2 minutes left…
9:27 p.m.
A DVD was in the trunk, a note beside it: “I hope you enjoy watching this as much as I did filming it.” She felt a surge of dread, gazed around the neighborhood one last time, then took the DVD inside to watch it, thinking only of what Adkins, or his copycat, might have done to Lewis.
Out the back window, Tessa saw someone in the backyard.
Just a glimpse of shadowy movement along the edge of the rock wall.
“Detective Warren! He’s in the yard!” Even though she couldn’t see his face, she knew.
It’s him. It’s him. It’s Adkins!
Cheyenne leveled her gun, slid to the back door, opened it a crack, yelled, “Stop and put your hands to the side!”
The figure fired a shot toward the house and dove for cover.
We still didn’t know what would happen at 9:29.
An attack on Cheyenne? On Tessa? On me?
A bomb?
So far we only had evidence of C-4 found in the back of the van that the killers had used to transport their victims.
That was all. Nothing else.
But they transported more than their victims back there, Pat. They transported What is obvious is not always what is true.
No, it’s not.
But sometimes it is.
They’d also transported the wheelchair in the back of the van.
And now it was in the FBI Lab. I whipped out my phone.
Punched in Angela’s number.
A second gunshot, and the doorframe just inches from Detective Warren’s face shattered. Tessa cried out, but Cheyenne hardly flinched, just crouched to a shooting stance. Studied the yard.
Tessa noticed a smear of movement in the deep shadows, a figure edging carefully toward the house. “There!” she cried. “By the wall!”
“Stop!” Detective Warren aimed.
The man flicked his hand up, fired. The window above Tessa blistered apart, showering glass onto her.
And then, time froze.
Ice covered everything, stilled everything.
For a fraction of a second, Tessa saw Detective Warren’s body tense.
And then she took a shot.
Another. A third.
The ice of the moment shattered, and Tessa felt as if fragments of time and sound and fear were falling all around.
Then silence.
The night was still.
Her heart was hammering, hammering. She peered out the window.
“Stay low,” Detective Warren warned.
But before she ducked down, Tessa saw a man sprawled near the rock wall skirting the woods. He was on his back, his gun a few feet from his right hand. His face turned the other direction.
“You got him?” Tessa said. Dry, airless words.
“Yes.” Detective Warren still had her gun aimed at him.
“You sure?”
“Yes.” To Tessa she seemed unbelievably calm. “You stay here.”
“You’re not going out there!”
“I have to see if he’s still alive.”
“So you might have missed?”
“I didn’t miss.” Detective Warren opened the door and, gun ready, arms taut, stepped onto the back deck. “I’ll be right back.”
Brad thought of the murders at the Styles house last month. Thought of the woman and the two cops. Thought of how he had laid so still on the carpet, waiting for one of them to approach him, the shotgun just within his reach.
He thought of those things now. Everything coming full circle.
But this time with a little twist.
His watch vibrated on his wrist.
Time’s up.