Джеффри Дивер - The Final Twist

Shaw was perfectly balanced, ready to move, awash with the exhilaration that comes just before combat. Irrational, mad, intoxicating.

Which is when Blond said, “Stop.”

Pausing, Droon turned.

“Get back. He’s going to move on you. We’ll do it this way.” He looked down at his pistol.

Droon frowned. He clearly didn’t see what Blond saw. “He’d take you,” the big man offered.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that, my friend.” But Droon stepped away from Shaw.

Blond said, “I’d risk a bullet. Top of the foot shouldn’t be much bleeding.”

Shaw sighed.

Droon walked back to Blond, who lifted the gun and pointed it at Shaw’s foot. Now, he really meant it when he said, “We can work something out. You want information. I’ll get you information.”

Blond aimed carefully.

Even if he survived the Tannery, what would a bullet wound do to his foot? Shattering the complex bones of the appendage would render the Restless Man disabled for a very long time.

Silencers do not, in fact, make a weapon completely mute. There’s a distinctive phhhht , followed by the click of the gun’s slide snapping back and then returning into position. Often you can hear the ring of the spent shell jittering on the floor or concrete or cobblestone, like what the men were standing on now.

Colter Shaw heard the first two of these, the muted gunshot and the click of the pistol as the gun reloaded for a second shot. He did not hear the dancing of the spent brass.

He did, however, hear another sound. The wet, smacking snap of a bullet hitting Blond’s forehead. The big man gave no facial reaction to the impact. He simply dropped.

Shaw crouched. The gunshot had come from above and behind him — the shooter was in the air, maybe on some scaffolding on the other side of the wooden construction fence.

Droon’s sense of survival kicked in. Not waiting to parse the situation he tore back to the street — and proving Shaw wrong — easily vaulted the dumpster. He landed and rolled, then righted himself and sprinted back toward the library.

Shaw immediately thought of the green Honda Accord, his shadow. Had the driver followed him here and been aiming at Shaw, but hit Blond by mistake? He leapt forward and rolled through the grimy alley, snatching up Blond’s SIG Sauer pistol.

Rising, in a crouch, Shaw glanced at Blond — he was dead — and drew back the slide of the SIG a quarter inch to make sure a round was chambered, something you always did with a weapon not your own.

He went prone behind the man’s body — the only cover in the alley — and trained the weapon on the plywood construction site wall.

A man’s voice called, “I’m not a hostile.” Then to Shaw’s surprise, the caller added, “Colter, I’m coming over the fence. Don’t shoot.”

He knows my name?

Something fell to the ground with a thud. It was a backpack, Oakland A’s.

This would have to be the man he’d seen at the coffee shop up the street from the safe house on Alvarez — the bearded man in the thigh-length black coat and stocking cap. He climbed over the fence and landed lithely on the cobblestones, his low combat boots dampening the force.

Colter Shaw gasped. Which was something he had not done for years — since a piton gave way and he dropped twenty feet on a half-mile-high rock face before the safety rope arrested the fall.

He was not sure which shocked him the most at the moment: That he’d been saved from the fate of being shot with only seconds to spare.

Or that the man who’d done the saving was his long-lost brother, Russell.

Russell said, “I understand. You have questions. I do too. Later. First, this.”

He was then on his phone, speaking in modulated yet commanding tones.

His brother was nearly identical in appearance to the man Shaw had last seen years ago at their father’s funeral. He’d had a beard then, though it was shorter than this, as was his hair. These were two reasons Shaw hadn’t recognized him near the safe house. Also, who the hell would expect the Reclusive One to be in San Francisco at the same time Shaw was?

The skin around the eyes was more weathered and ruddier. The beard was a uniform brown, without a touch of white or gray. The same was true for the tufts of straight hair protruding from the stocking cap.

One other difference between then and now: his eyes were presently cold, utterly inexpressive about the fact he’d just killed someone. Remorse, or even concern, let alone guilt, did not register.

“Help me here,” Russell said, nodding toward the dumpster. Shaw noted his brother’s voice was reminiscent of their father’s. He was startled by the near mimicry, though he supposed he shouldn’t be.

Shaw kept the muzzle of the SIG pointed away as he clicked the safety on and slipped the gun into his waistband — Russell glancing at him as he did so, apparently taking note that his younger brother had not forgotten their father’s endless lessons and drills about weapons.

They pushed the dumpster out of the mouth of the alley.

Shaw was wondering why his brother had wanted to move the big contraption; doing so would expose Blond’s body for any passerby to see. But the minute the dumpster was pushed aside and the alley was clear, a white van skidded to a stop in front of them and the side door slid open quickly.

Growing cautious, Shaw lifted the gun.

“They’re mine,” Russell said.

Three people climbed out.

Had the moment been less fraught — and confusing — Shaw might’ve smiled. He’d seen two of the trio earlier. One was Tricia, the woman in the street in front of the Alvarez Street safe house, and the man who’d attacked her — a verb Shaw put into mental quotation marks, since there’d been no assault at all, he now understood. Her screams for help had been merely a strategy to force Shaw outside and learn if he were a threat or not.

The broad-chested man had cleaned up considerably from his role as Homeless Man One. Russell introduced him as Ty. He glanced at Shaw without comment or other acknowledgment.

The third, whose name was Matt, was a slim, somber man of mixed race, with dark hair. His eyes scanned the alley and the street where the van was parked.

All three wore dark green jogging outfits and blue latex gloves.

A driver, whom Shaw could see only in silhouette, remained behind the wheel.

As Russell and Matt kept an eye on the side street, hands near their hips, Ty and Tricia — introduced now as Karin — stepped quickly to Blond’s corpse.

Shaw said, “There’re two other security people from the library. White. One heavy, one thin. Both armed. In dark suits, and—”

Karin said, “We know. They’re in the parking garage on Harrison, picking up wheels. We have two minutes before they’re here.”

The phony attacker unfurled a body bag and he and Karin got to work with Blond. Soon the body was inside, zipped up tight.

“One, two... lift,” the man said. The pair grunted simultaneously and hefted the weighty bag by the handles and began shuffling back to the van. Shaw thought about asking if they needed help but they didn’t seem to. They were both quite strong, and — it appeared — had done this before. They got the bag to the van and muscled it inside.

Matt reached into the van and removed a broom and a spray bottle. He returned to the site of the shooting and spritzed liquid onto the bloodstain. The bullet would have been a hollow point, designed to expand in the brain, causing instantaneous lethal damage but remaining within the skull. Exit wounds created the biggest leaks.

He slipped the bottle into his slacks pocket and swept dirt and gravel over where the body had lain. This had some sort of procedural precision to it and was done to confound a crime scene crew, though Shaw doubted any police would ever investigate. Certainly Droon and Braxton would not be calling 911 to report that the BlackBridge employee had met his end.