Jeffery Deaver - Mistress of Justice

Finally she managed to stand but just as she was about to start running he grabbed her overcoat and pulled her legs out from under her. She tumbled again to the ground, her head bouncing hard on a tie. She rose, exhausted, to her hands and knees.

"No," she said. "Please."

The killer was up, ready to pounce. But Taylor remained motionless, on her hands and knees, stunned.

"What do you want?" she gasped, breathless, spent.

Still, no answer. But why should he respond? It was clear what he wanted. She was the tiny bird that her father had hunted, she was the victim of the Queen of Hearts – off with her head, off with her head.

The weapon drawing back, its needle-sharp point aiming at her face. She lifted her head and gazed at him, piteous. "Don't, please."

But he leaned forward and lunged with the pick, aiming toward her neck.

Which is when she dropped to her belly and scrabbled backward.

She'd been feigning, remaining on all fours like an exhausted soldier, when in fact she had – somewhere – a tiny bit of strength left.

"Ah, ah, ah, ah."

Taylor squinted at him, still in the position of attack, right arm extended, clutching that terrible weapon.

"Ah, ah, ah, ah!" The terrible moan from his throat.

In his haste to stab Taylor he'd ignored what was just beyond her body – what she'd been trying to sucker him into hitting the electrified third rail of the subway, which held more amperage than an electric chair.

"Ah, ah, ah, ah."

There were no sparks, no crackles but every muscle in his body was vibrating.

Then blood appeared in his eyes and his sandy hair caught fire.

"Ah, ah, ah -"

Finally the muscles spammed once and he collapsed onto the tracks, flames dancing from his collar and cuffs and head.

Taylor heard voices and the electronic sound of walkie-talkies from the Rector Street platform. She supposed it would be the transit cops or the regular NYPD.

It didn't matter She didn't want to see them or talk to them.

She knew now that there was only one thing to do that might save her. Taylor Lockwood turned and vanished into the darkness of the tunnel.

"Do you mind my saying? I mean, will you take it personally if I say you don't look very good?" John Silbert Hemming asked.

Taylor Lockwood said to the huge private eye, "I lost eight pounds in two days."

"Quite a diet. You should maybe write a book. I'm told you can make a lot of money doing that."

"We couldn't market it – the secret ingredient ain't so appetizing. I'm feeling better now."

They were at Miracles Pub. She was probing at a bowl of Greek chicken soup flavored with lemon. It wasn't on the menu. Dimitri's wife had made it herself. She had some trouble with the spoon – she had to keep her fingers curled, her rings tended to fall off if she didn't.

"Maybe," he joked cautiously, "you should've taken my offer to have dinner. Probably would've been better than where you ended up eating."

"You know, John, I wish I had." Then she said, "I need a favor."

Hemming, who was eating a hamburger, said, "If it's not illegal and not dangerous and if you agree to go to the opera with me a week from Saturday at eight o'clock sharp, I'd be happy to oblige."

She considered She said, "One out of three?"

"Which one?"

"I'd like to go to the opera."

"Oh, dear. Still, it makes me very pleased. Though nervous – considering you're balking on the other two. Now, what's the favor?" He nodded toward his plate. "This is a very good hamburger. Can I offer you some?"

She shook her head.

"Ah!" He resumed eating. "Favor?" he repeated.

After a moment, she asked, "Why do people murder?"

"Temper, insanity, love and occasionally for money."

The spoon in her hand hovered over the surface of the soup, then made a soft landing on the table. She pushed the bowl away. "The favor is, I want you to get me something."

"What?"

"A gun. That kind I was telling you about – the kind without any serial numbers."

It would be near quitting tune at the firm. The end of another day at Hubbard, White & Willis Files being stacked away, dress shoes being replaced with Adidas and Reeboks, places in law books being marked for the night, edits being dropped in the In Box for the night word processing staff.

Four miles away Taylor Lockwood was hiding out in Mitchell Reece's loft. She was concerned that the person behind Clayton's death might figure out that she'd been responsible for the death of one hired gun and had called in a second one who was staking out her apartment right now.

She picked up the scarred gray.38 revolver that John Silbert Hemming had gotten her. She smelled it, sweet oil and wood and metal warmed by her hand. She hefted the small pistol, much heavier than she'd thought it would be.

Then she put the gun in her purse and walked unsteadily to Mitchell Recce's kitchen, where she found a pen and one of his pads of yellow foolscap.

She wrote the note quickly – he was due home at any moment – and she didn't want him here to deter her from what she had to do.

In her scrawled handwriting Taylor promised that she'd explain everything to him later – if she wasn't killed or arrested – but she begged him to please, please stay away from the firm tonight. After all the deceit and horrors of the past two weeks she'd learned who Wendall Clayton's killer was. She'd gotten a gun and, finally, she was going to make sure that justice would be done.

Taylor Lockwood had never liked this room – the big conference room in the firm.

For one thing, it was always dim – a pastel room so underlit that the colors became muddy and unreal. For another, she associated it with the large meetings in which the paralegal administrator would gather her flock and give them all a rah-rah pep talk, which amounted to a plea not to quit just because the raises this year were going to be only 5 percent.

Mindless, proletariat babble.

Nonetheless, at eight o'clock in the evening, here was Taylor Lockwood, sitting in a large swivel chair at the base of the U, the chair Donald Burdick reserved for himself.

Suddenly the huge teak doors to the room opened and Mitchell Reece ran inside.

He stopped, gasping, when he saw the gun in her hand.

She looked at him with surprise. "Mitchell, what are you doing here?"

"Your note. I read the note you left. Where did you think I'd be?"

"I told you not to come. Why didn't you listen to me?"

"What're you going to do with the gun?"

She smiled absently. "It's pretty obvious, isn't it? I've got to save us."

"The US attorney's coming tomorrow. Don't do this to yourself."

"The cops? The U S attorney?" She laughed skeptically. "And what would they do? We don't have any evidence. You and I are never going to be safe. We got run off the road, I was poisoned. I was almost stabbed to death."

"What?"

She didn't tell him about the latest assault just yet. She muttered, "It's just a matter of time until we're dead – if I don't stop things right here. Now."

"You can't just shoot somebody in cold blood."

"I'll claim self-defense. Insanity."

"The insanity defense doesn't work, Taylor. Not in cases like this."

She rubbed her eyes.

"The man who stole the note's dead."

"What?"

"The janitor or whatever he was, the one who put the poison in my food – him. He tried again. He chased me into the subway. But he got electrocuted."

"Jesus. What did the police say?"

"No." She shook her head. "I didn't go to them. It wouldn't do any good, Mitchell. They'd just hire somebody else."

"Well, who is it?" he asked. "Who's behind all this?"