Matt Hilton - Slash and burn

From the front office she heard the tinkle of a bell as the front door was opened. She heard McTeer greeting someone. She couldn't make out the words, but there was no concern in his voice.

She put the phone back in her purse, took out the Glock 17 that Joe had given her. It wasn't her gun, but one he'd taken from a man at Little Fork. She racked the slide, jacking a bullet into the firing position. She flicked off the safety. Then she went to the door and listened. McTeer said something else, muffled by the intervening door, but then he laughed. Kate almost relaxed her finger on the trigger. Almost, but not quite. She heard a woman laugh in response to McTeer's words.

Kate cracked the door open an inch, peering round the door frame. She could make out McTeer at Rink's desk, reclining in the seat with his fingers linked behind his head. Velasquez wasn't there. He must have gone off on an errand of his own, leaving McTeer to guard the sleeping women. Standing on the other side of the desk was a slim woman with long blond hair. She was wearing glasses and a flowery dress that reached just below her knees. Over the dress was a cardigan buttoned below her ample breasts. The woman had a large purse hanging over one shoulder, and as Kate watched she saw the woman dip a bejewelled hand into the purse.

'I brought identification with me,' the woman said. 'I've got it right here.'

Kate moved without thought.

She stepped fully into the room, lifting her Glock.

The woman caught Kate's movement in her peripheral vision and she began to withdraw her hand from the purse.

'Shit!' McTeer kicked back to put distance between him and the silenced handgun that the woman lifted. McTeer slapped at the gun in his shoulder rig, but it was no use. Too little too late.

A gun spat flame. But this gun did not come with a silencer and the noise of the discharge compressed the eardrums of all three of them in the room.

Kate was deaf to the second and third shots she fired directly into Ruth Wicker.

Struck side-on, Wicker took the bullets in her right ribcage, and she was pushed over on her buckling left knee. Her reactive shot missed McTeer by inches and drilled a hole in the wall behind him. He stood up, bringing out his gun. Wicker ignored him, bringing her gun round at Kate. Her hand was trembling and she jerked on the trigger. Kate saw the flash of fire spit from Wicker's gun, but she didn't hear its retort. She was stuck in a place where only killing her enemy meant anything.

Kate fired again.

This time her bullet hit Wicker in the head, snatching away strands of the blond wig and a large portion of her skull. Wicker went down on her back, her legs splayed in an unladylike way. Her gun fell from lifeless fingers.

McTeer was standing in stunned fascination, his own gun forgotten for the moment. He looked down at the woman lying dead on the office floor.

'Jesus…' he hissed. 'How'd you know she was one of Huffman's people?'

'I don't know.' Kate wasn't sure if it was a premonition, or pure luck that she'd come out of the room when she did with her gun ready. Maybe it was simply because she'd been expecting something like this. Whatever, she had Joe Hunter to thank for it. If she'd fumbled with the safety, maybe shouted a cop-like warning, then McTeer would be dead. Perhaps Wicker would be standing over Imogen pumping rounds into her body. But Kate had stopped her.

'Christ,' McTeer said running a hand over his face. 'She almost had the drop on me. You saved my life, Kate. Thanks.'

'It was nothing,' Kate said. Now that Wicker was gone, she hugged her arms round her chest. She felt very weak.

'Nothing, my ass! I was supposed to be protecting you.'

'The disguise didn't work on me.' She looked down on Wicker, and even with the wig, the glasses, the feminine clothing, Kate didn't see anything but the vindictive bitch who'd almost shot her at Quicksilver Ranch.

'Goddamnit!' McTeer said, studying the close grouping of the shots in Wicker's side, the wound in her head. 'That was good shooting!'

Kate felt mildly pleased with the acknowledgement. 'It wasn't that good, McTeer,' she said with a sad smile. 'She was too close to miss.'

Behind her, Imogen came out of the bedroom. She was tentative, holding her breath as she crept close to Kate. Imogen touched her on the shoulder and Kate turned and they hugged close. Then Imogen pulled away, lifting Kate's phone up to her. 'It's Joe,' she said.

Thank God! Kate thought, reaching for the phone, there's still time. 'Joe…' she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

Then Imogen saw the blood on Kate's breast.

Kate blinked slowly at her sister. She looked down at the wound in her chest. Imogen let out a sob. After all this, after all that they'd been through, they still hadn't escaped Robert Huffman's reach. When Wicker had fired her last shot, it had cut directly through Kate's body. She had been too close to miss.

'No!' Imogen cried as she reached to support her failing sister. The phone slipped from Kate's fingers, and Joe's warning voice sounded tinny and very distant, and totally overwhelmed by Imogen's grief-stricken scream.

I heard the screaming over the phone and knew that I'd failed my prime directive. I felt Kate's death like a solid wedge of ice had been driven through my heart. Maybe in time I'd have come to love her as deeply as I had once loved my wife, but now she was gone. All I had left were the memories of those few hours we'd spent together. Maybe I should have screamed, too, but I couldn't. I only wept silently.

Rink gripped my shoulder, but he didn't say anything. I wiped my face. You can't be a soldier and fight the kind of battles I have if you're going to collapse under the weight of grief. There'd be no grieving yet. Not while there were still things to be done.

Clean-up was the immediate problem we all had to face, and I stepped up to the challenge. Anything to keep my mind off Kate.

Quicksilver Ranch burned like a nuclear reactor in meltdown, the flames fed by a wind that sprang up, and by the fuel we added to the buildings. The building laced with aviation fuel burned almost white-hot. We carried the dead there and flung them on the flames. I wished that Huffman was still alive when I dumped him in the fire.

After cleaning ourselves up, we appropriated a vehicle belonging to one of Huffman's people and it took us as far as the outskirts of Dallas. On a road bridge we tossed our weapons into the river below. There was no ceremony to the action, just good sense. The vehicle made a fire of its own on a deserted parking lot, and we walked away headed for DFW airport.

Little Fork was a major problem, but I was pretty certain that nothing there could be tied to us. The fact that Imogen's house had been burned down and the corpses of men found inside it was the biggest stumbling block. They would in turn be tied to the deaths of Jim Aitken, Judge Wallace and the guy I'd shot on the stairs at the restaurant. But it now looked like Larry Bolan was going to be held responsible for all three of those deaths. It also looked like he'd shot dead his younger brother, Trent, before heading off on the rampage that destroyed Quicksilver Ranch.

Kate's passing was hard on us all. She'd died a hero, but she could never claim that accolade. Her death was put down to a random drive-by shooting that took an awful lot of setting up, but was managed by a man who'd always been in the business of covering the true nature of death. My old CIA contact, William Hayes Conrad IV, had been a great help in the past and he came through once again. I knew he would. When he helped me resolve the issue with the contract killer, Dantalion, he'd told me he couldn't keep on condoning murder. But nothing of what we'd done was construed as such this time. The way things turned out, Walter made it known that a disagreement between factions of the criminal underworld had erupted into all-out war. Many suspected criminals had died in the process when enforcers from various syndicates started killing each other during a power struggle. The media had a ball with it, but as usual the news was only topical for a few days. We wouldn't be earning any medals of commendation for our actions, but at least we were kept out of prison. Ruth Wicker, the enforcer who'd gone after and ultimately murdered Kate, was the only person who connected us to the war that was waged across Kentucky and Texas. But Walter covered that too. He sent in a clean-up crew that made Wicker disappear completely and her name – like Kate's – was never added to the tally of the dead. Kate's death was handled with more dignity, but it was still something that pained us all deeply. Sadly Kate would only be remembered as a statistic of a violent and senseless world, except in the hearts and minds of those who truly cared for her.