Matt Hilton - Slash and burn

Maybe what I did was enough to throw him over the precipice of insanity, maybe he had no desire to live any longer with only half a face, but he kept on running and the last I saw of him was a lumbering shadow flailing within the flames.

Next, hands were at my collar and I was dragged unceremoniously away from the building as it crashed down and sealed Larry's fate.

I lay there in stunned silence. Equally quiet were my friends. In the end, Rink said, 'You shoulda let me shoot him, Joe.'

I looked at the filth in my hands and was sickened. But then I recalled the threat Huffman had made to Kate. That he'd allow Larry to rip her apart. Larry wanted to eviscerate me, too. Well, what goes around comes around.

Together we moved past the burning buildings and turned into the road. The entire ranch was now a magnificent pyre from which smoke billowed into the heavens. Beneath a shawl of smoke I saw the crumpled form of a man lying on the road. I knew without checking that the smashed-up body was that of Rourke. I felt no pity. He'd died after all, but it wasn't me who'd killed him. I'd only helped him along in the right direction.

'Is he the last of them?'

'I got a man round back, plus another out in the field that I took the rifle off,' Harvey said.

'Goddamnit,' Rink said. 'I stuck one with my knife, but all I got to shoot at was freakin' walls.'

Harvey grinned. 'That's the only way we could be sure you wouldn't miss.'

'Course, I got to soften Bolan up for you, Joe.'

'Yeah, but it was me who made a start on his lips for you,' Harvey added.

My friends, like many soldiers stuck in desperate circumstances, were trying to lighten the mood with graveyard humour. I was doing a quick head count. I wasn't sure how many people Huffman had at his disposal, but there was at least one I hadn't come across yet.

'There was a woman. She was with Huffman when we took Kate away from him. Where's she at?'

'I didn't kill any woman,' Harvey said. As it was to me, the very thought of killing a woman – even a mob enforcer like that one – was abhorrent to him.

Rink shrugged expansively. 'Like I said, all I got to do was shoot at walls.'

I experienced slowly creeping dread. 'I've got a horrible idea where she is at.'

Rink's office was in downtown Tampa. He had a condominium up near Temple Terrace in the wooded area north-east of the city, but he chose to work from the office. He wasn't one for taking his work home with him. Like Rink, there was nothing fancy about the building. It was simply a solid construction, a bit like the man it served. Rink had inherited his Japanese mother Yukiko's love of minimalism. The walls were white, the desk, computer and chairs enough to satisfy any clients walking in through his doors, but all the other excesses of a modern office space were missing.

A door in the back of the office led to an equally stark room where Rink occasionally bedded down if he was working late and couldn't be bothered facing the drive home. Because of his size, he had installed a double bed. He also had a coffee percolator and a microwave oven. A shower stall and toilet completed the living area, providing all mod cons when the alternative was having nowhere to stay.

Kate wasn't complaining. After being a prisoner in Huffman's house, this place felt like a home from home to her. Imogen grumbled about the cramped living arrangements, but Kate only smiled. Her sister had just spent seven days on a luxury cruise liner; it was about time she felt a little of the discomfort that Kate had endured on her behalf. Not that she wanted her sister to suffer, not really. She loved her dearly and wanted only the best for her.

The sisters had to share the bed. There was nowhere else they could relax, unless they went out in the office with McTeer and Velasquez, and though Kate was grateful for the men's presence they weren't exactly riveting company. Both were taciturn individuals who seemed happy only when they were sharing a common silence. Kate wondered if their time on the force had made them so dour; a reason she was considering quitting her career. If she ended up as miserable and cynical as those two she'd sooner get the hell out now while she still retained a spark of life.

Lying next to Imogen reminded Kate of when they were small children. They'd had to share a room with their older brother, Jake. He'd had the single bed while Kate and Imogen had top-to-toed in the double that their parents had installed. Kate was six years old before Jake got his own room and she'd inherited his bed. But, many times after that, she'd still crawled into the double alongside Imogen when a particularly bad dream had disturbed her or when thunder rumbled outside. Even now she couldn't help throwing her arms around her slumbering sister and snuggling up close.

Imogen was in the midst of a dream. She mumbled something incomprehensible and her brow creased as though she was perturbed. It wasn't surprising, considering what she'd gone through. Kate gently stroked her sister's forehead, smoothed her sleep-tousled hair and some of the lines relaxed on her face.

'It's OK, Imogen. Everything's OK,' Kate said very quietly.

The words helped soothe her, but they felt false to Kate's own ears.

She was still worried.

She was thinking about Joe.

Why hadn't he called yet? The only possible reason was that he was still engaged in battle with Huffman and his men. Either that or he'd failed. What if he was injured? What if he was dead? No! She wouldn't even contemplate that possibility. Joe was better than Huffman and all the scum he'd gathered around him. In fact, Kate had never known a man the like of Joe Hunter before.

As an officer with the NYPD she'd worked alongside some pretty tough individuals, some intelligent people too, but Joe embodied something that went beyond the norm. His cool exterior concealed a man of deep and complex emotions. He cared about the well-being of others to a point that he'd forfeit his life to make things better for them. There was nothing that he asked in return – apart from the occasional request that she trust him and do as he asked – there was nothing selfish about him. He'd agreed to help her find Imogen, to lay down his life to achieve that, but had never once enquired about payment. He'd agreed to help because he felt that he owed Kate's family a debt. Jake had been killed while saving the lives of his comrades, but Joe had risked his own life in return, carrying Jake out of the war zone. Joe had already paid his debt in that respect.

As a police officer she should have baulked at the extremes that Joe went to, except she understood him. He was working from a different set of rules than the bureaucracy laid down in the police procedural manuals she followed. He worked according to a different ethos, a somewhat old-fashioned creed that harked back to less complicated days. He was like the old-time marshals who patrolled the Wild West relying on their toughness and their sense of right and wrong to bring calm to the chaos of a lawless nation. Like him, she wanted to make the world a better place. It was why she'd enrolled as a police officer. They'd chosen a different route, that was all. She wished she'd had the nerve to do what Joe did. His methods seemed to get results.

Restless, she slid slowly from the bed so that she didn't waken Imogen. She stood by the bedside, pushing her feet into her shoes. She was already fully clothed, had stayed that way since arriving at Rink's office, knowing that they might have to move at a moment's notice. She leaned down to where her purse lay, and pulled out the cell phone that Joe had returned to her. She checked the phone for any messages she might have missed, but the screen was empty. She pushed buttons, finding Joe's number stored in the memory. She hovered over the button, wanting to ring, but knowing she might distract him when he needed that the least. Something else made her pause: what if she dialled him and the phone simply rang and rang and was never answered? How would she feel then?