Intent to Kill (30 page)

THE CHECKER SPOTTED THE GREENISH GLOW OF A CELL PHONE AND
assumed that Ryan was dialing 911. The police would arrive soon, which meant that a gunfight was unavoidable.

It was time to take stock.

He tried to scan the cemetery one more time with his night-vision monocular. No go. His cheapo equipment was definitely broken. That idiot Babes had hit him like a Mack truck and sent the monocular flying onto the concrete floor. He didn’t need night vision to beat these amateurs anyway. Ryan—he’d identified himself when shouting to Babes—had taken cover behind a stone monument. Obviously, that first target in the trench coat had been someone else. Probably that prosecutor. Emma. Maybe she was hit. In any event, she was out of sight, down somewhere in the sea of gravestones.

Vladimir checked his ammunition. Under ideal conditions, he would have needed just one bullet for each target, but with rainfall coming and going, he would have to count on a few more misses. He had one extra magazine for his Glock pistol—another fifteen rounds in addition to the dozen remaining in the first magazine. Plenty of firepower. The Beretta was also fully loaded, but it wasn’t very accurate at a distance of more than thirty feet, and unless he had the barrel of the gun pressed up against the victim’s skull, the Checker never counted on a .22-caliber weapon to deliver a fatal blow. From here on out, the 9 mm Glock was his ticket out of this mess.

“Ryan, where are you?” shouted Babes.

“Stay down and stay quiet!” Ryan shouted back.

“Watch out for the Russian!”

Vladimir used the voices to pinpoint his targets. Ryan was still down low, out of the line of sight.

But Vladimir had an open shot at Babes.

The kid was only fifty feet away, much closer than Vladimir’s earlier shot at the trench coat. Even a crescent moon peering through passing clouds was enough light to complete this hit. Babes’s body was concealed, but most of his head was exposed above a waist-high stone monument. He reminded Vladimir of a young deer: alarmed and alert enough to look up but lacking the experience to realize that it was time to run away.

Easy pickings, even without night vision.

Vladimir took careful aim. A simple squeeze of the trigger would have ended it. But then he backed off.

Sirens blared in the distance—barely audible at this point, but approaching. The cops were indeed on the way. Matters were getting complicated. Vladimir needed to rethink his escape.

A hostage.

He might need one. But only one. Between Babes and Ryan, Babes would be easier to subdue. Vladimir could also be certain that Babes was unarmed. The same could not be said about Ryan.

The police sirens were growing louder. No time to waste. It was settled. He’d retake Babes. And then he would kill the guy who had dragged the police here in the first place and screwed up Vladimir’s entire night.

Ryan.

BABES GRIPPED THE GRAVESTONE TIGHTLY AS HE CROUCHED ATOP
some dead Puritan’s final resting place. The marker didn’t exactly crumble in his hands, but it felt strangely fragile. Despite the stress—or because of it—the numbers called out to him, and he studied the dates on the monument. It was more than two centuries old, discolored, cracked, and decaying from the elements. He wondered if Vladimir’s bullets could cut right through them.

Babes felt a strong urge to draw his knees up to his chest and rock, but he forced himself to remain as still as possible. The slightest movement could reveal his whereabouts, which would have been deadly. He listened. The busy interstate bordered the western edge of the cemetery, and even though Babes couldn’t see beyond the trees, the rain had made passing vehicles audible. Speeding tires on wet pavement sounded just like the traffic on the bridge over his boxcar.

Eshheer.

He’s here.

Babes heard the approaching sirens, too. The police. They were coming for him. Surely a guy like the Russian would know how to escape, but Babes feared that his own luck was running out. If the cops caught him, they would pin Yaz’s murder on him and throw him in jail. Then the big men without women would smear his lips with cherry Kool-Aid and have their way with him.

Footsteps!

Babes could have sworn he’d heard someone coming. Maybe it was the police. Or the Russian. He wasn’t sure which would have been worse. Either way, he had to escape.

Babes got down on his belly and, like a snake, slithered between the monuments, keeping low and making himself invisible.

Watch out for the Russian.
That last warning from Babes was burning in Ryan’s ear. It had to be the same thug who had laid out Ryan on the sidewalk last night.

“He’s coming,” said Ryan, whispering.

It was purely instinct speaking. In the darkness he couldn’t see the Russian, but the silence told him that something was under way.

“Either that, or he’s going after Babes,” Ryan added, thinking aloud.

“Take my gun,” said Emma.

It hadn’t occurred to Ryan that she would be armed, but it was no surprise that a female prosecutor who went up against rapists and murderers on a daily basis would be licensed to carry a firearm.

“Lucky me,” said Ryan. “My first shootout, and it has to be with a trained killer.”

“Don’t tell me you’re the only boy from Texas who doesn’t like guns.”

He didn’t bother telling her that his dormitory at UT had boots, knives, and guns sculptured onto its frieze. Or that by the age of fifteen he could have shot the cap off a bottle of Dublin Dr Pepper at fifty paces. “I know guns,” he said.

“Good. It’s holstered on my left side.”

Ryan released the pressure on her wound, which made Emma cringe with pain. Change of any kind obviously wasn’t going to agree with her in this state. He reached carefully inside her coat, where everything was wet with blood. It had soaked all the way over to her left side, which scared him. The bullet’s entry point was too high to have hit a vital organ, but any wound that bled this much could be fatal.

Emma seemed to pick up his concern. “Am I dying?” she asked.

Ryan froze, and even though his hand was on the gun, he could feel her heart beating. In a strange but powerful way, he felt connected to her. “No,” he said firmly. “You are
not
dying. Not tonight. Not any time soon.”

Ryan slid the gun from the holster and wiped it clean on his shirt.

“It’s a SIG-Sauer,” she said. “Nine millimeter.”

The sirens were getting louder. Ryan guessed that the police and the ambulance were three minutes away, which would probably feel like three hours.

“You have ten rounds in the magazine,” said Emma.

Ryan cocked the hammer with his thumb, then pulled the slide back and released it, loading a live round into the barrel.

“Let’s hope we don’t need that many,” he said.

The Checker had lost sight of Babes. One minute the twit was an easy target, the next—poof. He’d vanished amid an overcrowded collection of tall markers that stood side by side, almost on top of one another, a veritable forest of chiseled granite.

You’re a total pain in the ass, you know that, Babes?

It didn’t seem possible, but the night was growing darker. Once again the cool mist was turning to cold rain, and the last band of clouds had moved in and swallowed the light of the crescent moon entirely. Vladimir had worked under far worse conditions. If not for the approaching police sirens, he would have relished the challenge of this little search-and-destroy mission. In a few minutes, however, the cemetery would be crawling with cops. He’d had enough. To hell with Babes and the notion of taking a hostage. There was no telling where he was hiding, and Vladimir didn’t have the time to smoke him out. It was best just to drop that screwball at the first opportunity.

He changed direction and doubled back toward the place where his first round of gunfire had dropped the body in the trench coat—back toward Ryan.

“Ryan, watch out!” Babes shouted.

In one fluid motion, Vladimir turned, fired two quick shots in the direction of Babes’s voice, and immediately dove to the ground, taking cover behind a marker.

“Babes!” Ryan shouted.

Babes did not respond. The night was deadly silent.

Vladimir smiled to himself. Ryan’s last shout to Babes had confirmed his suspicion: Ryan had stayed near the body of the Checker’s first victim.

Gun in hand, his body low to the ground, Vladimir used the monuments as cover as he made his way toward his final target.

SILENCE PIERCED BY SIRENS—THE SOUND WAS HAUNTING TO RYAN.

The night was beyond black. Emma lay at his side, and the darkness was so profound that it was difficult even to see her face. For an instant—a bizarre and confusing moment in Ryan’s mind—Emma became Chelsea, and Ryan was at her side as the ambulance approached too slowly, too late to stop the bleeding and save her life.

Ryan shook it off. He could hear Emma breathing. She was struggling.

“Only a couple minutes more,” he whispered.

A shot rang out, and then another. Ryan hit the ground as the bullets ricocheted off the marker behind him. The second one had whistled right past his ear. Surely the squad cars were pulling into the parking lot by now—they sounded closer than ever. Still, help was a quarter mile away on foot, and the officers would have to find their way through the cemetery’s maze of winding footpaths. If Ryan didn’t take out the Russian before they arrived, one of those cops might lose his life.

Ryan was going to have to put Emma’s gun to use.

Suddenly he felt ready—on so many levels, and for so many reasons. At that moment, the need to save Chelsea’s brother was more powerful than the need to avenge Chelsea’s death. And if Babes was already gone—silenced by those last gunshots in the dark—there would be at least as much justice in taking out the Russian as there had been in bringing down Connie Garrisen.

Emma emitted a gurgling sound. Her breathing was growing more difficult with the passing of each precious minute.

Ryan sat up slowly, his back pressed hard against the granite monument. He was still shirtless, and the polished stone felt like a block of ice against his bare back. Saying another word to Emma was out of the question, fearful as he was of drawing more fire. He simply reached out in the darkness and squeezed Emma’s hand to reassure her.

Then, in total silence, he raised his head above the marker and searched for his enemy. And his heart sank.

He saw only the black of night.

The Checker approached with the confidence of an assassin. Time was short. The police were coming. The target was near at hand. His heart was pounding.

I can’t see shit.

The darkness, however, was strangely exhilarating. Ryan had yet to fire a shot—perhaps he didn’t even have a gun—but Vladimir had to assume he was armed. He
always
assumed that his targets were armed, and if that body in the trench coat was Emma Carlisle, he was experienced enough to know that prosecutors often carried weapons. Commonsense insights and assumptions had enabled him to keep the upper hand throughout his career. More than a dozen hits—way more—without a hitch. His keys to success were simple. Know your target. Know your surroundings. Know your way out. Tonight he was breaking the rules, battling the darkness, venturing into uncharted territory.

And he had never felt more alive.

Sixty seconds more was all the time he had. He could almost feel the police closing in, and soon he would have to make his escape.

Vladimir moved to the next marker, stopped, and listened. If he couldn’t see Ryan, he knew that Ryan couldn’t see him. But Vladimir had the advantage. Ryan had already given away his position by calling out to Babes. All Vladimir had to do was avoid making any noise—and keep his ears open.

The next man to make a sound would die.

Ryan felt it in his bones that the shooter was nearby—perhaps just a few stone markers away. But he couldn’t see a thing in the pitch darkness.

What is taking the cops so damn long?

They had to be on the way, but maybe they had charged off to another section of the cemetery. Ryan had told the 911 operator that there was a shooter at the North Burial Ground. In the confusion of the moment, he couldn’t recall whether he’d mentioned the Dawes family crypt. He hoped the police had the common sense to realize that the Dawes crypt was in Emma’s original plan, and he would have liked to redial 911 to make sure they were coming, but that would have been risky. The light from the cell phone’s display would make him a glowing target in the darkness. He could keep the phone in his pocket and punch out the numbers by feel, but that was a stupid idea. How would he talk to the operator without getting shot?

A touch of irony gripped him. He couldn’t call 911 to save Emma. Connie Garrisen had failed to dial 911, which had killed Chelsea.

Ryan raised his weapon, pointing the barrel upward in the ready position. The SIG-Sauer was among the smaller 9 mm pistols, and it felt comfortable in his hand. He’d been away from guns since leaving Alpine, Texas, for the most part. There was a time after Chelsea’s accident when anger had gripped him, and he’d taken up target practice at a shooting range in South Boston. The target was a black-on-white image of a man, and Ryan would cast the dark silhouette as the faceless drunk who had run Chelsea off the road. He’d squeeze off hundreds of rounds, all to the head and the heart, kill shot after kill shot.

Ryan bristled. He heard something. The shooter? No. Just the wind.

What is taking the cops so damn long?

He tried to focus. His ears were his only ally. This was a game of sound and silence. Make a sound, and you’d be silenced. Like Babes.

Please, God. Not Babes, too.

Goose bumps suddenly covered his upper body. Ryan was naked from the waist up, but the chills had nothing to do with the cold. It was a confluence of thoughts. On one side of his brain were Babes, Chelsea, Emma, and 911. On the other side were the shooter, the silence, the danger of making noise. Like a flash of light in the night, it came down to one common denominator.

The phone.

It was his only chance against a professional killer.

With his left hand, he reached into his pants pocket, pulled out his phone, and pressed it facedown in the grass so that it would emit no light. With the tip of his finger, entirely by touch and memory, he found the rectangular Menu button on the right and pressed it. He found the corresponding OK button on the left and pressed that. Then he found the round Talk button in the middle. He punched it—and held his breath.

The next three seconds felt endless. If all had gone right, Ryan was dialing the last number to have called him.

A phone chirped in the darkness.

Instinct took over, and in a total blur of adrenaline-driven motion, Ryan rolled to his right, sprang from behind the cover of the granite marker, and rapid-fired three shots—
pow, pow, pow
—aimed directly at the ringing cell phone. The noise, the vibration in his hands, the recoil in his forearms—every bit of it seemed to overload his senses and touch his very core. He wasn’t just squeezing off gunshots. He was squeezing out three years of grief, anger, sadness, and every other emotion that had kept him staring at the ceiling night after night since Chelsea’s death.

He heard a thud—a body hitting the ground.

Then silence.

Ryan moved forward, one stone marker to the next, maintaining a position of cover. Just five gravesites away, beside a tall stone monument, he found what he was hoping for.

The Russian lay facedown in the wet grass.

Ryan reached out and put two fingers to the Russian’s jugular. No pulse. Another silhouette, another kill shot.

Right beside the body lay a professional killer’s tool of choice. The pistol that could have killed Ryan and Emma. The pistol that might already have claimed a life tonight.

“Babes!” Ryan called into the darkness.