Robert Walker - Absolute Instinct

He held a small caliber weapon to the terrified girl's brain. Jessica could see bruises on her forehead where he had burrowed the muzzle into her to make his point, and the girl had gone limp, fainted, so that Giles had to drag her about with him like some enormous other self.

“She's not dead,” he said immediately to clear this up. “Just went out like a light. I may've choked off her air a bit too long. But she's very much alive.”

“That's good, Giles. I know you want to do the right thing here.”

“Yeah… I do. Now take out your weapon and kick it back down those steps you came up.”

“For the girl, OK. You let her go, I kick away my weapon and become your hostage.”

“That might do except for one thing. You toss the weapon first. Then I let go of her.”

Jessica took in a long deep breath of air as she cautiously took her coat off and discarded it, displaying her shoulder holster. This she then unstrapped and tossed down the stair well to the half landing below. It made a resounding echo, causing some in the crowd below to look up at the unfolding drama overhead as if it were part of the planned activities of the evening. Stroud's voice wafted up and echoed off the marble columns here. “The Mojaves had a strange ritual and an even stranger deity…”

“Satisfied?” Jessica asked Giles. “Now let the girl go.”

Giles smiled and eased the unconscious girl to the marble floor. Jessica took a tentative step toward the girl as if she might help her, but Giles jammed the gun in her face.

“Forget about her. She's nobody. It's you and me now, and it's time. Our time, Jess. Something I do to make Father proud.”

“Time for what, Giles?” Jessica reached hands out to him. “You going to shoot me? If so do it now, because I'll be damned and dead before I go to any other location with you. I'm no fool to wind up facedown under your bone saw for a slow death.”

“Bet you have exquisite spinal fluid running through you, Jessica Coran. Juicy and thick. Thick yellow is… healthy. And marrow. I could really enjoy sucking on your-”

“It's not going to happen, Giles. It's here and now. One shot and every policeman and FBI in the building descends on you.”

“You came alone. I saw you.”

She lifted the phone and spoke into it to Richard. “Richard, where is your location?”

“Main lobby downstairs.”

“Lies,” countered Giles.

“Richard, show me your location on the camera.”

She held up the camera phone to Giles's eyes, and he saw the show of force, uniformed and plainclothes cops spreading out across the museum and covering every exit.

Jessica took this moment of surprise to drop and yank his ankles from beneath him. Giles came down hard, striking his head on the marble floor, his gun skittering away, rattling crablike as it raked across the marble floor.

“I got him!” shouted Jessica who'd snatched out her second weapon. “The same gun that ended your father's life, Giles. One fucking wrong move from you, and I put you out of your miserable fucking excuse for a life. Now get up!”

Jessica heard the elevator rev up, knowing Richard and others would spill out any moment to relieve her, Richard to scold her further. She heard others racing up the stairs to the collective shock of the crowd below. She took a moment to gather in her breath when the girl on the floor moaned, and Jessica took her eyes off Gahran for a millisecond.

Giles had been pulling himself up with the help of the balustrade, and suddenly he stood balanced atop it, threatening to jump.

The others spilled from the elevator and Jessica shouted for all to stop. She pleaded with Giles to come into her custody. “I'll see you aren't harmed, Giles, and that you aren't treated-”

“Like some sort of freak?” He laughed and sent a colorful bubblegum card billowing her way. As the card fluttered birdlike toward her, Giles shouted, “I'll see you in hell, Doctor!” And he dove swanlike out over the railing. She rushed to the edge, irrationally shouting no even at this juncture, just in time to see him pirouette onto his back and land face up, his entire back splayed open in a series of stabbings from the diablo spinata. The splat and the spatter of blood on white shirts, eyeglasses and evening gowns combined with the horror of Gahran's sudden arrival amid the elite of Field Museum donors sent up a collective terror-layered gasp.

Even from her distance, Jessica could make out Giles's open eyes staring back up at her, and she heard a whisper in her ear, not Giles's voice, but that of Mad Matthew Matisak's, quietly, eerily saying,Join me here, Jess, on the spine of Satan. She could even hear his maniacal laugh, a sound she had thought long before banished from the last corridor of her mind, vanquished years before by her heart.

Apparently not so.

“Diablo spinata,” she repeated the archaeology professor's term for the dinosaur bone that had claimed Giles Gahran, just to hear the sound of it again, she imagined, and just to weigh the sheer irony of it all as she stooped and lifted the bubblegum card he'd contemptuously thrown in her face. It proved a card depicting none other than Mad Matthew Matisak-crime statistics, the man's ranking according to body count listed alongside his brief biography with a notation of his unofficial official website all on one side, while his grim, ruddy and handsome features as a young man before the ravages of his disease graced the front. A sick society had made of Matisak a cult hero.

Laughlin now stared matter-of-factly down at the dead man and said, “Damn, looks like a picket fence went through the creep. Good riddance to rubbish, heh? One for the M.E.'s to yammer about over drinks at the convention, heh, Dr. Coran?”

“That could've been you down there, Jess. It's obviously what he had in mind, send you over to join with his father in a pathetic attempt of one monster trying to please another,” Richard said.

“A son trying to please a father, a son who could never please his mother,” Jessica replied.

“Why don't you write it up in another of your case file books, Dr. Coran,” Laughlin sardonically suggested. “Given the bizarre nature of the case and all, it oughta make a bestseller.”

“I'll likely have all the time in the world to write. Gods of the FBI are going to come down hard on us, Richard, when we return to D.C.”

“Perhaps… perhaps not,” Richard replied, holding her close to him.

“Do you know something I don't?”

“Before I discovered you missing at the cafe, I got a call from Eriq Santiva.”

“And?”

“He and Hemmings had it out right in the middle of Fischer's office, heated battle as they say, and Eriq came out on top defending our actions, reminding them of your previous successes in New York, Philadelphia, Miami, twice in New Orleans, D.C., Houston, Hawaii and London.”

“Did Eriq go so far as to say he condoned our actions in Portland?”

“Better yet.”

“What?”

“He brought in Xavier Darwin Reynolds who so impressed Fischer that Hemmings was blown out of the water. Darwin pointed out that the FBI came out as the hero all across America thanks to us yanking an innocent man off death row at the thirteenth hour. And the kid's persuasive, as you know.”

“But did Eriq go so far as to tell Fischer that we had his blessings?”

“He went further. He claims the glory. It was his idea.”

“My God, Eriq did that?”

“To save our asses, yes. Said he will take the brunt of any disciplinary actions Fischer might want to take, including his dismissal.”

“Geez, we can't let Eriq take this on himself this way. Did you tell him I was thinking of taking that position with Virginia state? Did you?” She grabbed her phone up and pressed speed dial for Santiva in Quantico.