the 13th Hour (44 page)

"Slowly." Dance motioned to Nick to remove them before placing the barrel of the gun squarely in the center of Nick's forehead.

Dance laid the Peacemaker on the roof of the Audi as Nick pulled out and handed him the first envelope. He looked at the blue crest before quickly opening it and reading the two sheets.

Nick slowly withdrew the watch from his pocket and held it out.

"A watch," Dance said as his eyes flicked between the gold timepiece and the letter. "Are you fucking kidding me? Do you think I'm a fool?"

Dance scanned the letter from Nash again. "What kind of bullshit is this?" Dance jammed the gun harder into Nick's head.

"Read the next one," Nick said calmly, handing him Marcus's letter while tucking Nash's letter back into his jacket pocket.

Dance began to read.

"Look at the last sheet," Nick said. "The printout from today's
Wall Street Journal
."

Dance read it through, confusion creasing his brow.

"Look at the date and time," Nick said. "That's eight hours from now."

"A kid could have made this with Photoshop."

Nick slowly reached back into his breast pocket and withdrew his cell phone, flipping it open.

"What are you--"

"Relax," Nick said as he flipped it open, pulled up the picture of Dance's car, and handed him the cell phone.

Dance thumbed through the pictures of his car, stopping at the image of his trunk. He stared at the golden weapons, the knives and swords, and the bag of diamonds, his eyes finally falling on the Colt Peacemaker, the same gun that rested atop Nick's car.

"What kind of trick is this? That stuff isn't in my trunk. I just looked into it a few minutes ago."

"It's no trick," Nick said calmly. "You're looking at the future."

"How is this possible?"

"Bear with me a moment. If the letters you read are the truth, think of what you could do."

And Dance's mind began to work.

"Manipulate the past, know the outcome of lotteries, horse races." Nick appealed to his greed. "Use it wisely, and you could amass a fortune."

"Why would you give this up? You would trade all of this for that guy's life?" Dance pointed his gun back toward Paul Dreyfus.

Nick nodded.

Dance smiled. "No," he said, shaking his head as the pieces came together. "That's what Shannon meant about my killing your wife, that's what these letters are about. I do it in the future and you've come back to stop me."

Dance looked around. And stared at the watch.

"Holy shit," Dance said in realization.

As Dance became lost in his thoughts, Nick looked about the parking lot, down the driveway toward the road.

"I know who your wife is," Dance said. "Hennicot's attorney, right?"

Nick said nothing.

"If I take this watch," Dance smiled a cruel smile at Nick as his thumb moved about the golden case, "who's to say I still won't kill her?"

Nick's heart began to pound, the blood coursing through his body, filling him with fury.

Dance looked again at the watch in his hand and it was all the distraction Nick needed.

Nick snatched the Colt from atop the Audi and holding it like a hammer drove it into Dance's temple. Nick's left hand grabbed and twisted the Glock from the detective before he could react and tossed it aside. He raised the Peacemaker again and drove it down against Dance's nose.

Tossing the gun aside, Nick pummeled Dance with all his rage, all of his anger and frustration, his fists a blur of wrath directed at the evil soul before him.

Despite all of his strength, despite all of his experience on the street, of fights and killing, Dance was no match for the passion-fueled onslaught being released from Nick's soul. Nick had seen his wife die, experienced her death too many times, in too may ways, and all of it brought about by this man.

Nick finally stood, leaving the broken and battered detective writhing on the ground.

Nick spied the gold watch, his passport for the day, gleaming in the sunlight. He picked it up and tucked it into his back pocket.

Then he picked up the ornate pistol, reached into his pocket, and withdrew a silver bullet. He flipped out the cylinder and dropped the .45 slug into the gunmetal chamber. He flipped it back and gave it a spin.

He looked at the gun, at its intricate design, at the golden finish that shined in the midmorning sun, giving the impression of a holy aura about the weapon. Nick thought of the Arabic lettering upon the bullet casing,
May you be forbidden from paradise,
hoping that the phrase had some magical property of actually weighing down the soul so it could be dragged into hell.

He laid the gun against Dance's head.

"You're going to kill me to avenge a murder I haven't even committed yet?"

Nick drew back the hammer, clicking it into place.

Dance stared up helplessly into Nick's eyes.

As Nick looked at the bloodied cop, a man who had shot his wife, had killed his best friend, killed Paul Dreyfus and Private McManus, set in motion the crash of Flight 502, Nick realized he was looking into the heart of evil, looking at a man who saw humanity as his pawns, a man who was without morals or compassion.

And then a crushing realization coursed through his body, as if the three sisters of fate were holding him back. For none of those things, none of those deaths had yet occurred, they were all in the future, a future that was no longer fixed but left to chance.

But as Dance's eye burned up at him, Nick saw the coldness, the lack of a soul and knew this man would visit darkness upon others throughout his life.

"You can't do it, you can't pull that trigger, can you?" Dance said.

Nick's eyes softened.

"You know what, if I killed your wife in the future--" Dance paused as if he was about to apologize, but that possibility quickly passed as a mirthless smile creased his lips "--she probably deserved it."

With those words burning in his ears, with all reason gone from his mind, Nick wrapped his finger about the antique pistol and . . .

. . . pulled the trigger.

S
HANNON STARED UP
at Randall and Arilio standing next to the Chrysler Sebring, watching Paul Dreyfus wrap a makeshift tourniquet about Sam's leg. The two dirty cops exchanged whispers.

Shannon sat up against his Mustang next to Nash. He had quietly dragged the zip-tie against the blacktop, shaving it, compromising its integrity. He took a glance at the far side of the parking lot where he saw Nick and Dance begin to fight. Without further delay, Shannon drew his arms apart, twisting, stretching the zip-tie, ignoring the pain as the plastic cut into his skin, until it finally broke.

Randall and Arilio caught sight of Nick beating on Dance, but they were too late.

Shannon sprang to his feet, and his fist caught Randall square on the nose, exploding it in a crimson mess as he stumbled back against his car, dazed and confused. But Shannon continued moving toward him, unleashing two massive body blows into Randall's soft belly, sending the middle-aged cop to the ground barely conscious and in agony.

As he turned, he knew Arilio would be a far different opponent, younger, faster, angrier, and still holding on to his gun, which was now aimed at Shannon's head.

"Shannon, back off or I'll kill you where you stand."

Shannon didn't answer. He had never understood why people in fights, in life-and-death situations, felt compelled to talk.

With a sweep of his rising left arm, Shannon deflected the gun up and away from his body as he wrapped his hands about Arilio's wrist, twisting the police-issue Glock and compromising the cop's ability to effectively use it.

Arilio's instinctive reaction was to battle for control of his gun, which was exactly what Shannon was counting on. Arilio twisted his wrist while grabbing at Shannon's arm, trying to free his weapon. Shannon's right fist cocked back and unleashed his fury into Arilio's throat, stunning him, sending his hands to his damaged esophagus. Shannon tore the pistol from the cop's hand, all the while continuing a massive succession of blows to Arilio's head and body. The cop had no chance, as his hands had instinctively wrapped his throat trying to catch his breath. And within ten seconds, he was disabled upon the ground.

D
ANCE WAS STILL
alive. The gun's hammer had fired against an empty cylinder.

"You can't kill me, can you?" Dance said, taunting Nick, who stood above him holding the Colt Peacemaker.

"It was never my intention," Nick said as he looked down the drive at the approaching car.

The black Mercedes limo drove up the drive behind Dance, pulling to within a few feet of where he lay.

"There are some people who are better equipped for that sort of thing." Nick looked up as the rear door of the black car opened.

Dance turned his head and saw the two large men emerge from the driver and passenger doors of the black stretch Mercedes. Their shoulders were wide, each wore a short-sleeve button-down shirt. Imposing pistols rested in shoulder holsters on the left side of their bodies.

Without a word they walked past Nick, reached over, and effortlessly hoisted Dance to his feet.

Dance's face went white with fear.

"No way," he screamed. "I said I'd pay you tonight."

A short man emerged from the rear of the vehicle, his good eye squinting in the bright sun while the milky one was wide open, oblivious to the glare.

Dance ripped his arms away from the two bodyguards, threw his shoulders back in defiance, and stared at Rukaj. "You said I had till midnight."

"I got a call a little while ago." Rukaj looked at Nick before casting his eyes back on the cop. "I was told you had no intention of paying me, that you were going to fly out of here this morning."

Nick began taking small steps backward, moving away from the Albanian and his two-man wrecking crew. He had lifted Rukaj's number from Dance's phone near the end of the eleven o'clock hour, finding the cop's cell on his dead body. Nick knew it was the last call Dance had received, and he had seen how terrified the caller had made him. He dialed Rukaj just after 10:00
A.M.
, knowing that the Albanian would pay a personal visit if he learned he was being lied to and betrayed.

Dance stood, flanked by the two hulking guards, and glared at Nick. "You son of a bitch. It was all bullshit: the watch, that box. It was all a trap, you bastard."

And without warning, Dance spun about, ripping the pistol out of the driver's holster, and in a fluid motion, he continued his momentum spinning toward Nick and firing a single shot.

The bullet hit Nick in his right side, the force of the nine-millimeter bullet knocking him off his feet.

The bodyguard grabbed Dance's arm, twisting the gun from his grip, snapping his wrist in two with a loud crack. The two guards each took an arm, pulling them outward, sending Dance into agony.

Rukaj walked over and knelt over Nick. He laid his hand against the wound, seeing the blood bubbling through his shirt. He silently stared into Nick's pain-filled eyes before exhaling and rising to his feet. He turned back and walked up into Dance's face.

"I came here to scare you, Dance, not to kill you," Rukaj said in his thick accent. "If you were going to run you had fourteen months to do it, you wouldn't wait until the last minute. But now . . . You just shot a man, most likely killed him." Rukaj stared back at Nick lying upon the tarmac, blood pouring from his side. He caught sight of the dead dog, lying in a pool of blood twenty feet away. "Did you kill the dog, too?"

Dance stood there like a rag doll, his arms being torn apart by the two bodyguards.

"Sometimes in life," Rukaj said, "we don't realize how one simple action, one single mistake will affect our future."

Rukaj nodded to his bodyguards, who twisted Dance's arm even harder, sending him into a crippling agony.

"You're useless to me now," Rukaj continued. "A cop committing murder doesn't play well. They'll hunt you, and I can't afford you leading them to me."

Rukaj pulled out his knife, its polished metal shimmering in the morning sun. "I don't do many favors, and I certainly won't get in the habit of it, but I believe your slow death will allow more than a few people to go on with their lives."

Dance looked back and saw Shannon and Paul Dreyfus fifty yards away sprinting madly toward them.

Rukaj laid the blade under Dance's eye, trailing it down his cheek. "Time to pay up."

Dance's eyes filled with terror as the bodyguards pushed him into the back of the Mercedes. Rukaj took one last look at Nick and, without a word, climbed in and shut the door.

And the limo pulled away, driving out of the parking lot, disappearing around the corner, leaving Nick to die.