“Put the gun down, and let him go. The building is surrounded, Blake. You’re not going anywhere. Let’s end this thing without more violence, okay?”
Blake shook his head. “There’s no one out there, Amanda.”
He knew her name. It was scary.
“We held back until you showed up. As soon as you came in, I gave them the signal on the radio. There’s no way out.”
Blake nodded. “Excellent. Signal on the radio. That’s a nice touch, Amanda. But I’ve spent years working with military personnel trained far better than any police force. There was no one in the area. It’s just you and me. I’ve been watching you drink your coffee and make your way through five doughnuts for the past hour.”
“It was four doughnuts,” Amanda said. “Put the gun down.”
“Don’t follow me, and you stay alive,” Blake said. “So does this nice man here.”
He began backing down the corridor that led to the restrooms and the crash door that led outside. Amanda had checked out the exit earlier. It led to a vacant lot, strewn with glass, backing up near Eighth Street.
Amanda followed cautiously, keeping her gun trained on him. She wished she had called for backup now. She knew there was no one on the other side of the door, and if Blake got away, he would disappear through the downtown streets. Slip through their fingers sagain.
Take the shot Make the shot.
She couldn’t. She didn’t have it. And she couldn’t risk that Blake would get off a shot first and kill the manager.
Blake was almost to the door. “The two of us are leaving now. Don’t make me kill him. Stay where you are.”
“Go through that door and they’ll split your head open like a watermelon, Blake.” Bravado. Lies. They both knew it.
She was six feet away from him. Blake’s back was at the crash door. He waited there, hesitating, and she wasn’t sure why. Did he believe her? Was he wondering if there really was a SWAT team poised out back?
The bell on the front door clanged again. A new customer entered the shop. Amanda flinched, and Blake threw the Asian manager at her, his body wildly flying through the air and tumbling both of them to the ground like bowling pins. As Amanda fell, she heard the crash door bang as Blake spun through and vanished. She cursed, disentangled herself from the manager, and scrambled back to her feet.
She charged down the corridor.
At the door, she froze.
Was Blake running or waiting?
Amanda raised her gun and kicked the door open, watching it hurtle around to the opposite wall of the building.
When the door swung open, banging against the wall, Blake knew she was smart.
He recoiled and almost fired. His finger twitched on the trigger, instinct taking over, and he realized at the last instant that she wasn’t coming through the door. She wanted him to fire, betraying his position.
His bullet, then her bullet, and he would be dead. A nice ruse.
He knew enough to respect his enemy.
He didn’t fire. She didn’t know where he was. Now, he knew, she had to choose.
Damn. He didn’t fire.
Left or right, she thought.
She had to make a choice. Either he was on the left side of the door or the right. Or he was running, getting away, and each second she hesitated gave him more time to escape.
She would roll through, pivot, and fire. Make the right choice and it was even odds for both of them, gun to gun, man to… woman.
Make the wrong choice, and she was dead. Simple as that. Left or right.
Left was the only direction that made sense. The door opened left. On the right, he was exposed. To the left, the door gave him cover, blocked her view for a crucial millisecond, gave him an advantage. She had the edge if he was on the right-and he knew it.
Unless he could see into her head and anticipate what she was thinking and realize that being on the right gave him the edge if she went to the left first, offering him her back. A gamble. A risk. Vegas.
She couldn’t overthink. She was up against a tactician. He’d give himself the maximum odds for survival. That meant he was waiting for her on the left.
Or running.
She needed to move.
Amanda thought about Bobby. She could taste his last kiss.
Then she kicked the door a second time, and as the light spilled out, she dove and rolled onto the pavement and came up in a crouch to her left with her gun aimed. She had just enough time for the image to reach her brain, to see the empty stretch of wall behind the door, to realize her mistake. She reacted instantly. Didn’t fire. Began to twist, turn, duck, shift.
Fast Blindingly fast. But not fast enough.
He waited for her on the right, his gun poised. She had to go left, because all her training told her to go left, and cops were creatures of training. There was no surprise, no pleasure, no sadness, when she did. In every fight there was a winner and a loser, and it was no disgrace to lose with dignity.
She was very fast. He was impressed.
Most cops would have frozen, hesitated, but she turned seamlessly, recovering from her mistake and spinning back the other way. If she had gone right, she might well have gotten the first shot.
But no.
Blake pulled the trigger.
It was such a short moment, but it felt so long.
Amanda was on a precipice, a slim tower of rock. Around her were other peaks, a chessboard of granite kings, many of them grand, cloud-swept mountains climbing into the sky. She stood on the edge and looked down, but there was no bottom to the world, no emerald earth, just mist. She knew she could fly.
When she glanced behind her, Bobby was there, tears streaming down his face, and she didn’t understand how he could be so sad when there was such joy to be had here.
Amanda smiled at him and blew him a kiss. Then, with her arms spread wide, she stepped into the air.
THIRTY-NINE
Blake ran. The night gave him cover. He sprinted through the empty lot, feeling broken glass crunch and scatter under his feet. When he reached Eighth Street, he headed northeast, toward the downscale neighborhood surrounding the overpass for Highway 95. He slowed to a walk as he crossed Stewart Avenue, then ran again when he was beyond the glare of lights from the street.
He abandoned his car, which was parked three blocks in the opposite direction, but it was stolen, and he could readily steal another. His apartment was only half a mile away, and it was safer now to get there on foot.
There were a handful of strangers around him. It was after midnight, and they were mostly ducking the law themselves, selling drugs or using drugs. They glanced in his direction as he ran, to make sure there were no cops in hot pursuit, but otherwise they didn’t care about him. The deeper he penetrated into the neighborhood, the fewer people he saw, until he was alone. He walked again.
He saw the concrete overpass ahead. The houses around him were sunk into decay, with collapsing fences, cracked pink stucco, and gates hanging open. A few dusty cars were parked haphazardly in the yards. He passed a couple of old shopping carts on the sidewalk, their wheels stripped off.
Sirens erupted in the surrounding streets. Blake ducked back into the shadows near one of the houses. He eyed the traffic behind him and saw the flashing red lights of a patrol car as it streaked toward the cafe. Word was out It wouldn’t be long now, just a few minutes, before the neighborhood was engulfed by police trying to lay out a net around the area.
He walked faster. When he passed a house with laundry hung out on a sagging clothesline, he slipped inside the fence and grabbed a jean shirt off the line and shrugged it over his white T-shirt. A baseball cap was lying in the dirt, and he put it on. He began peeling at the false beard on his face. He kept a small bottle of spirit gum remover in his jeans for emergencies, and he tried quickly to get as much of the hair and glue off his face as he could. It wasn’t perfect, but at least at first glance, he was again a man without a beard.