Does Charles know about it all? He must have told her that someone had been looking at the secret account. Is he in on the murders? Did Amber tell him? Did he have anything to do with Maggie Prestwick’s death? Does it matter? I don’t think I even care now.
And only after she botched my murder did Amber see she was at the limit of her power. She needed professional killers to kill me. The risk of hiring unknowns — who could blackmail her — was too great. Who to turn to? Daddy. Because she needed him. Because blood was thicker than water. A rapprochement. Oh, Amber. It had to be you.
I move the gun sight from him to her.
And I hold it. Hold it. My finger on the trigger. The sight between her shoulder blades. For a second. Amber’s fair face. Her golden hair.
Beautiful.
Another long second.
A squeeze.
And then.
And then I release the tension on the trigger.
No, Amber, you will not make me do the wrong thing again. I was weak before. I failed. In Ireland. But not here. Not this time. Some other way.
I begin lowering the gun. A man at her dad’s table sees me, reaches inside his jacket, pulls something out.
I finally breathe.
A blast like a firecracker.
The man next to me is thrown backward into a woman holding a champagne glass. Blood gushes from his back. There is a ghastly silence and then people start to scream. The other man beside Amber’s father draws his gun, begins to shoot. The men next to the senator and the congressman pull out their guns, shoot across the room at Amber’s father’s table. Panicky fast shots thumping into the walls. Shooting from all directions, all around.
People begin screaming, diving for cover. At least half a dozen men now are shooting at once, seemingly at random, in a panic, at me, everywhere. Bullets from semiautomatics and big-caliber revolvers, the sound horrendous in the enclosed space of the ballroom. People yelling, terrified, running, trampling one another, falling to the floor. A bullet hits a spotlight and a fire starts behind the band. The fire alarm goes off.
Charles and Amber have dived to the floor.
I drop a smoke bomb.
Confusion, more gunshots.
The sprinklers start spraying water and the water makes the lights fuse, flicker, go out.
Now the screaming really starts.
Yellow emergency lights come on above the fire exits. I run for one.
I sprint across the darkened room, unhindered, untouched. Something comes whizzing over my head and crashes into the wall. There’s the sound of shooting and a yell to cease fire. Not an unarmed person left isn’t screaming, isn’t diving under the tables.
I push on a metal bar and the door flies open. I run down a corridor, open another fire door, and am suddenly out in the night. I hammer across the street to the ball-bearing factory. I wipe the gun clean and throw it through one of the broken factory windows. I tear off the white jacket and pants, change into jeans, an Eddie Vedder shirt, black jacket, sneakers. I unlock the bike, ride like crazy. I head east, I just keep going. I don’t look back.
In two minutes, I don’t hear the fire alarm, I don’t hear anything, I’m on big empty streets going anywhere. A fire truck shoots past me heading for the Eastman Ballroom.
I ride through the unfamiliar landscape of northeast Denver until I come to a bus stop. I ditch the bike, I get the bus to the airport bus stop.
I take the airport bus to Denver International.
That big teepee structure. The windows. The sun behind the Rocky Mountains. The blue sky. The stars. I queue up at the British Airways desk. I get my boarding card for the direct flight from Denver to London.
I find the toilet and throw up. I wash my face. I smack the hand dryer off the wall. What a disaster. What a terrible balls-up. I go to the gate.
I get on the plane. Sit in my seat. The plane idles for a long time, gets delayed, loses its place in the queue. The captain explains why. Something mechanical. We wait. My heart going like a rivet gun. I bite my nails. We finally get another takeoff slot. The plane taxis, turns, roars down the runway. Lifts into the night, leaving behind the city, the plains, and, eventually, Newfoundland and then North America itself.
John’s body in the landfill in Aurora and Amber safe and alive. Unharmed, and as strong and as beautiful as ever.
12: THE HIDDEN RIVER
Through the window it’s morning. Night slinking away over the lighthouse and the milk churns and the cliff path. The moon’s breath, cold, in the gray light that in the east they call the wolf’s tail.
Across the Irish Sea, the peak of Ailsa Craig and the hills of Galloway.
A line of yellow in the sky.
A smattering of vessels, fishing boats, tankers, and big container ships waiting for the pilot to guide them to the container docks of Belfast. Closer to the shore, a lobsterman, pulling nets, swearing so loud that you can actually hear him.
A man is coming up the road.
This isn’t my house. I’ve come here, to hide as best I can. Dad was useless as usual, but Mr. Patawasti suggested their cottage up the Antrim coast if I wanted a place to rest.
There is only one way to the house.
Along the cliff, around the lighthouse. Coming over the boggy fields would be a nightmare.
An assassin has to come up the one narrow road.
That’s the beauty of the thing.
And he’s here. I can’t tell if he’s being furtive. There isn’t enough light. But I can see him. Glimpses of him between the thorns and the blackberry and the bramble bushes. Walking fast. Not running. That’s how I’d come too. At dawn. In the half-light. I would never have spotted him but for the fact that all I do in my waking hours is look out at the sea, the cliffs, the path.
And now the decision.
There is a shotgun over the fireplace. I checked it as soon as I moved in. Twelve-gauge. Nice. Clean. For shooting foxes, badgers. A box of shells near the range. It would be easy to slip out the back, circle behind the cottage, and take him as soon as he gets to the front door. Easy.
And yet.
I sit here, the gun untouched, the shells untouched.
I’ll let him come, I say, and smile. Aye, I’ll welcome him.
For I have failed in everything.
The debacle in the Eastman Ballroom. I didn’t even fire my weapon. More than a dozen people injured, two nearly died, and, of course, Charles and Amber completely unharmed. More famous now than ever while an inquiry sorts out what on earth happened. No one really knows, but they think a security guard panicked and started shooting at a man he thought had a gun.
Charles has been on 20/20 and even Larry King, displacing for a moment the round-the-clock O. J. Simpson coverage. CAW’s profile has been raised a hundredfold. I couldn’t have given them a better gift. He’s a shoo-in for Congress, a rising star. He’s got a chance of running for governor or even being the balance on the GOP presidential ticket at some point in the future.
I have fucked up utterly, in all ways.
I fell in love with heroin, I fell out of love with truth. I was beguiled by a killer, smarter than me. I let down my old love, failed her, too, failed my friend.
So come, assassin.
I’ll wait here.
Come. And he does.
Who would they get to kill me? Would they have told the IRA that I was a senior police officer, or an independent drug dealer, something like that? The IRA, the UDA, it doesn’t matter. As long as they are efficient.