Killer Mine (21 page)

For a fraction of a second time had ceased, but in that millisecond he read my eyes and saw everything come apart and knew that there was nothing left unknown at all. He had her tied to a chair with her clothes torn from her body and had been giving her a sample of the things he had always taken pleasure in and now enjoyed even more, trying to force confirmation from her just to be sure the game had been played out the old way, and ready to kill her when he was certain of it and start a new one behind Marcus.

But I hadn’t told her anything and she hadn’t been able to talk. Now I
was
telling him things. Silently. The Sentol, the FS-7, the silencer, the finger in the ink bottle… and now it was over. He read the whole message in my eyes and fired from the hip.

He didn’t even come close. The .45 punched a hole at the bridge of his nose and left a stream of matter from the floor to the wall and he was whipped onto his back by the force of the impact, dead before his body hit the boards.

It only took a couple of moments to kick a hole through the opening, wrenching the boards loose. Downstairs somebody was yelling for somebody else to call the cops and a beam of light flashed up to where I was going through the slats.

Only one fluorescent light hung from the ceiling casting a bluish pall over everything. The blood that oozed from Madaline’s mouth had a purple tinge and the welts across her breasts and shoulders from the leather strap he had used were a dark maroon. Her eyes were dull, glassy with pain and fatigue, then she recognized me and the light came on behind them.

To one side a door stood open where Marcus had disappeared, but I wasn’t chasing him now. He wasn’t going anywhere. Outside in the city the sirens had begun to sound the last chord and they’d know who to look for.

I dropped the gun in her lap and began working at the knots in the rope that held her. “Easy, honey. Relax.”

First one untangled, then another and her arms fell limply to her sides and I knelt down and started on the ones that bit into the flesh of her thighs and calves.

She squirmed, went rigid. I looked up to tell her not to fight against the pressure, then I saw her face. Fear had drawn it tight and her mouth was half open in a soundless yell of warning.

Leo Marcus said from the doorway, “All right, Regan, just stand up and turn around.”

I swung my head and saw him, the gun in his good hand, the bandaged one held clutched to his stomach. His eyes were wild and alert, his mind racing. I let my hands drift over my head and stood up, taking a step to shield Madaline from his fire.

They’ll be here soon, I kept thinking. I could hear them coming. He could get me, but they’d get him. At least she’d stay alive.

Marcus could read my face too. “No good, Regan. There isn’t enough time.”

“There’s no place to go, Marcus.”

“I have a way out,” he said simply. “It’s been prepared ahead of time. I’ll be on my way while they’re still trying to figure this one out.”

“They know,
Marcus.”

“Do they?” His eyes mocked me.

“They have that finger to prove it.”

He made a vague gesture with the gun. “Anybody can lose a finger. Don’t forget… they have mine, too.”

Damn him anyway! He was right. It wasn’t conclusive.

“I like this approach even better now.” He glanced at the body of Al Argenio, then back to me. “Now he’s out of the way. You two had a shoot out, that’s all. Incidentally, this is his gun. I think it will work very nicely. Everybody knows of the hatred between you two. The woman was the crux of the matter. She was caught in the middle when you shot each other.” He laughed softly. “A simple matter of putting a gun in his hand. Even my former… er, associates will buy the picture.”

“You’ve had it, Marcus,” I said, stalling.

He shook his head. “I should have done this a long time ago. It would have saved a lot of trouble to do it right there in my own living room.” He raised the gun and sighted along the barrel.

Her whisper was almost soundless. “Move, Regan.”

I took one step as the shot burned past me, tugging at my coat. Somehow the .45 slug from the rod she held squeezed in both fists tore the gun from his hands taking fingers and all, leaving a great, gouting stump dangling from his coat sleeve.

Leo Marcus looked down at the obscenity that had been a part of him a second ago, opened his mouth in what started to be a great bay of absolute horror and collapsed in the agony of frustration and pain.

The sirens were close now. They were stopping and voices were yelling instructions. I took the gun from her hand, put my arm around her and got her to her feet. Her coat was in the corner, and I draped it around her as they were coming up the stairs.

In the doorway Leo Marcus’ life ran out of him in a swampy pool of arterial blood and nobody was going to know anything except what I wanted them to know.

Madaline’s face was still ashen white, but the color was coming back into it. Outside I heard Jerry Nolan’s voice calling for axes to smash down the door. She said, “Is it over, Pat?”

I kissed her gently and shook my head. “No, kitten, it’s just beginning.”