I’d been waiting for that second. I sprang off the floor and leapt to the stairway.
I’d just barely started up when the blasting began again. Then the door came crashing open.
I ran for the top of the stairs. I heard the metallic clunk beneath me that could only mean one thing: a grenade. Probably an M84, a flash-bang. Because Stark didn’t want to kill me. That’s why he had shouted a warning. He just wanted to pin me down so I couldn’t lie in ambush for him.
Sure enough, as I reached the dark landing, as I hit the floor, covering my ears with the heels of my palms, the thing went off below. Even with my eyes closed, I saw the white flash. Even with my ears covered, the explosion rocked me.
Then the gunfire started again as the rifleman entered the house. The darkness below flickered with muzzle flame. The air trembled with thunder. Glass and wood exploded everywhere. I could hear the bullets sweeping the room.
Another pause—the quick snapping sounds of a reload.
Stark’s rasping whisper: “Upstairs.”
I got to my feet and ran. I dashed through the first open door I saw, pushing it shut behind me just as the next grenade hit the landing. I was leaning against the door when the flash-bang blew. The sound and light of the explosion was muffled but the air wave jolted me through the wood. Then the shooting started again as the rifleman climbed the stairs.
I opened the door and curled quickly out of the room, back onto the landing, back toward the stairway. The air was flickering and shuddering again as the bullets rattled into the landing wall. The muzzle of the gun came into view, and then the gunman’s head and shoulders as he climbed, firing relentlessly, sweeping the bullets back and forth.
Then another pause. The snap of the rifleman reloading.
I stepped to the top of the stairs and blew his head off.
It was one shot. The top of the rifleman’s brow flew away in pieces. His head snapped back as his brains spat out behind him. Some portion of a second later, the message reached his body that there was no longer anyone home, and the meat that was left toppled backward down the stairs.
Stark laughed. Of course he laughed. The rifleman had been a sacrifice. To get him close. And now he was close. Nothing between us but Samantha.
The sound of his laughter—that god-awful sound; it really was awful—drifted up to me where I was standing, my Glock still pointed down the stairs into the shadows of the living room below. I saw Samantha come out of those shadows first, her mouth taped, her eyes still dull and far away.
Then Stark came forward behind her. His arm still wrapped around Samantha’s throat, his death’s head appeared over her shoulder, grinning up at me. In his free hand, he held a gun, trained on my heart.
It was a good thing I had killed his brother. It was a good thing he hated me so uncontrollably. If it hadn’t been for that hatred, he would have shot me dead on the spot and Samantha right afterward. It was only his obsession with revenge, his need to cause me the greatest pain possible: That was his weakness, and it was all that was keeping both me and her alive.
“Drop the gun, Champion,” he rasped.
He climbed toward me, pointing his weapon at me, forcing Samantha ahead of him up the stairs. He kept his head moving, drawing it back behind her. I had no shot, no way to take him out without risking her life.
I drew back, down the corridor, hoping for a better angle. Samantha rose into view, but now Stark had her twisted around, a shield to protect his flank from me. He shifted his grip on her and hoisted her off her feet. I could see how strong he was by the ease of the movement. He took the last few stairs more quickly, coming onto the landing, turning toward me, Samantha in front of him again, his arm around her throat again and the pistol once again leveled at my chest.
“Drop the gun, I said.” He came down the dark hall.
I backed away, my Glock on the two of them, but no shot, no way to take a shot.
“Do it now, Champion, or I’ll put one in her.”
He shifted his weapon. Took it off me. Stuck it into the side of Samantha’s head, making her flinch with pain and fear. He kept coming toward me. I kept backing away.
“You think I won’t do it?” he said. His face appeared from behind her for a second and I saw him smile. “I’d like to keep her around, it’s true. I’d like to draw this out, you know I would. But I’ll kill her, I surely will. Drop the gun.”
He stepped toward me. I stepped back, forcing my heart to go cold as the calculations ratcheted through my mind at high speed.
“She’s no use to you dead,” I said. My voice still sounded alien to my own ears. “Put a bullet in her and it’s just you and me trading fire. At best, she’s a dead shield. At best, you kill me—kill me quick. That’s no good for you, is it? You made a promise to your brother’s soul, Stark. Remember? To put me through hell. You promised him you’d put me through hell for a long time . . .”
I heard the breath come stuttering out of him like a death rattle. I saw the big eyes glow with frustration and fury. He kept coming toward me. I kept stepping back—and then my heels hit the door, the door of the last room, the room where the Fat Woman was tied to the chair.
I stopped. Stark stopped. We stood facing each other. The corridor was silent. The Fat Woman wasn’t screaming anymore. I guess all that gunfire had shut her up.
For one more second we faced off, Samantha between us. Then I saw the next idea—the next move—come into the skeleton’s glowing eyes. I guess we thought of it at the same time, and we knew at the same time that I was finished.
He shifted the gun from Samantha’s head to her elbow. He tightened his grip around her throat.
“I don’t have to kill her,” he rasped. “We can begin this now.”
But even before he finished speaking, I threw down my gun. I spread my hands.
“You win, Stark,” I said.
Stark made a noise: a long, groaning breath of satisfaction. His grin and his pleasure-glazed stare made his face look like something that might pop out at you in a funhouse. He had to lick the salt of joy off his lips before he could speak.
“Go through the door now,” he said. He pressed his gun harder against Samantha’s writhing body by way of emphasis.
But I didn’t need to be told twice. I reached behind me for the knob. Opened the door. Stepped through.
The light in the room made me squint after the shadows of the corridor. Before I got my bearings, Stark stormed in after me, shoving me aside. He took one look around: the Fat Woman struggling in the chair, the cluttered desk, the night-hung windows, the papers and files stacked up against the wall . . .
“Good!” said the Fat Woman at once in her loud, blunt voice. “Get this cord off me—now!”
Stark ignored her. With every breath, he was still making that sound, that gratified groan. He tossed Samantha away from him—as if she were a crumpled piece of paper; as if she were garbage. She hit the wall and stumbled, struggling to keep her feet. She stood there, breathing hard behind her gag, her hands bound behind her. She watched us with her wide, distant eyes.
Stark, on the other hand—he was all focus, fully alert. He gestured at me with the gun.
“Take off that jacket.”
“Get this cord off me, damn it!” said the Fat Woman. “It’s cutting off my circulation. I’m going to get gangrene.”
“Shut up,” Stark told her. And to me again: “The jacket—take it off.”
I stripped off the windbreaker. He gestured with the gun again. I tossed the jacket to a spot near his feet. Stark kicked it aside.
“Turn your pockets inside out,” he said to me.
“Goddamn it, Stark!” shouted the Fat Woman.
“You’ll get out,” he told her. “Just hold your water.”
The Fat Woman made a guttural noise of rage. She struggled against the cord for a moment, then sagged, gasping with the effort.
Another gesture my way from Stark’s pistol. I started to turn my pockets inside out.
“You’re a hard case, Champion. I have to give you that,” Stark said as I went at it. He was beginning to come down from the high of winning our confrontation. The bitter rage was welling up in him again. “Those were good men I sent after you. And you took them out. I have to give you that. You’re a hard case. We’re going to see how hard.”
I didn’t answer. I went on turning out my pockets.
“Go ahead. Say something funny,” Stark told me. “I like it when you say something funny.”
I was done. I lifted my hands.
“Turn around,” said Stark.
I turned. I looked down at the Fat Woman. I saw her glaring up at me from the chair, her mottled ruin of a face contorted with furious triumph. Her marble eyes glinted her hatred at me.
“Good,” said Stark behind me. “You’re unarmed. Turn around again.”
I faced him.
“All right,” said the Fat Woman. “Now let me out of here.”
Stark nodded—but for another moment, he made no move to go to her. He went on standing there, went on looking at me—looking at me almost dreamily, covering me with the gun. He was really enjoying this now.
“You know what’s funny about this,” he rasped. He cocked his head as if the clever idea had just occurred to him. “Here you are again. You see what I mean? All this time, all this running, all this killing you’ve done . . . this whole journey of yours—where has it taken you? You’ve returned right back to where you started, haven’t you? You and your girl—prisoners of my fat friend here. Locked up—oh, yes, she told me all about it. Locked up in the high room, about to be sent into a world of my pleasure, and your pain.” His laughter made my skin crawl. “Isn’t it amazing, Champion? How it’s all come full circle? After all that trouble and time and death, here you are again, same place, same situation, you and your girl both, and what’s the difference?”
I shook my head slowly, my hands still raised. “Only one,” I said, “only one difference.”
Stark snorted through his weird, wide, sunken nose. “What’s that?”
“This time, my girl has a knife.”
I had kept watch on Samantha during this past minute or two. I could see her working at her canvas and metal belt, getting the knife out, sawing at her zip-tied cuffs. I could see she was ready—or as ready as she was going to be. I just wasn’t sure she had the will or the courage.
But if she was capable of doing anything, she had to do it now.
There was a second after I spoke—what seemed to me like an unnaturally long second—when I saw my words begin to make sense to Stark, saw his eyes begin to reflect his understanding. He had probably searched Samantha. Of course he had. But she was just a librarian. It hadn’t occurred to him that she had planned for this, that she had thought of a way to fight back, to turn herself into a weapon. My weapon. He hadn’t thought of that at all.
Too bad, skeleton-man.
As the understanding dawned on him, he turned—and still, the time seemed to stretch out, the movement seemed to me slow as slow could be—he turned, bringing his gun around toward Samantha.
I threw myself at him. And at the same time, Samantha launched herself off the wall, her hand lashing out from behind her with the strength and flexibility of a bullwhip. The little blade jutting from her fingers caught the light and winked. The Fat Woman had time to let out a short bark of surprise behind me.
Then Samantha slashed Stark’s face. A scarlet line of his blood arced through the air, following the arc of the blade. And at the same instant, I grabbed the killer’s wrist with one hand and drove the edge of my other hand into the crook of his elbow.
The blow sent his gun hand flying up. The pistol discharged—a blast that filled the room, that overwhelmed the atmosphere with noise. The bullet went into the ceiling and fragments of wood and white plaster rained down on top of us.
Chaos then. I twisted Stark’s wrist and he dropped the gun. He twisted around to strike at my throat but sent only a glancing blow to the side of my neck. Samantha, making a high, gravelly noise behind her gag of tape, tried to cut him again, leaping at him, jabbing the point of the knife into his shoulder. He drove his elbow back into her—a hard shot in the center of the forehead. Her blade went flying. Samantha went reeling backward. She smacked into the wall. Her legs went rubbery underneath her. She reached for purchase but found nothing and slid down to the floor, blinking, openmouthed, dazed.
And Stark and I came crashing together, grappling with each other, our contorted faces inches apart.
My hands were on his arms and his on mine and both of us were struggling to strike a blow. Locked in combat like that, we also smacked into the wall, trying to punch or tear or knee or kick one another but only turning violently around the doorjamb as one body, stumbling as one body through the opening, out into the hall.
We moved from the light of the room to the shadows of the corridor, struggling, wrestling. Those sinewy arms of his were strong; I could feel it. I couldn’t get a hand free and had to use all my own strength to hold on to him. We turned again and my back hit another wall in the corridor. The impact jarred me and Stark used the moment to spin me off the wall and lift his leg between us. In a single, swift motion, he jammed his foot into my belly and hurled himself backward to the floor, dragging me down with him.