The Masked Truth(96)

Wheeler lets out a belly laugh. “Oh my, it seems chivalry is dead. Or it dies very fast in the face of actual death. Not much sense winning brownie points with a girl if she won’t survive to let you spend them, huh, Maximus? You’ll shoot her and frame yourself and then we can arrest you instead of staging your suicide.” He fakes a deep frown. “Unless you’re actually just trying to get me to hand over the gun. Oh, you almost got me there, my boy. You really did.”

“I’m not trying to do either,” Max says, as calmly as he can. “Handing over the gun won’t help when your partner still has his pointed at me. And I didn’t say I’d kill Riley. I said I’d shoot her. A nonfatal shot. Then I’ll kill myself.”

“No!” I say, lunging against Buchanan’s restraining hand.

“Then I’ll kill myself,” Max repeats. “Riley survives, and she tells exactly the story you want her to tell, because she knows what you are and that you’ll have no compunctions about coming after her family.”

“Compunctions,” Wheeler muses. “Good word. But we also have no ‘compunctions’ about killing her right—”

“I know,” Max says quickly. “But this will be even better. You’ll have the forensic evidence for your case, and you’ll have an eyewitness.”

“Nice try,” Wheeler says. “But no.” He waves Buchanan over and they switch weapons. “My friend here will do the honors on Miss Riley. Not because I have any ‘compunctions’ about doing it myself, but because I know you better than he does, Maximus. So I’ll keep an eye on you while he does your work for you, using the proper gun, of course.”

He turns to me. “Miss Riley? It has been a pleasure. You may have been a pain in the ass, but I rather enjoyed the challenge. In this job, it’s the same old, same old. Walk up and pull the trigger. At most, you get a moment of ‘Oh no, please don’t kill me!’ Almost like factory work. Repetitive and dull. You livened things up. Worthy adversaries, you and Maximus. Now kneel.”

I do. As I lower myself, I’m eyeing Buchanan’s knees. One sharp hit in the back and they’ll buckle. Do I still have the strength to do it? I have no idea, but I need to try.

I’m lowering myself into position, visualizing my strike, and then—

Max launches himself at Buchanan. I strike the back of the man’s knee as hard as I can, and he does crumple, but it’s because Max has hit him, and they’re going down, and the shot fires.

No, the shot fires before they go down. It fires, and then I hit Buchanan, and then Max does, and the shot isn’t from Buchanan’s gun. It’s from Wheeler’s, aiming at Max. The gun fires. The bullet hits. Blood sprays.

Buchanan drops his gun. I’m not sure when or why or at what stage in that split-second sequence. What I see first is not blood. It’s a falling gun, and then it’s in my hand, with me gripping it by the barrel.

That’s when I see the blood, and out of the corner of my eye I see Max and Buchanan go down, and before I can look, before I dare to look, I see another gun. Wheeler’s. Rising.

I scream. I scream as loud as I can, and I run at Wheeler, the gun still in my hand as I fumble to get a proper grip on it. Wheeler swings his weapon at me and …

And he slips. I don’t know what on. It’s not even a slip as much as a tiny stumble and stagger, his foot sliding out from under him. But it throws him off balance, and I’m swinging up the gun, and he’s right there, and the gun hits his forearm, hits it in exactly the right place, and his hand opens on reflex and his own gun drops, and I kick it away.

And then I’m holding a gun on him. Miraculously, somehow, I’m holding a gun on him, and I look down to see what he slipped in, and it’s River’s blood. The irony. Yes, the irony.

I hear a groan, and that snaps me out of my moment of victory as my chest seizes, and I remember the shot, and I spin to see both Max and Buchanan on the ground. And blood. There’s blood.

“Riley!” It’s Max. He’s pushing himself up and waving frantically at me as I catch a blur of motion. Wheeler rushes me. I back up fast, careful to stay out of that snaking stream of blood.

“I’m fine,” Max says, and he sounds about seventy percent correct. There’s a catch in his voice, a small hiss of pain, but he’s on his feet, his hand clamped to his side. “It went through me and hit Buchanan. He’s gone.”

And there is, in that, a second shot of irony. Wheeler shot Max and killed his partner instead. Then he tries to shoot me and slips in his last victim’s blood. Bitter, ironic coincidence. Or perhaps a little more. If I care to see divine intervention, I’ll see it here. Like a parent watching a toddler stumble around, insisting she reach her goal on her own, and then finally saying, “All right, you’ve done enough,” and easing a couple of immovable obstacles out of her way.

Max is fine. Or fine enough. Buchanan is down. And Wheeler? Wheeler is at the other end of a gun barrel. My gun barrel.

I see him down that barrel, and I think of Sandy, shot and discarded in a supply closet. I think of Gideon and Maria, dead in pools of blood, staring in shock. I think of Lorenzo, fighting for his life and losing. I think of Brienne, saying “I’ll be brave,” Brienne shot in the back. Of her brother, given the chance to run only to be gunned down. I even think of Aimee, because it doesn’t matter if she was part of this, what I’m thinking isn’t of the fact of her death but the way he did it, walking up to a former partner, someone he knew, someone who trusted him, shooting her once and, when that failed, shooting her in the head.