He would have been a hero if he had kept on shooting but he didn't. Amazement at his own boldness made him indecisive. He watched the dead man fall, and by the time his furry back had hit the rug, Markov and Cherkassky had drawn out pistols of their own.
"Bravo," said an unshaken Cherkassky to the rookie. "Now throw the gun away."
The new cop blinked, counted weapons, blanched at the arithmetic, and did as he was told.
Cherkassky turned to Aaron. "Enough. Give us the girl or everybody dies."
Aaron looked down at his hands. He could faintly hear that Carol Lopez was still breathing. She was breathing through the hole in her shirt, and the wet sound of it made Aaron want to vomit. He looked up at Cherkassky. "Go fuck yourself."
Markov's flubbery lips were working, he licked them with a hound-like tongue. "Is only a woman. You cannot save her anyway."
"Where's my father?" Aaron said.
Cherkassky wagged his pistol. With his other hand he tugged his lumpy face. "Your father. Ah," he said. "Perhaps you like to trade? Your father for the whore."
The rookie trembled in the doorway. To get to Suki they would have to go through him, and he had no doubt that they would.
"Where is he?" Aaron said.
Markov smiled a salesman's smile. "Fifteen minutes you could see him, have reunion ."
There was a pause. Carol Lopez gurgled softly from deep down in her punctured lung. Tarzan Abramowitz's right foot gave a slight but ghastly flick as some dead nerve finally shut down.
"A trade would be just fine."
It was Suki talking. She was standing barefoot at the bottom of the front porch steps. She'd slipped out the back door of the kitchen and come down the walkway with its ranks of new shrubs still waiting to be planted. No one saw her till she spoke. She could have kept on going—through the gate, onto the street, out of town, to the ends of the world. But she didn't. She stood there. Her voice was calm and her face serene.
The Russians wheeled cautiously at the words.
Aaron said, "Suki, please—"
She put a foot on the bottom stair and looked at him, her gaze slicing in between the Russians. Her hair was black and coarse, her eyes an unlikely violet. Her upper lip, disconcertingly, was lusher than the lower. She said, "Aaron, it's the only way. We should've seen that long ago."
"It's not the only way," cried Aaron, though he didn't see another.
To the Russians, Suki said, "I'm ready."
Markov and Cherkassky shared a glance. There still were witnesses to be disposed of.
Aaron, desperate, stalling, searching for a way to be by Suki's side, said, "Wait. You said a trade..."
A mocking twitch pulled at one end of Cherkassky's mouth. He quickly erased it. So trusting, these Americans. So stupid. A trade. Of course. A most convenient way to get all these insufferable and meddling people together to be killed.
Solemnly he said to Aaron, "We will bring you to your father, yes." With a gracious Old World sweep of his arm, he gestured for the man behind the counter to come join them.
"Aaron, don't," said Suki.
But Aaron's feet were moving. They didn't feel like his own feet and they didn't recognize the texture of the sisal rug, but they carried him around the counter and past the sprawling body of Abramowitz.
When he was close enough to grab, Markov seized his arm. And Cherkassky opened fire on the disarmed rookie, making, he believed, for two dead cops.
The Russians ushered Aaron through the office door and down the stairs. The sun was shining. Fronds were gently rustling. Suki waited patiently. Aaron could see the freckles on her neck, the rise of muscle in her shoulder. He wondered if the murderers would let them touch.
At the bottom stair he reached out for her hand. Their fingers twined, nobody dared to stop them. Ivan Cherkassky stepped across and put the muzzle of his gun against her ribs. Aaron felt it. He knew the flesh of her side where the gun was pressing in.
They walked slowly toward the picket gate. Foliage thinned and the noises of Key West intruded. A motorcycle revving somewhere; the bellow of a cruise ship's horn. They saw the blue Camaro at the curb.
Ivan Cherkassky said, "Very nicely, all together now, we get into the car."
In a clumsy cluster they moved across the sidewalk. There were people all around, heartbreakingly oblivious in silly hats and sunburns, licking ice cream, reading maps. No one, so it seemed, paid particular attention to the odd quartet, the couple being escorted to their deaths.
Ivan Cherkassky opened the passenger-side door, bundled Aaron, then Suki, into the backseat, and finally climbed in himself. Markov lumbered around the front of the car to get in behind the wheel. He did not notice a barefoot, ragged man sitting on the curb a little distance away, his beard scraggly and translucent, his face medieval, his mouth a mere dry slot.