Authors: John Fortunato
“Who cares about his lawyer? The point is, he knew about Melissa. How? Either he's getting information from someone or he has someone watching me. How else would he have known she came to visit?”
“The shooting was in the news,” Stretch said. “Maybe he guessed you had a daughter.”
“He also knew I haven't found a job yet.”
“You're not exactly hiring material right now. Bad press does that.”
“And when I interviewed him, he knew Trudle was a professor, and he knew my name before I introduced myself.” Joe shook his head, disgusted with himself. “I thought William Tom gave him the heads-up, but⦔
“What are you saying?” Dale asked.
Joe's mind was spinning. He needed time to get his thoughts in order. He needed to be alone. He needed to think.
“Forget it,” Joe said. “Just forget it.”
Then Andi entered the room, followed by Cordelli and Tenny.
“We got the warrant,” she said. “My team's on the way, but we can start with the body search and DNA collection. You need to leave. Joe.”
Dale looked at Cordelli and Tenny. “Give her a hand.” They followed Andi to the study.
Dale and Joe moved to the hallway to talk.
“You were thinking hard about Othmann a few moments ago,” Dale said. “Where were you going with it?”
“All I know is that he has information he shouldn't.”
“Someone on the squad?” Dale's voice took on an edge. A challenge.
“I don't know.” Joe considered the implications of Dale's words. The implications of his own suspicions. Hearing the idea spoken out loud gave it more weight. “Why? Do you suspect someone?”
Dale hesitated. “I thought it was you.”
“
Me?
” Joe said. “Why the hell would you think it was me?”
“Keep your voice down.” He looked around. “Why do you think? You had financial problems after Christine's death. You lost the house. Melissa's in college. And we're retiring you.”
“You thought I was selling out to Othmann? I didn't even know him. And how did you know Othmann was even buying?”
“We've been trying to put a case together on him for years, and every time he's one step ahead.”
“Why didn'tâ”
A commotion erupted from the study.
“Drop the gun!”
Joe drew his Glock and started down the hall.
Books came through the study door, walking backward.
Andi yelled, “Drop the gun!”
Joe took aim.
Books turned. In his right hand, he held a gunâa Glock. Under his left arm was Cordelli's neck. He jammed the gun into the side of Cordelli's head.
Joe yelled, “Let him go!”
Books spun Cordelli under his arm and pushed him down the hall toward Joe.
Joe took a step to the side to get a clear shot.
Books fired.
Cordelli grunted.
A round slammed into the wall beside Joe's head. He dropped to a knee. Took aim. Cordelli fell into him, obstructing his view and knocking him off balance. Joe wrestled Cordelli aside, trying to get a bead on Books, wanting to eliminate the threat. Cordelli seemed wooden, unresponsive, an expression of surprise frozen on his face. Then it was Bluehorse Joe was holding. He was back on Jones Ranch Road, watchingâ
Stop it. He forced his mind to return to the present. Using his left arm, his injured arm, he eased Cordelli to the floor, his tricep screaming under the weight. Joe scrambled to his feet.
Now Joe could see Books. He was at the end of the hall, heading to the back of the house. Joe raised his gun, finger on triggerâ
“Moving!” Andi shouted, and buttonhooked into the hall from the study's doorway, right into Joe's target area.
Tenny followed. They both had their guns trained down the hall.
Books turned the corner and was gone.
“Cordelli's down!” Joe said, rushing past Andi and Tenny. “Andi, on me.”
Joe ran down the hall, Andi right behind him. They stopped short at the turn. He went to a knee and darted his head forward, beyond the outside corner of the wall, a quick peek, then pulled it back. In that fraction of a second, he saw the door at the end of this second hallway swing closed.
“Clear!” Joe was up and running. “Rear door!”
At the door, he stopped and moved to the right, pressing up against the wall on the strike-plate side of the frame. Andi and Tenny hugged the wall on the other side. Joe signaled, using his fingers and hand, indicating he wanted to clear the door quick and with a purpose, crisscrossing through the entryway. Joe would go through first, moving diagonally to cover everything beyond the door to the left. Andi would then move to cover everything beyond the door on the right. Tenny would follow to support either side. But the signals weren't necessary. They had all trained for this. Whoever goes through first is always right. Whichever way number one goes, number two adapts and goes the other way. Clearings were dynamic and fluid and strong. They would address, engage, and overwhelm whatever threat was on the other side of that door.
He raised his left fist.
His arm shook.
His heart pounded.
Finger count.
One, two, three.
He shoved the door open and took three quick steps, assessing everything in his field of fire: trees, dirt path, lawn furniture, shed.
His quarry, twenty yards past the shed, heading out into open country.
“Got him!” Joe took aim, but Books was running hard, bobbing and weaving along the path into the woods beyond.
Joe ran. Andi with him.
The door slammed open behind them.
Feet pounding.
He looked back. Tenny and Dale.
As he ran, Joe recalled his conversation with Melissa, telling her nothing would happen, promising her. There would be a whole team of agents there, he'd said.
Books fired two rounds at his pursuers. Joe instinctively ducked. A round whizzed close by. He took a knee and returned three rounds. Andi fired another three.
They took off again, running hard, running in a pack.
He gasped for air. They'd covered almost a hundred yards. Peering through sparsely spaced junipers, Joe could see Books fifty yards ahead and still running. Books stopped out in the open; the high desert here offered little cover or concealment. The scraggly trees were spaced too far apart.
“Down!” Joe took a knee.
Books fired two rounds. One round sailed overhead. The second hit the dirt twenty feet in front of Joe, kicking up a spray of earth.
Joe felt his vision focusing. He was hypersensitive to Books, his gun, and the agents behind him, but everything else was melting away into a black fog. A part of his mind recognized it. He'd experienced it at Jones Ranch Road. This was what officers who'd told him about firefights called “tunnel vision.” When threatened, a person develops an acuity of the senses to address the threat and only the threat. A survival mechanism.
Joe fired off three more rounds. His chest was heaving and he knew his rounds were landing everywhere but on Books.
Books was off and running.
A volley of shots came from around him.
Joe started running again. The son of a bitch was not getting away. He counted Books's shots. Six rounds fired. Nine left. Joe had fired six rounds, too. They both had nine left.
Joe kept his eyes focused on Books. One moment Books was cutting past a tree; the next he was gone.
“Where did he go? Is he down?”
Tenny pointed. “He's in the arroyo!”
A small engine started up. Then the sound of a dirt bike as it took off. They raced to the arroyo. Too late.
“Shit!” Tenny stomped his foot. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”
Joe said nothing, unable to speak. He bent over, hands on knees, drawing in deep breaths. Finally, he managed to ask, “How's Cordelli?”
O
CTOBER
15
F
RIDAY
, 10:02
A.M
.
O
THMANN
E
STATE
, S
ANTA
F
E
, N
EW
M
EXICO
“One second I'm listening to Andi tell Othmann's lawyer about the search warrant, the next I have the gorilla's arm around my neck.” Cordelli moved his right hand from his chest to his throat. His hand shook. “I don't know how the hell he got my gun. It all happened so fast.”
Cordelli sat on a chair in Othmann's study, his bulletproof vest discarded on the floor. The squad formed a semicircle around him. Dale was on his cell by the door, contacting the locals to be on the lookout for Books.
“Then he drags me into the hallway. The bastard was strong. Man, when he pushed me down and I heard the shot, I thought I was done. It felt like I'd gotten whacked with a baseball bat. I couldn't breathe.”
Cordelli's shirt hung unbuttoned. He lifted his white T-shirt beneath to reveal a dark red welt over his left nipple. He rubbed at it with a still-shaking hand.
Joe felt dizzy, his arm on fire. Even his cheek, which hadn't bothered him the last couple days, felt like someone had shoved a hot coal under the bandage. His adrenaline was dissipating and the realization of what had just happened began to dawn. He needed to sit down or he'd surely fall down.
Joe walked away from the others. They kept talking. He leaned against a display cabinet and slid to the floor, sitting with his back to the glass.
Stretch looked over. “You okay?”
Joe waved him off.
Ten minutes later, Andi's search team arrived. He tried to stand, putting his weight against the cabinet. It gave a little and seemed to spring back when he stepped away. He climbed to his feet and examined the cabinet. He called Andi over. There was something behind it. She would have her team pull it.
Othmann walked into the room with his attorney. Joe had nothing to lose. He spoke loudly to attract the attention of his squad. “I'm sure we will find your bodyguard. And when we do, you can bet he'll want to make a deal.” He watched Othmann. “How did you know about my daughter?”
“You have got to be kidding,” the attorney said.
But Joe already had his answer. Othmann had glanced over at his squad. He had looked at someone. Joe didn't know who, but at least his suspicion was confirmed. The rat was real. Sooner or later, they would figure it out. But not today. Too much had already happened. He started for the door but stopped when he heard Sadi's voice.
“Why did he look at you?”
Who was she talking to? He looked at Othmann. The collector's self-assuredness crumbled. Even after Books had run, Othmann had somehow held his composure. Now, realizing Joe had tricked him, his veneer broke.
“He didn't look at me.”
Joe stopped moving. Stopped breathing. Stopped thinking. No. No way. He couldn't believe it. Didn't want to believe it. He closed his eyes, but it changed nothing.
“Don't give me that shit.” Sadi's voice rose in anger. “He looked right at you.”
There was a pause, then Stretch said, “It's not what you think.”
A tremor moved through Joe. His mind roiled. His senses numbed. If conversation continued in the room, he did not hear it. If there had been a fire at that moment, he would have burned. And, in a way, there was a fire. Everything he believed to be real and true was ablaze, and there was nothing he could do to put it out.
It's not what you think.
Nothing good could come from those words. He did not want to know the full extent of his best friend's betrayal.
When Joe opened his eyes, Stretch was leaving the study with Dale behind him. Sadi followed.
She looked back at Othmann. “That's my partner, you son of a bitch. What the hell did you do to him?”
Othmann had recovered. His face revealed nothing.
Sadi continued toward the door, but Dale raised his hand, blocking her way. “I need to talk to him.”
“Butâ”
“Alone.”
Sadi's face contorted into a patchwork of emotion.
Joe pushed past her. He followed Dale down the hall
Dale saw him. “No.”
“Save it.”
Joe sidestepped Dale and rushed into the great room. Two agents from Andi's team followed them in. Stretch turned only in time to look surprised. Joe grabbed the front of Stretch's shirt and pushed the tall man into the room, all the way to the fireplace wall. He ignored the throb in his injured arm. The two FBI agents started toward them. From the corner of his eye, Joe saw Dale wave them off.
“Stretch, I'm going to ask you one time, and if our friendship ever meant anything to you, then you need to tell me the truth. Did you tell him about Melissa?”
Stretch said nothing, tears welling up in his eyes.
“You attended every one of her birthday parties.” Joe's voice broke. “You went to her graduation. You told Christine on her deathbed that we were your family.”
Stretch said nothing. But the tear that slid down his cheek said everything.
Joe lowered his head.
“How could you? How could you? You knew what Othmann was capable of.” Joe looked up, anger replacing sorrow. “You told him about the mask and about my wanting to go after him, didn't you? You set me up. Because of you, Bluehorse is dead.”
Joe slammed Stretch against the stone wall. “Because of you!” He slammed him again. “I trusted you!”
Dale came up and tried to pull him away.
“I trusted you!” Joe struggled to hold on to his best friend. Once he let go, Stretch would be gone. Gone forever. Like Christine. Another part of his life gone. Like Bluehorse, gone. Like his job, gone. He was losing everything. And he could have lost Melissa because of his best friend's betrayal.
The two FBI agents grabbed Joe.
With a burst of strength, he threw Stretch back against the fireplace. His head smacked against stone. The agents dragged Joe away.