Part 35 (2/2)

From outside: ”-locked in there with the-”

As he revved the blade inches from his cheek, he heard a percussion, and then a straw of light impaled the darkness.

A bullet hole.

Wrenching with all his might, he slashed at the dividing wall, then dropped the saw and smashed through the rear seat backs, a series of bullets skewering the cargo s.p.a.ce behind him. Panting, he scrambled over the console into the driver's seat.

Misha stood five feet back from the driver's window, aiming for Nate's head. So it would end here in the front seat of a Town Car. Nate had only an instant to wonder why Misha was standing so far back when he pulled the trigger.

Flinching away, Nate heard himself bellow.

Inches from his temple, the driver's window wobbled and spit out a chip.

Bullet-resistant.

Of course the boss's car would be bullet-resistant.

Misha fired again and again, aiming at the same spot.

Nate rammed the keys into the ignition and floored it, the Town Car leaping forward, fishtailing around, clipping the rolled-open barn door. As the a.s.s end of the vehicle swept past the men, they all leaped back except Pavlo. The rear b.u.mper swung within inches of his knees, but he held his ground, unimpressed, glaring through the rear winds.h.i.+eld, his craggy face and dead eyes promising, as the car accelerated away, that Nate's safety was only temporary.

Nate hurtled up the long driveway and careened onto the main road, spilling into the empty oncoming lane, wrestling the car back under control just in time to skid to a stop parallel to his parked Jeep. He stumbled out, across, in, his own set of keys at the ready.

The engine roared to life. Wiping sweat from his brow, his blood-sticky hands firm around the wheel, he aimed the hood at the glowing dotted line and clamped the pedal to the floor. Hurtling through darkness, he felt a sensation overtake him-that he was flying out of his own grave.

Chapter 55.

Three in the morning and Nate had just finished scrubbing Abara's blood from his hands. He'd sneaked back into the Bouquet Canyon house, careful not to awaken his father or the kids. Janie had stirred as he'd slipped past into the bathroom, but he couldn't bring himself to wake her yet to tell her what they had done to Abara.

Beneath the punis.h.i.+ng heat of the nozzle, Nate felt the reality of his situation settle in, and he emerged from the shower cloaked in a mood of black finality. Charles waited, holding his towel out for him and dripping blood on the clean tiles. Nate took the towel, his left arm quaking slightly. He refused to acknowledge the ache emanating from deep inside the muscle.

”I'm running out of options, Charles,” he said. ”And time. I gotta make a move. But I don't want to.”

Charles took this in solemnly, chewing a cheek. ”You were the guy on the beach,” he said, ”who dove into the waves and saved the girl.”

”I was.”

”But when we went over, you lost something.”

Nate was almost afraid to say it out loud. ”You mean the helicopter. When I didn't jump.”

”And with my mom,” Charles said. ”You could've told her I was dead. You were right there, parked at the curb. But she had to hear it from a stranger.”

Nate nodded. He was afraid to blink, to speak. When he did, his voice scratched his throat. ”That's why you've been here all this time,” he said. ”You've never forgiven me.”

”Of course I have,” Charles said. ”You've never forgiven you.”

”I don't understand,” Nate said. ”What's that have to do with this? This decision, now?”

Charles's face was speckled with dried blood, his lashes heavy with sand. ”You gotta decide for once and for all,” he said. ”Which guy are you? The guy on the beach or the guy outside my mother's house?”

Nate dried himself, taking a moment to flex his left hand. Charles's breath leaked through the blown-open lungs in his chest cavity. Nate dressed and hung the towel neatly over the rack. Placing his hand on the doork.n.o.b, he paused.

”The guy on the beach,” he said.

He and Janie sat the way they used to as college kids, Indian style on the bed, facing each other. The mood tonight, however, was anything but hopeful.

Nate couldn't get the image of Abara out of his mind. He thought of that lonely house, the single plate resting on the kitchen counter.

”Good people keep getting killed because of me,” he said.

”No,” Janie said, her face still ashen from Nate's report. ”People are getting killed because of Pavlo Shevchenko. Don't let guilt confuse the issue.”

”It can't keep going this way. I won't let it. And at any minute the choice is gonna be taken away from me. As soon as my fingerprints are discovered on that saw, I'm done. I will have killed a federal agent-”

”You can go in, explain-”

”And they'll believe me? Even if it's true, I can't explain everything away. There's too much against me now, Janie. You know that. Abara was my best-my only-advocate. And before they killed him, they forced him to call in and say he was wrong about me. Then his body? My prints? Along with everything else? It's done.”

”But the case they're building against Shevchenko-”

”They're not gonna be able to tie him to those murders. He covers his tracks too well. And we can't keep hiding forever. You know that too. It's only a matter of time before his men track down you and Cielle here. Or anywhere else. You can't live like this. Our daughter can't.”

Janie's breathing quickened. ”So what's that leave us?”

The starlight softened the room's edges, and he thought about the previous night here in this bed, how everything had been safe and promising then. A fantasy, sure, but one well worth having.

He touched her cheek gently. ”No way out but through.”

”What are you gonna do?” She pulled away. ”Go to war?”

He said nothing.

She coughed out a one-note laugh and looked to the ceiling. ”With what? Yourself? No weapons? You had one gun, and they took that.”

”I'm going now to figure that out.”

She covered her mouth, a gesture that might have looked prudish if not for her anguish.

”I've made so many mistakes,” Nate said. ”But the ones I regret the most are the things I didn't do. The things I let fear keep me from doing. But now, with this”-he lifted his left arm, rotated the weakened wrist-”and everything else. There's none of that. No more not doing.” He moved her hand down away from her face and held it in her lap. ”I will not go to my grave knowing that these guys are after you and my daughter.”

She squeezed his hand, hard, holding on. ”What are you gonna do?”

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