Jeffery Deaver - The Empty Chair

Culbeau wiped his hand on his pants and gripped the knife again matter-of-factly, surveying Garrett with no emotion, as if he were about to dress a deer. He stepped toward the boy.

Then there was a blur of motion from the floor. Mary Beth, still lying on the floor, grabbed the club and swung it into Culbeau's ankle. He cried out as it connected and turned toward her, lifting the knife. But Garrett lunged forward and pushed the man hard on the shoulder. Culbeau was off balance and he slid on his knees down the cellar stairs. He caught himself halfway down. "You little shit," he growled.

Rhyme saw Culbeau grope in the dark cellar stairway for his rifle. "Garrett! He's going for the gun!"

The boy just walked slowly to the cellar and lifted the rock. But he didn't throw it. What was he doing? Rhyme wondered. He watched Garrett pull a wad of cloth out of a hole in the end. He looked down at Culbeau, said, "It's not a rock." And, as the first few yellow jackets flew out of the hole, he flung the nest into Culbeau's face and slammed the root cellar door shut. He hooked the clasp on the lock and stood back.

Two bullets snapped through the wood of the cellar door and disappeared through the ceiling.

But there were no more shots. Rhyme thought Culbeau would have fired more than twice.

But then he also thought the screams from the basement would last longer than they did.

Harris Tomel knew it was time to get the hell out, back to Tanner's Corner.

O'Sarian was dead – okay, no loss there – and Culbeau had gone down to the cabin to take care of the rest of them. So it was Tomel's job to find Lucy. But he didn't mind. He was still stung with shame that he'd clenched when he'd faced down Trey Williams and it had been that psycho little shit O'Sarian who'd saved his life.

Well, he wasn't going to freeze again.

Then, beside a tree some distance away, he saw a flash of tan. He looked. Yeah, there – through the crook of a tree – he could just make out Lucy Kerr's tan uniform blouse.

Holding the two-thousand-dollar shotgun, he moved a little closer. It wasn't a great shot – there wasn't much target presenting. Just part of her chest, visible through the crook of the tree. A hard shot with a rifle. But doable with the shotgun. He set the choke on the end of the muzzle so that the pellets would scatter wider and he'd have a better chance of hitting her.

He stood fast, dropped the bead sight right on the front of her blouse and squeezed the trigger.

A huge kick. Then he squinted to see if he'd hit his target.

Oh, Christ… Not again! The blouse was floating in the air – launched by the impact of the pellets. She'd hung it on the tree to lure him into giving away his position.

"Hold it right there, Harris," Lucy's voice called, behind him. "It's over with."

"That was good," he said. "You fooled me." He turned to face her, holding the Browning at waist level, hidden in the grass, the shotgun pointed in her direction. She was in a white T-shirt.

"Drop your gun," she ordered.

"I did already," he said.

He didn't move.

"Let me see your hands. In the air. Now, Harris. Last warning."

"Look, Lucy…"

The grass was four feet high. He'd drop down, fire to take out her knees. Then finish her off from close range. It'd be a risk, though. She could still get off a shot or two.

Then he noticed something: a look in her eyes. A look of uncertainty. And it seemed to him that she held her gun too threateningly.

She was bluffing.

"You're out of ammo," Tomel said, smiling.

There was a pause and the expression on her face confirmed it. He lifted the shotgun with both hands and aimed it at her. She gazed back hopelessly.

"But I'm not," came a voice nearby. The redhead! He looked her over, and his instinct told him: She's a woman. She'll hesitate. I can get her first. He swung toward her.

The pistol in her hands bucked and the last thing Tomel felt was an itchy tap on the side of his head.

Lucy Kerr saw Mary Beth stagger onto the porch and call out that Culbeau was dead and that Rhyme and Garrett were all right.

Amelia Sachs nodded then walked toward Sean O'Sarian's body. Lucy turned her own attention to Harris Tomel's. She bent down and closed her shaking hands around the Browning shotgun. She thought that while she should be horrified to be prying this elegant weapon from a dead man's hands, in fact all she thought about was the gun itself. She wondered if it was still loaded.

She answered that question by racking the gun – losing one shell, but making sure that another was chambered.

Fifty feet away Sachs was bending down over O'Sarian's body as she searched it, keeping her pistol pointed at the corpse. Lucy wondered why she was bothering then decided, wryly, that it must be standard procedure.

She found her blouse and put it back on. It was torn apart by the shotgun pellets but she was self-conscious about her body in the tight T-shirt. Lucy stood by the tree, breathing heavily in the heat and watching Sachs' back.

Simple fury – at the betrayals in her life. The betrayal by her body, by her husband, by God.

And now by Amelia Sachs.

She glanced behind her, where Harris Tomel lay. It was a straight line of sight from where he'd been standing to Amelia's back. The scenario was plausible: Tomel had been hiding in the grass. He rose, shot Sachs in the back with his shotgun. Lucy then grabbed Sachs' gun and killed Tomel. Nobody'd know different – except Lucy herself and, maybe, Jesse Corn's spirit.

Lucy lifted the shotgun, which felt weightless as a larkspur blossom in her hands. Pressing the smooth, fragrant stock against her cheek, reminding her of the way she'd pressed her face against the chrome guard of the hospital bed after her mastectomy. She sighted down the smooth barrel at the woman's black T-shirt, resting the sight on the woman's spine. She'd die painlessly. And fast.

As fast as Jesse Corn had died.

This was simply trading a guilty life for an innocent one.

Dear Lord, give me one clear shot at my Judas…

Lucy looked around. No witnesses.

Her finger curled around the trigger, tightened.

Squinted, held the brass dot of the bead sight rock-steady thanks to arms strengthened by years of gardening, years of managing a house – and a life – on her own. Aiming at the exact center of Amelia Sachs' back.

The hot breeze whistled through the grass around her. She thought about Buddy, about her surgeon, about her house and her garden.

Lucy lowered the gun.

She racked the weapon until it was empty and, padded butt resting on her hip, muzzle skyward, she carried it back to the van in front of the cabin. She set it on the ground and found her cell phone then called the state police.

The medevac chopper was the first to arrive and the medics quickly bundled Thom up and flew him off to the medical center. One stayed to look after Lincoln Rhyme, whose blood pressure was edging critical.

When the troopers themselves showed up in a second helicopter a few minutes later it was Amelia Sachs they arrested first and left hog-tied, hands behind her, lying in the hot dirt outside the cabin, while they went inside to arrest Garrett Hanlon and read him his rights.

Thom would survive. The doctor in the Emergency Medicine Department of the University Medical Center in Avery had said laconically, "The bullet? It came and went. Missed the important stuff." Though the aide would be off duty for a month or two.

Ben Kerr had volunteered to cut class and stay around Tanner's Corner for a few days to assist Rhyme. The big man had grumbled, "You don't really deserve my help, Lincoln. I mean, hell, you never even pick up after yourself."