Hunt braked the car, cut the wheel right and felt the end drift. The car was heavy, still going fast. It slid in gravel, then shuddered across washboard dirt. Hunt took in the Escalade with its crushed fender, the front door standing wide, the darkness beyond it. He racked the transmission into park and hit the yard at a dead run, weapon out and hot. Ten feet from the door, a hot wind touched his face. Shadows flitted across the ground.
Hunt broke the plane of the door and saw Katherine, bound on the floor. Silver tape covered her mouth, and she was sucking hard through her nose. Johnny lay on the ground, filthy, bleached of color. He was bleeding, too, bruised, and the look on his face was one of pure terror. Holloway was a sack of bones beside him, either dead or close to it. Freemantle stood above them, two feet of metal pipe in his hand. Torn and bloody and fierce, he looked like a desperate man, like a killer. For Hunt, the math was easy.
Lead pipe. Cinder block.
Same thing.
The gun tracked right.
“Don’t,” Johnny said.
But Hunt took the shot. He fired a single round that hit high and right. It was not a kill shot. Hunt wanted him down but alive.
The shot staggered Freemantle. It drove him back, but he stayed up. Hunt stepped closer, weapon trained, but Freemantle made no aggressive move. A strange emotion crossed his face, confusion, then something like joy-sunlight, if such a thing were possible. His hand rose, fingers spread. He looked past Hunt, to the clear blue sky and the high yellow sun. He stood long enough to say a single word.
“Sofia.”
Then he folded at the knees, dead before he hit the floor.