Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

Charles turns his head slightly.

I momentarily catch his eye.

My grin widens.

He looks away. There’s a lot of things going on in this room.

Charles says something to a man with enormous whiskers. The man looks puzzled. Charles has begun an anecdote or joke, but he has lost the plot, he looks confused, he begins to stutter, like his brother. I bring the.38 to full extension, Charles’s confused face in the middle of the sight.

Amber leans in. Charles relaxes. Amber, beautiful and clever and hard. She says something and the man laughs and Charles looks at his feet and perks up and finishes his joke. And suddenly I see the whole dynamic of their relationship. Everything depends upon her. She’s not just the one behind the scenes. She’s the one that gives him confidence. She’s the one that lifts him up. It’s her. The heroin concealed it from me.

And then the gun feels weak in my grip as suddenly I see it all.

It’s Amber. Of course. It’s her. Jesus.

Charles could never have killed anyone. Too effete, delicate, too sensitive, he wouldn’t have had the bottle. And Amber under the ketch already told me as much. She told me everything already. I just didn’t see it. That perfect skin, that razor smile, those quirks, that steely look.

It’s her.

Charles probably never killed anyone in his life. Not John, not Victoria. Probably not Maggie, either. If it was one of those lacrosse boys, it was more likely Houghton. Charles just doesn’t seem the type. Of course, the blackmail game would still be on. Charles meets Maggie, Houghton shows up. There’s an incident. Houghton’s word against his. But no, I don’t think he did it. Charles is no killer.

Not even bloody John. I had assumed a man had done it, but why? Look at her. Strong, fast, fit, lithe, a fucking martial artist. Why not her? Tough enough and lucky enough to get one blow right in the heart.

Amber stroking her hair in midflirt with the powerful man next to Charles, who I recognize as a famous senator. And then I laugh. I really laugh. She had outplayed me from the very beginning. She had seduced me, to enable me to unveil myself. She had been hot and cold, all to get me off my guard, to find me out, make me slip. She was the detective, trying to figure out who I was and what I was doing here. Maneuvering me into a situation so that I would slip, reveal that, yes, I did know Victoria, I was on her trail. Ha. Me thinking I was mining her for information and all the time it was the other way around.

Amber, her mother a thief, her father a player. School of hard knocks. A real piece of work. Her body was the weapon she had used on Victoria and me, but her mind was the really impressive instrument.

How long have I been standing here? With my arm outstretched and the big coat sleeve partially but not wholly concealing a gun held in my hand.

One second? Two?

But in that moment, that brief increment of time, I see everything. From its very beginnings. After years of paying off Alan Houghton, Charles confesses or lets slip to his wife about the blackmail. Amber knows Charles is her ticket from the shanty-Irish muck. An old-money WASP with political ambitions. There is only one thing to do. She decides to kill Houghton. The easy way would be to tell her da. But she’s burned that bridge. She will do this on her own. Her da is the past she’s escaping from. She will make her own future. She plans it all. She plans the murder. She’s learned well from her da’s success, her ma’s failures. Yes. Handle this on her own, keep Charles out of it, keep Dad out of it, she’ll do it by herself. Just as she worked hard to get into Harvard, reinvented herself, probably forced the coincidence whereby she and Charles would meet at Vail. This was one more obstacle to be overcome.

Yes.

Then Victoria Patawasti finds out about the slush fund. Victoria leaves a trail in the accounts. Charles notices that someone has been looking at the secret account file. He panics, tells his wife. Of course it could only be Victoria and silly, poor, doomed Victoria writes up her suspicions in her computer. Only Charles, Robert, and, what was that Klimmer said, yes, Mrs. Mulholland, only those three ever went into Victoria’s office. Amber has to know what Victoria knows. Seduces her, gets her to reveal her password and what she knows. And once the decision is made to kill Alan Houghton, Victoria has to die too. Victoria can’t be bought. Amber has to act quickly. Hector Martinez is working at the CAW offices. Maybe he drops his license, maybe she rifles through his wallet. It doesn’t matter, she gets the license and knows she can use it to set up an innocent man. She kills Houghton and Victoria on the same night, sets up Hector as a burglar. Brilliant.

Does Charles know about it all? He must have told her that someone had been looking at the secret account. Is he in on the murders? Did Amber tell him? Did he have anything to do with Maggie Prestwick’s death? Does it matter? I don’t think I even care now.

And only after she botched my murder did Amber see she was at the limit of her power. She needed professional killers to kill me. The risk of hiring unknowns — who could blackmail her — was too great. Who to turn to? Daddy. Because she needed him. Because blood was thicker than water. A rapprochement. Oh, Amber. It had to be you.

I move the gun sight from him to her.

And I hold it. Hold it. My finger on the trigger. The sight between her shoulder blades. For a second. Amber’s fair face. Her golden hair.

Beautiful.

Another long second.

A squeeze.

And then.

And then I release the tension on the trigger.

No, Amber, you will not make me do the wrong thing again. I was weak before. I failed. In Ireland. But not here. Not this time. Some other way.

I begin lowering the gun. A man at her dad’s table sees me, reaches inside his jacket, pulls something out.

I finally breathe.

A blast like a firecracker.

The man next to me is thrown backward into a woman holding a champagne glass. Blood gushes from his back. There is a ghastly silence and then people start to scream. The other man beside Amber’s father draws his gun, begins to shoot. The men next to the senator and the congressman pull out their guns, shoot across the room at Amber’s father’s table. Panicky fast shots thumping into the walls. Shooting from all directions, all around.

People begin screaming, diving for cover. At least half a dozen men now are shooting at once, seemingly at random, in a panic, at me, everywhere. Bullets from semiautomatics and big-caliber revolvers, the sound horrendous in the enclosed space of the ballroom. People yelling, terrified, running, trampling one another, falling to the floor. A bullet hits a spotlight and a fire starts behind the band. The fire alarm goes off.

Charles and Amber have dived to the floor.

I drop a smoke bomb.

Confusion, more gunshots.

The sprinklers start spraying water and the water makes the lights fuse, flicker, go out.

Now the screaming really starts.

Yellow emergency lights come on above the fire exits. I run for one.

I sprint across the darkened room, unhindered, untouched. Something comes whizzing over my head and crashes into the wall. There’s the sound of shooting and a yell to cease fire. Not an unarmed person left isn’t screaming, isn’t diving under the tables.

I push on a metal bar and the door flies open. I run down a corridor, open another fire door, and am suddenly out in the night. I hammer across the street to the ball-bearing factory. I wipe the gun clean and throw it through one of the broken factory windows. I tear off the white jacket and pants, change into jeans, an Eddie Vedder shirt, black jacket, sneakers. I unlock the bike, ride like crazy. I head east, I just keep going. I don’t look back.