Брайан Фриман - Alter Ego

Mo made no effort to comply. She didn’t even look at Maggie, as if there were no more than the two of them in the parking lot. Her gaze was trained on Cab. He was the one she wanted.

“Did you think there would be no consequences, Cab?” Mo called. “Did you think I would go down without a fight?”

“Hands,” Maggie repeated, but Mo ignored her.

“You’re the one facing consequences,” Cab said. “It’s called jail.”

Maggie started walking again, step by step, across the parking lot. She felt the breeze blowing off the hill onto her face, and an American flag snapped and clanged on its pole near the information building. The standoff between them crackled with danger. She tried to guess the plan. The game. She didn’t know what it was, but she knew something was about to happen.

“Oh, Cab,” Mo retorted with a nasty smile. “So naive. You forget that I’m much, much richer than you and Tarla.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning I have the resources to do this .”

Maggie’s Avalanche exploded.

A cloud of hot flame billowed out of the truck, and shattered glass sprayed around them like bullets. The concussion wave lifted Maggie off the ground and threw her across the parking lot, where her body slammed into the pavement and rolled. Her gun bounced away. She was facedown. Her ears heard nothing, only silence. She pushed herself onto her elbows and watched red rain drip to the ground from her hair. It was blood. She got to her knees, but the world spun like a roulette wheel. The heat of the fire burned her cheek, and the black asphalt sparkled with diamonds.

She shouted Cab’s name, but she couldn’t hear her own voice.

Maggie crawled on the ground. The glass cut her hands. She shook her head to clear her brain. Cab was thirty feet away, lying on his back, with his arms and legs spread into an X. She shouted his name again, and she heard herself like an echo on the other side of a wide canyon. He didn’t answer. He didn’t move.

Untouched by the blast, Mo Casperson marched calmly across the parking lot. Her heels crunched on broken glass. She passed within a few feet of Maggie, and Maggie lurched upward to grab her but fell back as the world spun. Mo kicked Maggie’s gun away and headed straight for Cab. Her gloved hands emerged from her pockets. In one hand, she held a phone; in the other, she clutched a small revolver with a pink grip. She stood over Cab on the ground and dialed the phone.

Maggie was too far away to do a thing. She heard Mo speaking, and it sounded no louder than a whisper in her head.

“Tarla?” Mo said into the phone. “My dear, it’s Mo calling. Listen carefully. I wanted to congratulate you on destroying me and Dean. Job well done. I hope you’ll decide it was worth it, because the next sound you hear will be me putting a bullet into your son’s brain.”

Stride heard the explosion of the car bomb like a boom of thunder on the hillside above him. Black smoke rose in a thick column above the trees. He floored the accelerator, and his truck fishtailed as he sped up the Thompson Hill access road, which curved like the body of a snake.

He wheeled into the parking lot and jammed the brakes. With his gun in his hand, he dived out of the driver’s door and ran. His eyes took in the flaming hulk of Maggie’s yellow Avalanche turning black, its hood bent in half, its windows open shells with a few fragments of frosted glass. The melted tires gave off a burned rubber smell. The smoke in his face made him squint.

There were three people in the parking lot in front of him.

Maggie crawled, screaming Cab’s name. Cab lay motionless on his back, his face and hands streaked with blood. Mo Casperson had her slim arm outstretched with the barrel of a revolver pointed at Cab’s head.

“Freeze!” Stride shouted across the parking lot.

He stopped dead, raising his pistol and aiming it at the dead center of Mo’s back. He steadied his wrist with his other hand. There was no more than twenty feet between them. “Put the gun down!”

Mo’s arm was steady and straight. The hammer of her gun was cocked and ready, her finger on the trigger. Her head swiveled, and her honey hair swished. She stared at Stride with the disinterest of an A-lister bumping into an extra on the set.

“Too late, Lieutenant,” she said.

“Mo, put the gun down; you’re under arrest!”

“No, I don’t think so,” she replied.

She focused on Cab again. She was going to fire, so he fired first.

Stride pulled the trigger once, twice, three times, four times, five times, six times. Every bullet hit Mo Casperson. She jerked with each shot; her arm flew up; her finger yanked back and sent a wild shot into the trees. Her knees sagged beneath her, and she slid straight down like a building imploding. She sank into a pile of black leather and golden hair next to Cab on the ground, her gun spilling from her open fingers.

He ran to them and scooped up Mo’s gun and checked on Cab. The blond detective was unconscious, but his pulse was strong. Maggie, wobbling, staggered his way. He grabbed his phone to call for an ambulance, but he already could hear sirens below them on the southbound freeway.

Maggie steadied herself by taking hold of Stride’s arm.

“You should sit down,” he told her.

“I’m all right. How’s Cab?”

“He’s alive.”

She watched her Avalanche burn to a crisp. “I can’t believe that bitch blew up my truck.”

“Yeah.”

He stared down at Mo Casperson, whose eyes were wide open and fixed. Her blood made a lake under her body. She was already dead, but she stared back at him, as arrogant and condescending as ever. In his decades as a cop, he’d never taken a human life until that moment. The quality of the life didn’t matter. Neither did the fact that she’d given him no choice. He’d been the one to kill her. He’d been the one to pull the trigger.

Stride didn’t have to bother memorizing her face. She was never going to go away. Mo’s eyes would be in his dreams for years to come.

Cab opened his eyes. He was certain he was either dreaming or hallucinating.

“There you are, darling!” Tarla Bolton announced from the other side of the hospital room. “I’ve been here watching you sleep. I can’t tell you how relieved I am that you’re all right.”

“You and me both,” Cab replied. “What are you doing here, Mother?”

Tarla folded her arms across her chest with a look of annoyance. She was wearing skinny jeans and a red Duluth sweatshirt that was several sizes too large for her. Her long blond hair was pulled back and pinned behind her head, but several strands had made a break for freedom and spilled down her face. She looked perfect, as she always did.

“What, you didn’t think I would hop on a plane immediately? I will be with you night and day until you are one hundred percent. Plan on my being your constant companion.”

“Constant companion?” Cab asked. “Lucky me.”

“Yes, don’t worry; I have everything planned. The doctors say you should be out of here in another day or two, and then we can fly back to Florida together. I’ve already made arrangements to move some of my things into your house in Naples.”

“Into my house?”

Now he really hoped he was dreaming.

“Well, you’re not going to stay alone yet, obviously. I have everything I need to be with you for a month. After that, we’ll just take things as they come. Wawa offered to stay with you instead, but I told her I had everything under control.”

“Lala wanted to stay with me?” Cab asked.

He felt as if all he could do was repeat Tarla’s words with an increasing sense of disbelief.