No shots came.
The river was about ten feet across here, maybe a little wider. I couldn’t see that far. From memory, I knew a person could walk easily across. Unless it was flooding, this branch of the upper Verde was little more than a creek here.
“How’s wifey, Doctor Mapstone?”
She was to my right, probably across the river. I called, “She’s going to be fine.”
“That’s too bad.”
I called, “Nobody else has to get hurt.”
“You know that’s not true.”
Was she closer, or was I imagining it? Must keep moving. It was my only chance against someone with her training. So I made my legs rise and I surged forward, splashing across the Verde bent low, both hands on the Python. I nearly lost my balance on the small, smooth rocks in the streambed. Across and up a modest slope, a big ponderosa awaited me. I fell behind it and swept my perimeter with the gun barrel.
“I know all about you, Amy…”
“You don’t know anything!” She was angry now. And closer.
The snow wasn’t sticking to the ground yet, but it swirled in front of my face. I stared into the night, trying to detect texture and folds and movement in the blackness.
“How can all this bring back your husband and your daughter? I know what happened to them in Calgary. I know what you did to Chaos for revenge. Did cutting the throats of his children bring back your daughter?”
After a long pause, “I didn’t expect it to.”
“Your family wouldn’t want this, Amy.” I ratcheted my voice down to a conversational tone, tried to keep it steady. “When does it stop?”
“When I get my stones.” Conversational tone. I heard undergrowth snapping to my left.
I said, “That’s not going to happen.”
I smelled Chanel Number Five. A pinecone crunched six feet away. Out of the gloom, I could see she was crouched, aiming at me with a combat grip.
Her face was flushed and her breathing came hard from the run, fog shooting out into the night. She nearly whispered, “You can’t save me. You can’t redeem what happened. You can’t even save yourself.”
I had the Python dead on her, both sights lined up.
“No,” I said. “It ends right now.”
“The world is evil, Mapstone,” she said. “You can’t stop it. You can’t even make a stand against it. I played by your rules and I couldn’t stop it. So either kill me or put your gun on the ground and walk back to the cabin with me behind you. Simple choice. No time.”
The Python was steady. So was my breathing.
In the next nanosecond, as she opened her mouth, I took a breath, let it out slowly, and pulled, letting the smooth action of the Colt do the rest.
A boom, a long flash of red and yellow, and the echo of the explosion ruptured the night.
Chapter Forty-five
“You don’t get out that easy.”
I spoke the words as I searched her thoroughly. Her knife and backup gun went in my waistband. She stared at me, half disoriented, half furious, but she was in no condition to argue.
I carried her back across the river, across the road to the A-frame, looking like the bride and groom from hell. She was too traumatized to do a saddleback carry. Fortunately, she was light.
Peralta was crouched behind a tree with the carbine.
“You son of a bitch.” He saw what I had done. “Now every civilian and reporter is going to think we can shoot the gun out of a bad guy’s hand and never employ lethal force.”