Jason Pinter - The Guilty

He was staring at Mark Rheingold. I recognized the burning in his eyes as the same expression he had right before pushing Mya off a building. That he'd enjoy the violence about to take place.

William Henry Roberts lay in bed, naked excerpt for a pair of loose-fitting shorts. The window was open, his skin dry from the cool summer air. He could hear sirens like crazed bees flying down the New York streets, looking to quench fires that could only be put out briefly before igniting again.

They were looking for the source of these flames, and so far they'd come up empty.

William read the papers. He knew they were looking for a ghost. He could be anybody. Someone's friend. Someone's brother. Someone's son.

In one life he had been all of these.

He could sense the panic in the streets as men and women tried to figure out who might be next. They promised to keep their children locked up, to come home early from work. That made him laugh. He wasn't targeting normal moms and pops.

All of his victims shared the same bond, and once he'd taken out as many as possible, in the end they would all thank him.

Some called him heartless.

Cold.

Evil.

A demon.

The devil himself.

Others called him a warrior.

A prophet.

An apostle.

One said that God worked in mysterious ways.

One referred to his beloved Winchester as the weapon with which God was raining brimstone down upon the city of sin. That only through darkness and devastation could light eventually emerge.

William Henry Roberts read all of these, and knew that with the right fire the whole city could burn. Just like the fire that had lit up the Texas sky years ago.

It took a fire to clean William and awaken him. It would take a fire for this city to see the light.

Just like his great-grandfather had done all those years ago, riding with fearless men who tried to right the wrongs of so many evils only to find backs turned, his very motives questioned, an army amassing against his fellow Regulators.

He was forced into hiding to save his life. He had to live a lie, denying his heritage until he was nearly on his deathbed.

Bonney was a great name. Billy the Kid was the mythological name bestowed upon him. William's parents had tried to hide that legacy from him. Better for them to die than to bury the legend, stem the blood.

The heiress and the mogul were all targeted from the beginning. The cop was a mistake, but a fortunate one. David

Loverne was a split-second decision. After reading Mya's interview in the Dispatch, it was an easy choice.

Mya, though, was another story.

She had to go because of Henry.

William Roberts was a Regulator. Some thought him a villain, others a savior. Whichever side of the coin he was on, Henry Parker was on the other, the one chosen by fate to chronicle William's myth. Parker was a young man, just a few years older than Roberts's twenty-one. Henry himself had been hunted, narrowly escaping death.

We're the same.

Even if Henry didn't understand what William was trying to accomplish, he would be the one to spread the gospel.

Patrick Floyd Garrett didn't agree with Billy the Kid, but it was his sensational storytelling that cemented Billy's legend.

And for Henry to be able to tell the story with the passion necessary, he needed to feel anger. He needed to feel hate. He needed to feel loss. Only then would his words have the desired effect. Once Henry Parker saw the world the way

William did, that thin line separating life and death, innocent and guilty, their two sides would amount to a perfect whole.

William remembered back to the night he learned the truth about his family. The first was the truth about his legacy.

Though his parents had fought their hardest to distance themselves from it, William knew his grandfather Oliver well.

And when he learned the full extent of his legacy, there was no way he could let that mantle simply fall to the floor. He had to pick it up, shepherd it into a new millennium. And New

York, more than New Mexico or Texas, needed it.

The second truth was about his mother and that smiling bastard. His parents told him they loved him, would never lie to him, that they would always put William and his sister above everything.

They forgot to leave out the "almost" before the everything.

William's mission had been clear. When a patient's limbs become gangrenous, you had to cut them off before they killed the whole. Sometimes you had to lose limbs vital to who you were. Limbs you never believed you could live without.

But he did.

William picked up the Winchester, ran his fingers along the cold steel, tried to envision all the lives shattered, worlds changed by this weapon. He squeezed it tight, believed he felt his ancestor, the great Billy the Kid, transferring his strength.

William felt it, felt ready. He knew where he had to go. He knew who had to die next. Mya Loverne was a stopgap, a bonus, but to get to Henry he had to strike closer. Because for

Henry Parker to truly be the other side of William, he would have to learn to deal with the death of his loved ones, as well.

When I first moved to New York, I would often find myself wandering the streets at night. Walking for blocks and blocks for no real reason other than to soak in the city, bask in the dimming sun and reflections off the towers. I dreamed of being part of this town, and like a lover I wanted to caress and explore every inch of it.

I would walk down to the South Street Seaport, breath in the salty air, stroll along the historic district with ports that looked like a relic from a Melville novel, made you forget it was a city with 3.2 coffee shops per square block.

I would walk all the way west to the Hudson, then down to Chelsea Piers, watching young teenagers skateboarding and couples bowling while a mammoth cruise ship took young lovers around the Hudson, down past where the World

Trade Center once stood, around the East River where they could see the majestic arches of the Brooklyn Bridge, the grace of the Statue of Liberty.

Most of these sojourns took place while my relationship with Mya was deteriorating. In prior months we would have spent every moment of every evening together, cuddled up on a couch, watching a movie. Mya would wear one of my Jason Pinter sweatshirts, purposefully drop popcorn all over my lap. Eventually we'd fool around and pass out, start the next day fresh.

Then our relationship dimmed, and we began to avoid each other at all costs. Then after I met Amanda, after I nearly died, Mya and I lost touch completely.

I didn't mind. I loved Amanda. It may have been cruel to leave Mya hurting, but it would have been worse to lead her on.

Ordinarily walking the streets alone at night wouldn't have been such a big deal. I wouldn't have thought twice about it.

But tonight I was walking alone, knowing Amanda was somewhere else. Not because my relationship with her was similar to my relationship with Mya-a Band-Aid slowly being peeled off-but because it had been painfully ripped away.

Suddenly I looked up and I was standing at the apartment building of Linda Fredrickson. I hadn't planned it, at least not consciously.

Linda Fredrickson was Joe Mauser's sister. Her husband,

John, had died from a gunshot wound after I confronted him.

If John had never met me, Linda would still have a husband.

After it was revealed that John Fredrickson was a dirty cop and I was exonerated of the murder charges, I attempted to contact Linda. At that point I wasn't really thinking about whether or not she would forgive me. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

A year ago I had come to this very apartment building, gone upstairs and knocked on her door. She opened it and stared at me with a befuddled look, the kind you might give a Jehovah's Witness who simply won't stop soliciting you. I told her I was sorry. She slapped me hard across the face. She slammed the door and I left.