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“What are you doing?” he said cautiously.

Konrad shook his head slightly, as if Jim should have known better than to ask that question. “You knew this would happen eventually, right?” Konrad spoke softly. “I mean, you helped us set up an assassination. We paid you. Did you really think we’d do that and then let you live?”

Jim looked awful. Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth. “I did everything you said!” He got a little too excited and set off a fit of coughing. He sucked in a deep breath, and his lungs gurgled. “I did everything you told me to.” He wheezed. “Everything.”

“Thank you for that,” Konrad said, raising the weapon. There wasn’t much more to say. He could have given Jim a few comforting words, or even let him take a sleeping pill if he felt sorry enough for him, but Konrad didn’t. Jim was a dirtbag. He’d sold out his friend for a big screen TV.

Jim cried out. He tried to raise his arms and defend himself, but he didn’t have the strength. He could hardly move. Konrad unloaded one round into his forehead. It was a hollow point, but even so, it blew out the back of his skull and shattered something inside the cabinet behind him.

Even with the noise suppressor, the .45 was loud enough to sound like a small car backfiring. That was okay, as long as it didn’t sound like a .45.

Konrad took a long look at the house, trying to decide exactly what to do now. If he’d had time to plan things out, he would have made the murder look like Sara did it. Now, instead, he was taking the heat himself. Again. Stryker’s assassin had turned out to be more of a lost puppy than a cold-hearted killer. Now Konrad had a body with two bullet holes in him that didn’t match. The best thing he could do was burn the place down.

Konrad closed his eyes and saw those chess pieces tumbling across the board.
Too many players in the game
, he thought. Problem was, he wasn’t even sure what the game was anymore. Stryker had initially called Konrad in as backup to make sure Project Mourningbird went down smoothly. Then Paolini showed up making demands, throwing everything out of whack. Her unconventional demands had helped put him in danger. Her insistence on public meetings and cloak-and-dagger spy games were going to get him killed. 

Why now
, he had to wonder.
What was Paolini’s urgency?

Konrad heard a murmuring voice somewhere out front, and it jerked his mind back to the present. He stepped around the corner, saw dark shapes moving on the lawn. “Shit,” he muttered. He glanced back at Jim’s body and noticed something he should have noticed before. Konrad hadn’t been paying attention. Jim had a phone. It had never even occurred to Konrad that Jim might have done something as stupid as calling the cops. The stream of curses that sprang to mind melted in a sense of urgent self-preservation.

Konrad sprang across the kitchen and yanked open the back door. He bolted across the back lawn, along the edge of the swimming pool and towards the cliff line at the rear of the lot. Out of the corner of his eye, Konrad saw a shadowy blur of motion off to his left.

He heard a woman’s voice shout, “Freeze!” Konrad kept running, following the same path Sara had taken less than half an hour earlier.

Chapter 27

Brandy found Matt in a feisty mood when she got home. She hung her coat in the hall and located him in the living room, watching TV. “Ah you’re finally here,” he said as she settled down on the sofa next to him. She kissed him on the cheek.

“It smells great in here. I’m starved. What is it, spaghetti?”

“It was,” he said disdainfully. “I ate yours.”

Brandy gave him a dirty look. “I have a gun,” she said.

“Alright, alright. There’s a plate in the microwave. Two minutes ought to be about right.”

Brandy poked through the fridge for some iced tea while her spaghetti warmed. Matt appeared in the doorway. He folded his arms and leaned up against the wall.

“You made cake?” she said. It was in a small pan on the bottom shelf, covered in saran wrap. It was unfrosted.

“I gave it a shot,” he said. “It looked easier on TV. Are they supposed to be mushy when you poke them?”

“Mushy?” she laughed. “Maybe you didn’t cook it long enough. What did you poke it with?”

“My finger.”

Brandy peered through the plastic wrap and saw the telltale hole in the middle. She shot him a look and Matt held up a finger wrapped in gauze. “It was hot,” he said sheepishly. “Go figure.”

Brandy burst into laughter. “I think it’s time for you to get another job,” she said.

Matt had been a reporter for the Chronicle since he got out of college, but they’d laid him off when the economy slowed down. He was bringing in decent money doing freelance work and writing editorials, but Brandy was starting to worry that she’d return home one day to find the apartment burned down.

“Hey, don’t blame me,” Matt protested. “It’s that Martha Stewart bitch. The cake was her idea.”

They made small talk over dinner. Brandy told him some of the details of her case, and he listened studiously. “So who set this lady up?” he said when she was finished with her story.

“Good question.”

“I think it was the government.”

She paused, her fork an inch away from her lips. “Why do you say that?”

“Who else could do all that? First, they set her up like a patsy, just like Oswald in JFK. Then they kill her before anyone gets a chance to hear her story. Only Sara Murphy was smarter than Oswald. She got away.”

“You definitely have too much time on your hands,” Brandy said. “I’m shutting off the cable.”

“No, wait a minute… think about it. Murphy had perfect credit, a good job, and then suddenly everything went to hell in a hand basket and she ended up on a roof with a sniper rifle, which incidentally
didn’t
kill Fortress. And now somebody’s shooting at her and trying to run her down with an SUV? This is definitely a conspiracy!”

“Okay, first of all, we don’t know any of that for a fact. There’s evidence to suggest that someone else was involved, which means she probably had a partner. Just because she didn’t pull the trigger doesn’t mean she’s innocent. Maybe she was involved with the klan or some kind of militia. If anything, she probably double-crossed somebody who was in on the whole thing. That would explain why they were trying to kill her at the golf course, too. Everything else is conjecture.”

“You take the fun out of everything,” Matt pouted.

“That’s my job.” Brandy’s phone rang and she fished it out of her pocket. “Hello? You’re kidding! No, I’ll leave right now. I’ll be out front in five minutes.”

She hung up the phone and found Matt glaring at her. “Taking off?” he said menacingly.

“I’m sorry, babe.”

“Is it Murphy?”

“Yeah. She just shot someone. One of her coworkers. The guy called 911 a few minutes ago.”

Matt followed her to the front door. Brandy threw her coat on and then kissed him. “Save me some cake, okay?”

“Pfft. I’m going to eat the whole damned thing just to spite you.”

“In that case, stay close to the phone. 911 is on speed dial,” she said, laughing. Matt cocked an eyebrow but he didn’t have a comeback.

Brandy waited on the street out front for Lee. He had to cross her neighborhood to get to Sea Cliff, so he’d offered her a ride to the scene. He was there in two minutes with lights flashing. Less than five minutes later, they were at Jim’s house.

“That’s a rental car out front,” Brandy observed. “We should run those plates, check up on who rented it.”

The rental companies had gotten better at keeping their cars nondescript so they wouldn’t be targeted by thieves, but they still had certain telltale signs. The bar code etched on the lower corner of the windshield was a dead giveaway, for instance.

“Backup’s coming,” Lee said. “Do you want to wait?”

Brandy crawled out of the cruiser. “No, Murphy’s long gone and it sounds like this Jim guy might need medical attention. Do you have a med kit? And maybe a print kit?”

“Everything’s in the trunk,” Lee said.

Brandy just happened to glance up at the front window as Lee fumbled around in the trunk. She saw a shadow move behind the curtains. Her hand went for her gun. “Somebody’s moving in there,” she whispered.

Lee raised his head, eyes widening. He glanced at the windows and nodded. “I’ll take the front,” he said. He slammed the trunk and drew his revolver.

Brandy jogged around back. The side of the house was fenced off, with a six-foot gate. There was no way to open it from the outside. She had to holster her gun and climb up high enough to reach the latch. Brandy was athletic. She didn’t have a problem getting up there, but it was an awkward stretch.

She had just managed to pull the latch when she heard the back door slide open. Brandy dropped to the ground and kicked the gate open, drawing her pistol in one swift motion. She raced up the side of the house and emerged in the backyard just as a tall, shadowy figure flew past her.

“Freeze!” she shouted. She lowered her stance and set her sights on the man. “STOP RIGHT THERE!” He put on a burst of speed and Brandy realized she was going to have to shoot him, or chase him down.

“Crap,” she muttered. She lowered the gun and broke into a run. She couldn’t shoot an unknown suspect in the back. Even if she knew for sure it was her suspect, it would have been tough to justify. Brandy ran along the edge of the yard at full tilt, past the pool, and then jumped the wire fence at the south end of the property.

She stopped there. She glanced up and down the trail, and along the beach. There was no one in sight. Lee came running up behind her.

“Did you see him?”

“Yeah. He got away.”

“It wasn’t Murphy.”

“No.” Brandy gave Lee a frustrated stare.

“The guy in the house is dead. Somebody blew his brains out.”

Brandy narrowed her eyebrows. “Wait… he was shot in the head? The guy in the house called 911
after
he got shot in the head?”

“No. He was shot twice. Once in the gut, once in the head. It’s a mess in there, but I’d make an educated guess he was shot by two different guns.”

Brandy took a moment to absorb that. “The victim identified Murphy by name, didn’t he?”

“Yep. That’s why we’re here.”

“So Murphy came here, shot this Jim character and then she left… and then someone else shot Jim again?”

“Doesn’t make much sense does it?” Lee said.

“Yes, it does. It makes perfect sense. Murphy came here for information. She got what she wanted and left, but she shot Jim first. They must have had a fight. Murphy didn’t kill him, though. She could have killed him if she wanted to, but she didn’t. She just left.

“So the victim -who was still alive- called 911 and then he called his friends for help –his friends being the same guys who were chasing Murphy down at the golf course this afternoon. The friends got here before us. They questioned Jim and then they shut him up, permanently. This really is a conspiracy.”

Lee gave her a quizzical look and Brandy managed a weak smile. “Something my husband said,” she said. “I’m starting to think he was right.”

Chapter 28

Sara ran. The trail rose and fell, twisting precariously through the darkness, but her eyes adjusted quickly as she flew across the unfamiliar terrain. Her heart raced, not from exhaustion but from fear. The gun was heavy and uncomfortable against her lower back, a vigilant reminder of the line that Sara had crossed. She’d shot someone.

Sara was in shock. She had never been violent. Never. Not even on the playground. She couldn’t stand the thought of hurting anyone. She’d once spent six thousand dollars to save the family dog from cancer because she couldn’t bring herself to put the poor creature to sleep. Never in a million years would she have imagined herself assaulting someone. How could she have changed so much in just a few hours? Was there a darker part of her, a part she hadn’t known about until now? Sara felt like she was becoming everything they’d said she was. Maybe somewhere deep down, she really was a killer.

She left the beach and headed into town. She stuck to the alleys and side streets. As she ran, the city came to life around her. Despite the cold and the fog, the city was crawling with the dregs of society. Sara flew past pimps and whores, past drug dealers and junkies and insane homeless people who carried their entire worlds in a shopping cart or a garbage bag, until she finally collapsed at the base of a stairwell on Jones Street.

It was quiet and dark, and for the moment at least, she was alone. The hilly landscape fell away at an odd angle, and Sara felt dizzy. Her heart was drumming and her breath came in shallow gasps. She leaned her head back against the cold stone wall and closed her eyes.

Her mind reflected trippingly over the events of the day, trying to make sense of them. The two things that remained vivid in her memory were the things she’d been told about her family. The man on the phone had said Sara would never see her family again if she didn’t cooperate. The man hadn’t actually said he’d taken her family, but it was clearly implicit. Could he have been lying? Perhaps he had simply meant that he would harm Scott and Bree if Sara didn’t cooperate…

She dropped her head in her hands. She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember the conversation clearly enough to be sure what exactly the man had said, and without that memory, she couldn’t even guess the true meaning of his words. Her family, that was what it came down to. Whether they had been taken, or if Scott had simply left her, didn’t matter. Scott and Bree were still in danger.

And then there was Jim. Jim had said Scott had left Sara, that they’d been separated for three months. As impossible as that sounded, it did make sense at a certain level. It made sense out of the details, like Sara’s devastated home. Scott and Bree couldn’t have been there recently. The place had been falling apart for a long time. Scott would never have allowed all of that to happen. Sara had been thinking that her home had been vandalized, sabotaged in a few hours while she was at work. Maybe she had been wrong. Maybe Jim was telling the truth and Scott really had left her, and she’d been living without him for months.