Someone large lumbered up the trail to Tim's right, and he whipped his gun over, waiting to see who appeared. An excessively camoed man with a beer gut charged around the bend, slipping to a halt. He smiled at Tim, raised his paintball gun. "Pow." His eyes changed when he took in Tim's expression and the steel gleam of the Smith amp; Wesson. Tim flicked his barrel toward the exit to keep the guy moving; he was only too happy to comply.
In the blackness up ahead, a woman shouted, "Who the hell are you?" She yelped, and Tim ducked into the foliage. A few moments later, she ran past, naked and screaming, Afternoon no longer D-Lited.
To his left he heard two bodies startle in the leaves, then move for the exit also, the panicked movements and shouted directives telling him they were the last two paintballers. Bear could deal with them and the girl once they spilled through the curtain.
Moving briskly, Tim closed in on the area of foliage in which the regulars had stumbled upon an uninvited guest. The band of dense, shoulder-high bush crossed the base of the slope where Tim thought Walker might be bedded down. Tim steered clear of the loose rocks composing the waterfall's base, picking quiet footholds around the mud wallow. Another theme-park addition, a camouflaged heavy bag, creaked on its chain, its sway more than the net-blocked wind could have generated. Someone had shouldered it on his way past.
Tim inched upslope, letting the branches bend slowly against him to avoid snaps and backwhips. A stout sprig hung up against his ankle, and he grabbed it, stepping past then carefully releasing the tension. Through the patchwork of underbrush, his eyes picked up the faintest movement against the mud, a dark boot rising out of view. He straightened, but the foliage blotted out any movement ahead.
His stalker's instincts froze him. Someone else moved to his left just a few feet away-Tim sensed a vibration or the heat. With excruciating slowness, he pivoted to face his pursuer, his heels soundless in the mud. He lifted his. 357, dodging leaves on the rise. In the silence between the brush of leaves and the scratch of crickets, he heard it.
The faint yet undeniable click of a hammer cocking.
Behind him.
His body reacted before the sound registered as a thought. He spun, and as his own gun jerked in his grip, he saw the flare from a muzzle illuminating Walker's face, floating as if detached among the leaves. The gunshot, compounded, seemed unreasonably loud.
Chapter 66
Before Tim could comprehend that the explosion came in surround sound-from in front of him, behind him, and his own hands-a hot streak ripped his neck. His recoil spun him around to see Caden Burke drop to the mud howling and gripping his shoulder. Walker Jameson grunted-Tim's bullet had struck home-and a Redhawk six-shooter spit from the bushes, knocked loose. Walker's furious retreat sounded like a beast fleeing.
Tim couldn't go after him right away because he still had Caden loose and who he guessed was Wes up ahead. Putting his knee in Caden's back, Tim frisked him, pocketing his Ruger and a quaint switchblade. Walker's shot had missed Tim and embedded in the ball of Caden's shoulder, pulling Caden's shot off center and inadvertently saving Tim's life. When Tim cuffed him, Caden screeched with pain.
Tim scrambled back to reclaim the Redhawk. The stock was still warm and felt familiar somehow, molded to his hand. He stiffened at a sudden footfall, turning to source the noise. With a whooshing of leaves, Wes charged out of the brush-he'd circled during the commotion and come in from the west. Tim went airborne, extended in a sideways dive, using Walker's Redhawk to sight on Wes's substantial critical mass. A slow-motion clarity came over Tim as it often did in a close exchange. He saw the black hole of Wes's mouth looming behind the smaller black hole of a handgun muzzle. The moonlight's sheen on the glossy leaves misted from the waterfall. Caden bucking against the cuffs, snarling with pain and a sort of dumb puzzlement. Tim flashed on Tess, made to sit at gunpoint on her bed, made to wait as Wes Dieter-the man at the receiving end of the Redhawk that Tim now clutched-pressed steel to her temple. Her last-second, turned-head recoil before the shot, when fear turned to dumb instinct. Tim's finger tensed, and the trigger inched back, hammer ready to fall on one of Walker's titanium bullets. At the last instant before he struck mud, Tim moved the barrel three millimeters left and put a bullet through Wes's forearm.
Wes's gun spun from his limp hand, and he shrieked, plopping in the mud wallow, his gun echoing the splash an instant later. Tim retrieved the gun, cinched Wes's good wrist to his ankle with plastic flex-cuffs, and sprinted off after Walker, feeding Bear the update a mile a minute through the radio. Across the dark preserve and through the netting, he could see a line of blue and red lights moving in from the south.
Leaves and thin branches whipped Tim's face. He hurtled over a slope, and the netting appeared, blindsiding him and cradling his full momentum to a stop. Tim could see Bear at the parking lot, shouting at the incoming units to spread out. Working his way along the netting, Tim shoved into it at intervals to test its tension. Finally a shove yielded no resistance and he tumbled through, landing on the flat, sparse wetland outside the preserve. The net had been sliced cleanly through. Within a few acres' sprint lay Lincoln Boulevard and scores of side streets, the freeway a brief stretch beyond. The wind snapped the netting angrily behind Tim.
He focused on the dark sweep of earth, looking for any movement. Its lights off, a car peeled out from the wetlands border, too dark for Tim to discern its make or model. It turned a corner, and Walker was gone. Tim ran his hand along the slit in the netting, and it came away sticky. He raised his fingertips, and the moonlight brought the drops of Walker's blood visible.
He radioed Bear the car's approximate location and told him Walker was wounded. By the time he walked around to the building's entrance, Game had been cleared of clients and the area was swarming with deputies, cops, and ambulances. Thomas and Freed had already retrieved Wes and Caden and turned them over to LAPD, a pair of cops keeping the hit men company in their respective ambulances. Xavier glared at Tim from the back of a departing black-and-white.
Crossing the parking lot, Tim heard a pattering and looked down. Dime-size drops on the asphalt. He touched his fingertips to the ground, and they came up red, his prints marked with his own blood above the smeared stain of Walker's. He patted himself down, searching for the entry wound with no luck until a paramedic clamped a gauze pad to the side of his neck and tried to lead him to the rescue vehicle. Tim took over the pressure clamp and said, "Just a second," breaking toward Tannino and a cluster of deputies. The paramedic followed, voicing his concerns.
Tannino said, "We're spreading out through the area, two choppers en route. The roadblocks are up, but we've got two freeway entrances within blocks. How bad's he injured?"
"Not bad enough that he couldn't haul ass out of there." Tim readjusted the gauze on his neck; it was getting soaked through. The paramedic tugged at his arm, and Tim gestured he needed more time. "But there's enough blood that he'll need some aid and a hole to curl up in. Work the news outlets, the hospitals, the drugstores. I want to know if there's a break-in at a veterinarian's. Our nose is on the trail, we're hot on his ass, and he's injured. We keep charging at him and closing down options until he's cornered. Now is the time to be relentless."
"You got nothing on the vehicle?" Freed asked.
"It's a standard car-Toyota, Honda, something. It could have been that stolen Camry. Remember, he doesn't know we're eyeballing it."
"The Camry just popped up in long-term parking at LAX. The driver's seat was soiled with ash. Word came in just before we left the post." Freed let the disappointment sink in. "Think he was faking that he went out of town?"