I dressed again and put the vest on beneath my jacket, making certain the straps were snug and that the Kevlar wouldn't creep up my chest if I had to run or crawl or jump. I stuffed the rest of my things in my bag and took it out to the rental car that had been left behind for me, stowed everything in the trunk. Then I put the SIG in a jacket pocket, the PDW under my arm, and closed up the house, shutting off the lights and locking all the doors. When the owners returned from Bermuda, there'd be no sign that we were ever there.
By my watch it was six minutes to twelve when I crossed the fence back into the preserve, and there was no sign of life anywhere as I walked. Naked branches scraped against each other in the wind, and the water whispered around the reeds, but I didn't hear any animals, and even the traffic from the road was intermittent and distant. Diffused light came from distant streetlamps in the surrounding neighborhoods, reflected on the clouds.
When I passed the stand where I'd first surveyed the area, I swung out the stock on the PDW, dropped the handgrip from beneath the barrel, and flipped the selector to its three-round-burst setting. I settled the weapon against my shoulder, and moved on, slow and staying low, and I took twenty-three minutes to follow the path around to where I could see the house. I stopped and listened hard for almost five minutes more, and heard only traffic and wind and water, and I decided that he hadn't arrived yet. I didn't think he would have; it was the PIN code that had hobbled him – whatever he might have wanted to pull, he had to get the code from me, and that meant he had to play my game until I gave it up. After that, all bets were off.
The PDW isn't a long-range weapon, and that meant I would have to be fairly close to do it. If I'd been less ashamed of myself, I'd have asked Natalie to get me one of her rifles, and I'd have taken position in one of the bird-watching stands; but to do that would have been to admit to everything, and somehow I lacked the courage, and I realized something else, then: that murder is cowardice, no matter what anyone says.
On the east side of the rotting house was a small peninsula, and from its edge at the closest point, the door of the building was only ten yards away. I crept along the brush, hearing branches crack and break around me, and at the edge, lay down on my belly with a view of the building. The ground was cold and wet from the rain, and the smell of the earth and the wet and decomposing leaves was strong. Lying there felt like penance.
I listened to my watch tick and waited, felt the moisture of the earth seep into my clothes and body, felt myself growing colder and calmer. An earthworm, disturbed by my presence, made its way over my hand, and I felt its progress and didn't move. It seemed to know what it was doing, and after a while it buried itself again, unconcerned by my intrusion.
The first sound of his car reached me at three twenty-eight, and my watch had just marked three-thirty when I heard the engine die and a door open and shut. I lost the sound of him as he crossed from the car into the preserve, caught his steps again as he fought his way through the underbrush. The branches cracked and broke as he came, and he stopped abruptly, realizing the noise he was making, realizing, too, that he didn't have an alternative. The wood of the house creaked as he stepped onto the porch, and though his shoes no longer made a sound, the building betrayed his position with every move he made.
The water bounced what bare light there was back into the air, and when he came around the corner for the door, I could see him, though it wasn't easy. He had worn black in an attempt to make himself less visible, and had even covered the bandage on his face with ink or paint to keep the white gauze from becoming a target. With both hands he held a gun, and when he turned I confirmed it was a machine pistol, a Beretta. I had expected as much; he'd compensate for his new lack of depth perception with firepower, rejecting finesse in favor of volume.
When he reached the door he hesitated, then crouched along the hinge side. He took nearly a minute to open the door, and when he finally had it free of its swollen frame, he gave it a hard shove and pulled back, out of the line of sight. After five seconds of silence he peered into the darkness, leading with the gun, and then, satisfied I wasn't inside, he lowered the weapon and reached his free hand into his pocket. When it came out again, a thin beam of light shone into the house. He moved it methodically across the floors and walls, quickly but completely checking for tripwires or other booby traps. Then the light stopped moving, and I knew he'd seen the card.
He rose and stepped inside, and the house groaned with his entry, and the marsh sloshed against the foundation. Ripples rode out on the surface of the water.
I brought the PDW up to my shoulder, and put the sights on the doorway of the house, where his head would appear. My pulse raced against my temples, and the feeling made me think of Junot again, of his bone cracking with my blow, and blood filling the space between his brain and his skull, of pressure building until the organ began to collapse beneath the weight of it all.
He was standing in the doorway again, and I didn't know how he'd gotten there. With both hands on the Beretta, he swung it in a steady arc, searching the shore on either side, and I saw his head in my sights and I tried to put the pressure on the trigger. I thought of Scott and of Chris, thinking that would make it easier, but it didn't.
Something gave me away, some sense that he was in my sights or some noise I didn't know I'd made, but something alerted him. He turned and the Beretta found me, and I still couldn't pull the trigger, and then his left knee blew out and the gunshot followed it across the dark water.
Oxford wobbled, the Beretta dipping, and he looked to find my muzzle flash and I saw his hip rip open, and wood behind him splintered and flew apart, and he twisted with the force of the shot and collapsed onto his remaining knee, the Beretta bouncing out of his hands and into the water. He opened his mouth to scream and there was another flash and the back of his head came open, and the report echoed again.
He dropped to his side and rolled off the slope of the porch, into the water.
I found my feet and started running, following the path back to the bird-watching stand, the PDW in my hands. I came around the bend and saw Natalie by the ladder, and she didn't look at me as she helped Alena down from the platform. There was no sign of the rifle, and I guess it had already gone into the water, and I said nothing as Natalie guided Alena back to the path, handed her the cane once more.
I dropped the PDW and she hobbled forward and I caught her before she fell. Her arms went around me, her hands open and strong on my back, and her voice was thick and wet, choked with the tears that I hadn't seen in her eyes.
"He would have killed you or you would have killed him, and I couldn't let it happen. I couldn't let you die for me, you understand?"
Natalie stood still on the path, and she was blurring in my vision, and I almost didn't hear her saying that if we were going to go at all, we had to go now.
I was remembering Lady Ainsley-Hunter, and the way she had gone through Orin McLaughlin as if he wasn't there. I was remembering the look on Alena's face as she threatened to use her crutches to kill a man if he didn't give her what she wanted.
I thought of all the dead; of Oxford, and Scott, and Midge, and Chris.
And Junot, who had been between me and what I needed to do.
"I couldn't let you become me," Alena whispered.
"It's too late," I said, and I lifted her in my arms, and I followed Natalie as she led us back to her car, carrying the PDW and the cane, the evidence of all our crimes.