Robert Walker - Cutting edge

“But he didn't act alone,” countered Lucas. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“Four, no, five died alongside him!” countered Randy, sitting up.

“No, not followers. There was a mastermind behind the whole damned thing. I can't put my finger on it, but I believe Phil Lawrence is somehow involved, him and his pals Pardee and Amelford.”

Randy looked for Meredyth's support, his hands going up in the air. “So, you want to rattle some more cages, is that it?”

“Lucas thinks,” began Meredyth, “we think… Aguilar took the fall for a much bigger operation. The same thought must've crossed your mind, too, Randy.”

“It might have… it might've, sure, but I was smart enough to run away from it…”

“What about Lawrence, Randy?” she cajoled. “We need to eliminate him. Can you scan his computer for anything like this?” She held out the sheet of paper that represented their death warrants.

“I did it already, once.”

Meredyth and Lucas looked from Randy to one another. “And…” she finally said.

“That's when I came across this.” He walked to the computer console and turned on the monitor; onscreen was the encrypted message, using the same category number and log number as the threat on Meredyth and Lucas. It was the message to kill the Shirleys, although their names were not spelled out.

Randy's state-of-the-art computer was so silent, Lucas had not known it was on. “You say you got this from Lawrence's computer files?”

“I found it while tracing the other message's origin. I followed the computer tracks right into Lawrence's files. He's Helsinger One.”

“Damn, then that makes it conclusive proof.”

“Proof for whom?” asked Randy. “Who's going to believe us? Before we're all killed, that is. Damn, I wish I'd never met you two…”

Randy was shaken, his face a mask of fear illuminated only by the dim light reflecting off his computer screen. He wheeled so they could not study the fear in him.

Lucas again wondered about Randy. He had told them that he'd played Helsinger's Pit as a child, that it had become an addiction for him for a while. Suppose the baby-faced computer whiz had never actually overcome his addiction? Suppose he was behind the real-time, real-life vampire stalking murders? Suppose he was Father Aguilar's light and salvation? Lucas felt a thousand doubts swirling about his head. “How long have you known about Lawrence's involvement? Why didn't you confide in us before now? Why did we have to drag this from you?” Lucas said, suddenly turning on Randy.

“Damn it, I was trying to keep us all alive. This gets out, that I know this stuff, and… and we're all dead, all of us…” He looked long and hard into Meredyth's eyes.

Meredyth tugged at Lucas's slinged arm. Lucas relented.

Randy sounded convincing, sincere, and Lucas cursed himself for being unable to trust in anyone anymore.

“We've got to get help, tell someone,” Meredyth told the other two. 'This just has become to big for us to handle alone.”

“Bullock and Price?” he suggested. “The FBI?”

“I tried to get them earlier, but I got a strange response.”

“Strange?”

“Just a foul-up, I'm sure-a secretary who didn't know anything, had never heard of Tim Bullock and Stu Price.”

His eyes danced with hers in a slow waltz of measured confusion. “Bullock and Price didn't exist?”

“But then why would they warn us?”

“Maybe someone likes sporting events to be sporting. I don't know.”

“I'm sure it was just a mistake. I'll call the FBI here, ask them to patch us through to wherever Bullock and Price might be.” She got on the phone and attempted to reach the elusive FBI men, but again she was told there were no agents matching the description or the names given.

“They were sent in to find out how much we knew,” he offered.

“And to keep a tail on us,” she agreed.

“Damn… damn,” muttered Randy, distraught now, locating beers for them all from his refrigerator, weakly joking, “We may's well empty out the fridge so nothing 'U spoil after I'm killed dead.”

“Who do we take it to?” Meredyth asked.

“Commander Bryce,” replied Lucas, “and we have to do it now, tonight.”

The three exchanged glances, agreeing to make their move.

Commander Andrew Bryce could only be reached at his home, a sprawling horse ranch he owned just outside Houston. There had been a heated controversy when he'd become a chief in the Houston Police Department that he give up living outside the city lines and move his family into the city proper, that a city police chief had to live in the city he swore to serve and protect. It was the kind of nonsense that Lucas had no patience for, and he had heard that the now Commander Bryce had continued to fight the ancient ordinance in court.

Bryce was receptive to the idea that Aguilar could not possibly have been working alone. In fact, he had said over the phone that the more time away from that night when Aguilar was gunned down, the more he had pondered the possibilities, and the more he had felt a definite pat hand had been dealt them all by Captain Phillip Lawrence, Pardee, and Amelford. He didn't need much prodding once Lucas opened up about his misgivings with respect to what he feared were perhaps the dirtiest cops he had ever run across.

“We'll need conclusive proof, though, Stonecoat, you realize, before anything can be moved on. Can you give me anything more than your suppositions?”

“We can, sir. We can.”

“You and Meredyth Sanger, you mean?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then why don't the two of you drive out to my place? It's the only private place I know of where we won't be bothered. Then we'll talk this thing through over coffee or a drink, perhaps? If you're certain of your facts, and if you've really got the goods, Stonecoat, we'll bring in the D.A.

Lucas intentionally left Randy Oglesby out of it. “Yes, sir. We'll be there as soon as we can, sir.” Lucas took down the address, a map of landmarks, actually, and the name of the ranch: the Rocking B.

Nightfall painted the deserted, dust-laden landscape outside Houston where tall cacti stood sentinel to time and comings and goings of men in machines as cars hurtled along the superhighways. Lucas and Meredyth pulled off the Interstate onto narrow County Road 341, occasional houselights like fallen stars here. Small roads led deeper into the desert area west of the city, which had disappeared in the distance behind them like the setting of the moon. Storm clouds scudded about, harmlessly dispersing, but in the distance, great streaking lightning bolts split the darkness with a laser display, like a scalpel tearing at the dark folds of the sky, the world tonight like so much leftover fabric being incised. In the distance, quietly sloping hills lay like sleeping camels, disturbed only by the intermittent light display. The occasional trailer home in the middle of nowhere rose and fell behind them as they drove on toward the Rocking B.

In a moment, they began to see signs for the ranch, fences leading them now, guiding them to the great, wide, tree lined drive. It was thirty minutes out of the city, but it may as well have been days, the place was so remote.

Commander Bryce welcomed them from a brightly lit wraparound porch, the front porch quite a showplace in itself. The house was elegantly done up, rivaling any ranch house in the country, Lucas thought, its warm log frame both richly textured and inviting. Noisy cicadas chirped all around them as they exited Lucas's car. The night air was crisp, a breeze playing its fingers over Lucas's brow and playing a lilting tune on a collection of wind chimes all about the expansive porch. Lucas stared appreciatively at the chimes.