Part 15 (2/2)

And again. He couldn't hit me, but I couldn't get a clear shot at him.

He was on the top floor. Was there a fire escape? He turned to look for the exit and I got my first solid shot off at him, up through the railings. I hit his calf. Straight through the muscle; I missed the bone or it would have blown him over.

He swore and lurched around to fire again.

Last bullet. I squeezed off a shot, but I was ducking as the shotgun came to bear on me again.

I dropped the HK at the same time as I heard the click of his pin on an empty chamber, and I was on him even as he tried to use the shotgun like a club.

With his leg useless, he couldn't push back against me. I lifted him. We were staggering across the room, picking up speed. There was a panoramic window in front of us.

I stopped. He didn't.

I saw him clearly, in shocking detail amidst the sparkling shards of gla.s.s. The exact point at which it registered with him that he was about to die, the widening of the eyes. The scream. An age later, the thud and the sudden silence.

I ran back down. It seemed much further. Five floors. The end of the adrenaline rush made me weak.

Emily screamed again when she saw me. I realized what I must look like, but I couldn't help that.

”They're gone, Emily,” I said, trying to soothe her. ”All gone.”

”Amber?”

I pulled my b.l.o.o.d.y jacket off and hugged her to me.

There were bullhorns sounding outside.

She was sobbing as I sat us down.

”Shhh. It's okay. It's okay,” I said. I was trembling with the aftereffects of adrenaline. ”You're safe now. I've got you. The police are outside. They don't know what's happened. It'll be noisy and frightening when they come in, but you're safe now.”

”Don't leave me.”

”I won't. We'll go out together. Let's just lie down here on the floor, okay? Close your eyes and cover your ears.”

We lay down.

Even with our precautions, the thunder and lightning of the stun grenades was disorienting. Emily cried, the noise thin, and I hugged her back against me as the SWAT team came pouring in. They were in full gear: Kevlar armor, helmets and black masks. They came from three sides at once, yelling and shouting, streaming up the stairs like large, murderous ants.

A couple of them pulled at our arms, trying to separate us. Emily refused; she wasn't letting go and they let us stay together as they hauled us to our feet. With a s.h.i.+eld of four of them pressed close around us, we were hurried through the shattered front door, Emily's face hidden in my s.h.i.+rt, wetting it with her tears.

We stumbled out into a strange, frozen silence. There were police cars scattered across the road, officers with guns crouched behind them. To one side an ambulance and the SWAT team transport waited, dwarfed by an armored army truck with its doors tightly closed.

Morales and Buchanan were standing in a group of uniformed police beside the truck. So was Colonel Laine. Our eyes met and the colonel gave me the smallest nod.

Medics pulled us into the ambulance. I shrugged off their attentions. As they closed the doors, I saw Knight's face in the sea of blue s.h.i.+rts.

He raised his hand and said something. It might have been ”well done, partner.”

Chapter 21.

TUESDAY.

I drove west, out to Red Rocks, and parked where I got a view back over Denver.

With the car door open I crossed my legs and rested my feet on the sill. Warm fall air blew across me, carrying with it the promise of coolness to come.

Morales and the colonel had held an emergency meeting, slamming down a news blackout around the case until Morales' carefully worded press conference.

Today's papers had run a great story. Gangs running successful underground clubs. Outsiders muscling in, killing staff, trying to take over. Police following clues, closing in. Hitmen cornered in a building, taking a child hostage. A textbook, surgical strike by the SWAT team. A neat, orderly operation all wrapped up. Move on folks, nothing to see here.

I'd mutually agreed with the police to resign, apparently, not that any newspapers bothered with that supposedly unrelated footnote.

Morales had praise showered on him from on high. Scuttleb.u.t.t said he'd been given the Captain slot in Major Crimes last night. He knew everything the army knew about me now, and had requested for me to be on call for him as a consultant. At least no one else in the police seemed to know, though he'd already said he would have to build a team in case of emergencies and they'd have to be briefed.

The colonel disappeared with the squad before anyone started asking questions about a tooled-up military team wandering around Denver. He was coming back for a meeting with me at the end of the week. Maybe that was how much time I had left free. Morales asking for me to be on call wasn't the same as the army agreeing to it.

Club Agonia was gone. I'd walked into the echoing building with a profound sense of unreality. The entrance with the mechanized head was gone, nothing but a gaping hole left. They'd opened up huge shuttered windows on the upper floors and stripped all the black gla.s.s panels already. Bright sunbeams slanted across the empty sh.e.l.l, turning the dusty air into a slow honey. Workers were noisily dismantling the giant frames that had held the look-through gla.s.s while others carried stock out to waiting trucks. I saw Domine's elegant desk and chairs stacked in a corner, waiting for loading.

It all looked so everyday, almost tawdry, like a stage magician's props exposed to the glare of sunlight. As if everything had been an illusion. My fingers ran over the skin of my neck, and I felt a p.r.i.c.kle of pressure. No, not all illusion.

The site manager hurried over and shepherded me out. ”It's not safe in here, ma'am,” he said. I snorted.

As I started to move away, someone called.

”Ms. Farrell?”

I turned. It was difficult to be sure, but I thought it was the highwayman who had brought champagne for us in Domine's office. He was in jeans and a sweats.h.i.+rt, looking like the college kid he probably was.

”I wasn't sure it was you,” he said, stumbling over the words. He meant I wasn't dressed as a vampire. ”Domine thought you might come.”

I gave him a tight, polite smile, which was as much as I could manage. ”She's not here?”

”She's gone on to Albuquerque,” he said. ”We're moving.” He mumbled and waved a hand at the building. ”Well, obviously.”

I sighed. ”I came to tell her I'm sorry. I failed.”

He turned his head aside and nodded. He took an envelope from his pocket. ”She left this for you.”

Inside was her card with her cell number. There was no written message. Pinned through the top corner was a single, s.h.i.+ny barb from an angoisse.

I got out of the car and sat cross-legged on the hood to take full advantage of the breeze. Between Domine and Master Liu, I'd had my fill of mysterious warnings and messages this last week. I needed to keep it simple. There were things going on in my head and my body that I'd have to deal with. The opportunity to do that would be a privilege. Just at the moment, my head was full of staying human, free and sane. They all felt intimately related.

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