stairs leading to the second floor.
The upstairs was just a single room, broken up by a couple of support columns. There was a small cluster of exercise equipment, some bookshelves, some closets, a terrace with a monstrous charcoal grill, and an open futon against the far wall.
“This way,” Annalise said. She kicked open a door. It led to a ten-foot-long covered causeway that connected to the entrance of the tower. We strode across it, looking down at the jagged black rocks twenty feet below.
The tower was made of gray stone blocks. It was dark inside, with only a single electric light burning above.
Annalise sprinted up the wooden stairs. I followed as closely as I could with my injured leg. She seemed to have forgotten that I was supposed to be her decoy.
We ran up the spiraling stairs, never pausing at the landings or glancing out the windows. Annalise tugged a ribbon free, but I couldn’t see what it was. My shoe was filling with blood, and I started to fall behind.
Annalise finally reached the ladder at the top of the stairs. She climbed up, threw her shoulder into the trapdoor above us, and broke through it.
She flinched, turning her face down toward me. There was the boom of a shotgun. Annalise’s head snapped back, and I knew she had taken the blast in the side of her face. The ribbon fell from her fingers, and she sagged toward me for a moment. I heard the gunman rack a new shell into the shotgun.
Instead of falling off the ladder and through the center of the tower, Annalise stood up straight again. She was still fighting.
“No!” someone shouted in disbelief. “No!”
Annalise was halfway through the trap. She covered her face as another blast struck. This time, she had braced herself and didn’t even flinch.
Whoever was up there racked the shotgun once more. Annalise climbed out of the trapdoor. I was right behind her.
Charles Hammer backed toward the other end of the room. Annalise ran at him. He aimed the shotgun low, blasting at her feet. Her legs went out from under her, and she fell onto her hands. I heard her hiss in pain.
