The Thirteenth Skull (Alfred Kropp #3)(56)

Vosch acted like he didn’t hear him. “You’re supposed to forgive.”

“God’s business, not mine,” Sam answered.

He started to squeeze the trigger. I brought my hand down hard on his wrist and the gun clattered to the pavement.

“Please let me, Alfred,” he said. He had never begged me for anything before.

“Yes,” Vosch said. “Please let him.”

I picked up the gun and tucked it into my waistband. “We’re getting out of here.”

Sam held on to Vosch’s hair for a second longer. His eyes darted wildly back and forth, from me to Vosch and back again. Sometimes the bloodiest battles happen inside our own hearts.

He drove his knee into Vosch’s back, sending him sprawling onto the pavement. Then he spat on him, took a deep breath, and looked away, finally, from Vosch, toward me.

“It’s good to see you again, Alfred,” he said.

Then he did something he rarely did.

He smiled.

MOTEL 6

HELENA, MONTANA

01:00:06:14

I walked around the building a couple of times to make sure the coast was clear, then knocked on the door to room 101. The chain lock rattled, the dead bolt slid back, and Samuel opened the door. He tossed the gun onto the bed and took the plastic sack from my hand.

“I was about to come after you,” he said.

He threw the lock and fell into the chair by the little table. I sat in the other chair across from him. He fished a deli sandwich from the bag and dug in, eating with his nose about three inches from the table. I took out my meal and slowly unwrapped the yellow paper.

“Corn dogs,” he said.

“I’m superstitious.”

The TV was tuned to a cable news channel. A car bomb had killed some people overseas. Somebody important was going to speak at the UN tomorrow. A car maker was set to announce record losses for the third quarter.

“Anything?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not yet.”

“You know that trucker gave a description.”

He shrugged.

“And the taxi driver.”

He shrugged again.

“Those people at the airport.”

He shrugged a third time. What was it with Op Nines and the shrugging?

A pickle slice had fallen from his sandwich and he picked it up and carefully tucked it back in.

I went on. “I’m so popular. Wanted by OIPEP, Jourdain Garmot, and now the feds.”

He shook his head. “The feds won’t get involved until we cross state lines.”

“Oh, okay. What a relief. I was about to panic.”

I scraped the skewer of my dog clean with my front teeth and started on the second one. Deli mustard is best, but the gas station only had packets of regular yellow.

I had brought up the two-ton elephant in the room, but he refused to acknowledge it. So I moved on, reminding myself not to forget to move back.

“It was Needlemier, wasn’t it?” I asked. “How they got you.”

He nodded. “He said he had a meeting scheduled with Jourdain regarding the status of your father’s estate. I should have considered the possibility they were using him—perhaps I would have, but I was eager to remove the threat, driven by emotion . . .”

“Gets you every time,” I said. “Emotion.”

His eyes cut away. “Jourdain Garmot is mad,” he said. Then he started to eat again. “And like all madmen, he fails to see the world as something outside himself. He truly believes that killing you will bring him peace.”

“Like you with Vosch,” I said.

He looked at me hard. “With Vosch gone, there is one less pursuer.”

“But one more gallon of blood on my hands.”

“There is no sin in self-preservation,” he said.

“I don’t care about all the ins and outs of it, Samuel. All the pie-in-the-sky philosophy won’t change the facts. For every Vosch we kill, Jourdain will send five more Vosches to take his place.”

That reminded me. I laid my half-eaten corn dog on the table and went to the telephone by the bed. Samuel shifted in his chair so he could watch me. I got the same recording I got the first time I tried, right after we checked in. I hung up without leaving a message. Samuel shifted again when I sat back down and picked up my corn dog.

“Perhaps Mr. Needlemier doesn’t need us to point out the prudent course,” he said.

“I hope it’s that,” I said. “I hope he’s taken off, gone someplace safe, but what if he hasn’t? What if Jourdain already has him?”

“Then may God have mercy on him.”

I looked at his hands. He saw me looking at his hands. I looked away.

“He doesn’t know where I am,” I said. “Maybe Jourdain will believe him and let him go.”

“He didn’t believe me,” he pointed out.

“Well, one life at a time. One thing I can’t figure out— well, there’s a lot of things—but the biggest thing is how killing me gets Jourdain the Skull.”

He frowned. “ ‘Jourdain the Skull’?”

I nodded. “The Skull of Doom.”

He didn’t say anything. He just stared at me.

“You’ve never heard about the Skull of Doom?” I asked.