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  “ … ot … ter …”

  “What?”

  Eli grabbed my shirt and squeezed with every last bit of energy he had.

  “her … ot … her …”

  Torrez pulled me away while sweeping Eli’s weapon away with his foot. He aimed his gun at my brother’s head and in his eyes I could see flashes of Officer Jason Rourke hanging from a tree, gutted like a deer. I jumped in front of him.

  “Back off, Torrez! You want to shoot him, you’re going to have to do it through me.”

  I saw him briefly consider and accept my terms. But after a deep breath, he backed up and lowered his weapon. Uniformed officers flooded the mall, helping the few people still too terrified to move and clear the building. I heard kids crying and people screaming and hoped that nobody else was hit.

  EMTs loaded Eli onto a stretcher and then raced to their ambulance.

  “You’re covered in blood,” Torrez said. “Are you hit?”

  “No.”

  Alyssa met us. She gave me a quick hug and then backed away. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine.”

  She suddenly punched me in the chest. “It’s a damned miracle you aren’t dead! You ran right into the crossfire! What the fuck were you thinking?”

  I shook my head, unable to explain it.

  “Alyssa and I will have to stay here,” Torrez said. “This is going to be a fucking nightmare. I don’t even know which of us hit him. But she’s technically still inactive, so I hope to hell it was just me.”

  “That’s real sensitive of you, Torrez.”

  “Hey. You were the one disavowing all relationships to Eli,” Torrez said. He searched my face, trying to find something to say, but gave up and called a uniform over. He told him to get me to the hospital. Double-time.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Eli was dead by the time I made it to Saint Francis Emergency. I received the news in the lobby from a grim-looking EMT named Dunn. It was a terrible name for a paramedic: Get treated by him and you’re “Dunn.” I collapsed in a chair, unable to stand under the weight of the past week. Dunn checked me to make sure I wasn’t going into shock. I told him to piss off and sat alone, covered in blood and wondering how I always managed to be a step too slow.

  The lobby doors opened. I was hit by the rush of cold air and the screams of an asshole.

  “Jericho Sands!”

  Preston Masters charged me. His coat flaps trailed behind him like Armani streamers. With him was Phillip York, state attorney for Peoria County, and three uniformed police officers.

  “You have put the people of this city in danger for the last time!” Preston said. “I have a signed affidavit for your arrest. These men will take you into custody immediately.”

  I stood, took three steps, and punched him in the jaw. He collapsed, knocking over a chair that I immediately picked up and held over my head. I looked down at Preston’s face and imagined planting the chair in the middle of it, not finding a good reason not to, wondering why I hadn’t yet done it.

  “Sands!”

  Alyssa ripped the chair from my hands and flung it toward the wall. She shoved me away and looked down at Preston, who struggled to his feet and fumbled to pick up his dignity. The state attorney and the officers did nothing. They stood like spectators, unsure of how much they wanted to get involved. The police department was no fan of Preston’s. Every time there was an opportunity for a pay raise, Preston found a way to shoot it down, claiming that funds were not available and would put too much of a strain on the state’s budget. It’s the kind of thing that cops tend not to forget. Preston turned and started at them.

  “Lot of help you were.” He turned to Alyssa and smiled. “Thank you, officer.” He said.

  “It’s detective.”

  “Yes, of course. Detective Jagger. Thank you for coming to my aid.”

  “I wasn’t coming to your aid, dickhead. I was coming to his.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “There is no excuse for you.”

  Preston threw an accusatory finger in my direction.

  “This bastard just assaulted me. Again! I want him arrested!”

  “Get used to disappointment.”

  “Do you realize who you are addressing, Detective? With one phone call, I can have you writing parking tickets outside Chiefs games.”

  “And with one cinder block, I can have you feeding the catfish at the bottom of the river.”

  Preston’s cheeks flashed the color of smoldering ash. I knew the look well; it was the same response Katrina had when she was pissed off. It was sexy when she did it. Preston just looked like a three-year-old who had his favorite toy taken away.

  He showed the appropriate amount of outrage to save some face, but then he left. The state attorney and the cops had a brief huddle. It looked like they were getting their stories straight. After a few moments there were nods among the three men, and they left the lobby without looking at us again.

  Alyssa walked over.

  “‘Get used to disappointment,’” I said. “Princess Bride.”

  “Always one of my favorites. Can I sit with you?” Alyssa asked.

  I motioned to the chair. “How’s the shoulder?”

  “Hurts like hell. But it should be fine.”

  Looking down, I noticed that she wore heavy rubber boots. I remembered seeing them in her car when she first gave me a ride home. Crime-scene gear.

  “Sorry about your shoes,” I said.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Doomsday’s a great dog. He’s just a little territorial. Anyway, I’ll pay for them.”

  “My shoes are way down on the priority list right now, don’t you think?”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  She placed a hand on my knee.

  “I’m really sorry it ended like this, Jericho. I really am.”

  “I know.”

  “It looked like Eli was trying to say something there at the end.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What was he trying to tell you?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. It didn’t make any sense. Hotter. Water. Something like that. I don’t know.”

  Alyssa put her hand on my knee. “There was nothing more you could have done. Eli chose his path. It was going to lead where it did regardless of anything you did or didn’t do.”

  “Yeah. I guess.”

  “At least it’s finally over.”

  For Alyssa it was. The bad guy was dead. This killings would stop. People could stop looking over their shoulder and dreading the sight of the next crime scene on the evening news. But it didn’t feel like it was over. Not to me. It felt like crashing into a brick wall and having my ears ringing with the vibration of the impact as I took inventory of bodily injury.

  “Would you like some company tonight?” She asked.

  “No.”

  “I understand. How about a lift home?”

  I shook my head. Alyssa stood and looked down at me, forcing eye contact the way she did in the interrogation room.

  “So, is this where you shut me out?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Look, Sands, we’re both grown-ups. You have that look, like you’re already rebuilding the fortress around yourself. I’m just wondering on what side of the wall I’m going to find myself when you’re done.”

  I had nothing to say to that. One of the constant truths of my existence is that I’m horrible with relationships. Maybe I value my independence too much to appreciate the importance of communication and sharing feelings. Or maybe I’m just too used to pushing people away to know how to stop.

  “Look, Alyssa. I’ll call you. Okay?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”

  She walked away, and I wondered what I was letting walk away with her. Things can change in an instant. Alyssa and I found a connection in the midst of mayhem. Now that the chaos was over, I wondered if whatever we found would survive. I was never one for the long haul. I don’t have
the skills for it. Part of that was by design, but it was also a choice, and I made it every time I decided to slam the door and walk away. Only with Katrina was I not fully able to close myself off. Now there was Alyssa Jagger. What would she represent? The one that got away? Or a reminder of all the horror and tragedy that had taken place?

  Outside, the wind swept over the parking lot. Cold, and promising winter. Snow and blizzards. Wind that bites into you like teeth. I walked with no direction, letting my feet take me away from the hospital, with its modern renovation and my dead brother.

  I bought a coffee and a pack of Camels at a stand, figuring screw it. I lit one up, welcoming the harsh bite of nicotine. Once a smoker, always a smoker. My habit was just another manifestation of craving things that are bad for me. My feet carried me toward downtown. I soon came to the charred shell of the Dungeon, where Eric Watts met his end.

  I kept walking. My garage completed the tour of death. The newly painted walls still held the visceral spatter of Sean Booker. The freshly scrubbed floor showed the bootprints of a monster walking away from his kill.

  And what the hell he had Eli been trying to tell me as he lay dying?

  Hotter?

  Water?

  My brother’s dying words kept playing in my mind, over and over and over. The closest meaning I could arrange from Eli’s garbled fragments was “her otter,” which, of course, had no meaning at all.

  I lit another cigarette, knowing that realization was a grasp away and all I had to do was reach in the right place. Sleep would certainly have been an asset in coming to the conclusion I felt mocking me. But the past week had been a dizzying carnival ride that kept me chasing after shadows and engaging in high-speed pursuits, and nearly killed me on more occasions than I cared to count.

  Why did Eli call Alyssa and Torrez to the mall? And why was he so obsessed with killing Alyssa? Torrez was the lead detective. He was the more experienced—and quite frankly, the scarier—of the two. Trying to kill the detectives who were trying to catch you made sense. So why not Torrez? Or better yet, why not kill both of them?

  My eyes went to the concrete floor. They fixated on the spot where large bloody footprints had traced a path of death and mayhem. Now scrubbed clean with pressure washers and covered with industrial-grade paint, I could nonetheless still see them. Those prints had been bothering me. They were not just on the floor; they existed on a plane in my subconscious and nagged at me like an irritating fly buzzing around your head that won’t leave you the hell alone no matter how many times you swat it.

  And just like that, I had it. The picture came into focus. I understood why the footprints had bothered me. Why they seemed too wrong to fit into any explanation I could come up with. All it took was Doomsday shitting on my new girlfriend’s department-store pumps.

  Armed with the answers that had eluded me, determined to face the full consequences those answers would bring and resolved to face the fallout, I stubbed out my smoke on the floor and hurried upstairs to my loft.

  Just as it did when I was writing books, the conclusion felt like a freight train bearing down on me, speeding with all the weight of the events that carried it down the tracks. The end of the story was in sight.

  I just needed to talk to somebody first.

  But I was going to need some firepower.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  I knew from my time with Katrina that Preston was a runner. He was pretty annoying about it, always calling her when she and I were together, boasting about the eight miles he just logged and urging her to join him next time. His speeches usually ended with a lecture about smoking. “You never used to smoke before you started seeing him,” Preston would say, loud enough that I could hear it from her phone. Either he knew his sister very little or was highly capable at self-deception, because Kat started smoking when she was sixteen.

  Thanks to Preston’s compulsion to brag, I also knew his routine. At 7:30 every night, he would leave his house in the hills overlooking the Illinois River and jog through the only neighborhood he considered upscale enough to live in. His neighbors were surgeons and attorneys and judges. Not a blue collar for miles. If one ever tried to infiltrate their ultraconservative, foreign-car-driving clique, they would throw him out.

  Halfway along his route, Preston would cut through a dog park, where, oddly enough, you were no longer allowed to bring your dog, due to complaints about land mines being left by negligent pet owners. By day, it was a place for residents to picnic and practice puts. By night, it was a shortcut Preston used to shave some distance off his “eight-mile run.” On this night, it was the perfect place for an ambush.

  My truck was parked a mile away in the lot of a gastropub favored by the younger and trendier locals. I stood with my back pressed against an elm tree, listening to the quiet afforded to the rich and waiting for the steady beat of running shoes.

  Preston arrived like clockwork. Peering around my hunting blind, I saw him coming down the path wearing green and gold sweats. Despite not knowing the difference between Vince Lombardi and Vincent van Gogh, Preston pretends to be a Packers fan.

  Yet another reason to hate him.

  As he rounded the turn that would bring him within ten feet of my tree, I stepped out onto the jogging trail, blocking his route. Preston stopped short when he saw me. He spun around and ran the way he had come, knowing that I would never be able to beat him in a foot race.

  Luckily I didn’t have to.

  “Doomsday! Blitz!”

  From across the path, my dog leapt from the bushes. He charged Preston like an outside linebacker looking to make a highlight reel hit and brought his target down on the turf. Doomsday stood atop one of the most powerful men in the state, snarling, growling, and waiting for the slightest indication from me that it was okay to bite his head off. It was tempting.

  “Hi, Preston. Nice night, huh?”

  “Nice night? Are you crazy? Have you finally lost your last tenuous grip on reality? I demand that you call off your mutt at once!”

  Doomsday’s eyes seemed to roll in the back of his head like a great white shark before it strikes.

  “I really wouldn’t call him a mutt. He’s pretty sensitive about that.”

  Preston turned his head, as much as the weight of Doomsday pressing down on him would allow, and yelled for help. We were far enough away from the nearest house, and his lungs were constricted enough that I was reasonably certain that nobody would hear his meager yell. But I didn’t want to take any chances. Kneeling down, I took out my gun and pressed it against his temple.

  That shut him up.

  “Now, Preston. Here’s how this is going to work. I’m going to ask you some questions. You are going to answer them truthfully and completely. Got it?”

  Desperation began to pour off Preston in a cold sweat. As he so enjoyed pointing out whenever somebody stuck a microphone or TV camera in his face, I was a killer. In truth, there was no way in hell I was going to follow through on my threat. But letting him think otherwise made this easier.

  “We can fix this, Sands. Really. However much you want—”

  “This isn’t about money, Preston. Believe it or not, I could afford to buy a house in this neighborhood just fine. I just don’t care for the riffraff.”

  “Okay. This is obviously about Katrina, then.”

  I shook my head.

  “Strike two. This isn’t about Kat, either.”

  “Then what, dammit?”

  “Why did you have a gun in your desk?”

  Of all the possible avenues Preston expected me to take, I had led him down a path he hadn’t expected.

  “What?”

  “You’re not the kind of guy who keeps a loaded handgun in his desk drawer. That’s me. Guys like you don’t keep guns in your desk, because guys like you grow up believing that your money and your family connections will always keep you safe. But something changed that. Or rather, somebody. I want to know who.”

  “You’re a madman.”


  “Yep. So, just so you fully appreciate your current situation, you are currently looking down the barrel of a gun being held by a madman. A madman who could tell the homicidal dog sitting on your chest to make sure I’ll never see you in the governor’s mansion.”

  Hope that somebody would come and save him was vanishing like a flickering light behind his eyes. He was on his own and scared, facing the one person he knew he wouldn’t bullshit.

  “Look,” I said, “you don’t have to worry about incriminating yourself, okay? Stop being a politician for thirty seconds. Stop worrying about covering your ass. This is just you, me, and the dog.”

  “Fine. But tell him to get off me because I’m having trouble breathing.”

  I was opposed to granting his request. Mainly because he was still playing politics. You make a request. If the person you are negotiating with grants it, you just scored a victory. It gave you some footing and got your adversary comfortable with making concessions. It was a tactic I was in no mood for rewarding.

  On the other hand, he was starting to turn blue.

  “Okay, buddy,” I said. “Get off him.”

  Doomsday turned back to look at me. His tilted head to ask if I was sure. I nodded, and he climbed down. Preston sat up and brushed himself off just as he did in the hospital, trying to restore some of his dignity. Once again, he failed.

  “I was contacted a few weeks ago by someone,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the truth. Our correspondence was strictly via email.”

  “So you corresponded with this person?”

  “I had no choice. Whoever it was knew … a lot.”

  “Like the fact that you were working with Sean Booker to inflate the crime rate in the parts of town you want bulldozed? Like the fact that Booker never seemed to interest the police, even though he was frequently at the epicenter of a crime spree? Things like that?”

  Preston looked over his shoulder to the jogging path he had just recently come down. It was still deserted, but he acted like he expected a camera crew to have suddenly appeared.