Sacred (Kenzie & Gennaro 3)

“Wait!” Trevor screamed as I crossed the floor, the gun extended and pointing directly at his head.

Outside, the surf roared, and the stars burned.

“No!” Desiree screamed as Angie crossed the floor toward her, gun extended.

Trevor bucked against the ropes that bound him to the chair. He jerked his head left, then right, then left.

And I kept coming.

I could hear the hammering of Desiree’s chair on the parquet floor as she did the same, and the room seemed to shrink around Trevor as my footfalls grew closer. His face rose and expanded over the target sight; his eyes rocketed from side to side. Sweat poured from his hair and his ruined cheeks spasmed. His milky white lips curled back against his teeth and he howled.

I stepped up to his chair and put the gun against the tip of his nose.

“How’s it feel?”

“No,” he said. “Please.”

“I said, ‘How’s it feel?’” Angie yelled at Desiree from the other side of the room.

“Don’t!” Desiree screamed. “Don’t!”

I said, “I asked you a question, Trevor.”

“I—”

“How does it feel?”

His eyes darted on either side of the barrel as red veins erupted across the corneas.

“Answer me.”

His lips blubbered then clenched and the veins in his neck bulged.

“It feels,” he screamed, “like shit!”

“Yes, it does,” I said. “That’s how Everett Hamlyn felt when he died. Like shit. That’s how Jay Becker felt. That’s how your wife and a six-year-old girl you had cut up and thrown into a vat of coffee beans felt. Like shit, Trevor. Like nothing.”

“Don’t shoot me,” he said. “Please. Please.” And tears rolled from his vacant eyes.

I removed the gun. “I’m not going to shoot you, Trevor.”

As he watched in amazement, I dropped the magazine from the butt into my sling. I pressed the gun in against my injured wrist and worked the slide, ejected the live shell from the chamber. I bent and picked it up and placed it in my pocket.

Then as Trevor’s confusion grew, I pushed down on the slide lock and removed the slide from the top of the frame and dropped that into my sling. I reached into the frame and removed the spring above the barrel. I held it up for Trevor to see, then dropped it too into my sling. Lastly, I removed the barrel itself, added it to the other pieces.

“Five pieces,” I said to Trevor. “Total. The clip, the slide, the spring, the barrel, and the gun frame. I’m assuming you’re adept at field-stripping your weapons?”

He nodded.

I turned my head, called to Angie, “How’s Desiree with the field-stripping concept?”

“I believe Daddy taught her well.”

“Wonderful.” I turned back to Trevor. “As I’m sure you know, the Glock and the Sig Sauer are identical weapons in terms of field stripping.”

He nodded. “I’m aware of that.”

“Bitchin’.” I smiled and turned away from him. I counted off fifteen paces as I walked, stopped and removed the gun pieces from my sling. I placed them neatly on the floor, spaced out in a straight line.

Then I crossed the floor to Angie and Desiree. I stood at Desiree’s chair and turned back, counted off another fifteen paces from her chair. Angie came up beside me, and placed all five pieces of the disassembled Glock on the floor in a straight line.

We walked back to Desiree, and Angie untied her hands from the back of the chair, then bent and tightened the knots around her ankles.

Desiree looked up at me, choosing to breathe heavily through her mouth instead of her ruined nose.

“You’re crazy,” she said.

I nodded. “You want your father dead. Correct?”

She turned her face away from me, looked at the floor.

“Hey, Trevor,” I called. “You still want your daughter dead?”

“With every breath I have left,” he called.

I looked down at Desiree and she tilted her head, looked up at me through hooded lids and the honey hair that had fallen in her face.

“Here’s the situation, Desiree,” I said as Angie went and untied Trevor’s arms and checked the knots on his ankles. “You’re each bound at the ankles. Trevor a little less tightly than you, but not much. I figure he’s a little slower on his feet so I gave him a hair of an edge.” I pointed down the long, polished floor. “There are the guns. Get to them, assemble them, and do what you will with them.”

“You can’t do this,” she said.

“Desiree, ‘can’t’ is a conception of morality. You should know that. We can do whatever we put our minds to. You’re living proof.”

I walked to the center of the room, and Angie and I stood there, looking back at them as they flexed their hands and got ready.

“If either of you gets the bright idea to join forces and come after us,” Angie said, “we’ll be on our way to the Boston Tribune newsroom. So don’t waste your time. Whichever one of you lives through this—if either of you does—would be best served getting on a plane.” She nudged me. “Anything to add?”

I watched the two of them as they wiped their palms on their thighs, flexed their fingers some more, bent toward the ropes at their ankles. The genetic resemblance was obvious in their body movements, but it was deepest and most glaringly apparent in those jade eyes of theirs. What lived in there was greedy and recalcitrant and without shame. It was primordial and knew more about the stink of caves than the airy leisure of this room.

I shook my head.

“Have fun in hell,” Angie said and we walked out of the room and locked the doors behind us.

We headed straight down the servants’ stairwell and came out by a small door that led off one corner of the kitchen. Above us, something scratched the floor repeatedly. And then there was a thump, followed instantly by another from the other end.

We let ourselves out and followed the path along the back lawn as the sea grew still and quiet.

I took the keys I’d taken back from Desiree as we wound past the garden and the reconverted barn and stopped at my Porsche.

It was dark out, but there was a glow shining over the night from the stars above, and we stood by my car and looked up at it. Trevor Stone’s massive home shimmered in the glow, and I looked out at the flat swell of dark water to the place where it met the horizon and the sky.

“Look,” Angie said and pointed as a white asterisk of light shot across the dark sky, trailing embers, lunging toward a point beyond our view, but not making it. It shorted out two thirds of the way there and imploded into nothing as several stars around it seemed to watch without interest.