The Prince of Risk A Novel(25)

She rubbed her fingers together and found them as slippery as a few minutes before. Not paint but grease. The kind of grease that keeps rust from gun barrels. And all the while she kept her eyes locked on Mr. Randall Shepherd.

You bastard, she thought. You goddamned, Oscar-winning bastard.

Shepherd stared back, eyes steady, unblinking. He ran a hand over his scalp, and Alex observed two rivulets of sweat at his temple beginning to roll toward his jaw.

“Au revoir,” she said, as lightly as her thundering heart would permit.

“Au revoir,” said Shepherd. The response was immediate and unrehearsed. It was French French, not her clumsy American variant. She knew it, and he knew she knew it. Shepherd shook his head, chuckling to himself. “Mais merde.”

“Hands against the wall,” said Alex. “You’re under arrest.”

“What is it?” asked Malloy. “Did I miss something?”

But by then the man who called himself Randall Shepherd was bringing a large semiautomatic pistol to bear and Alex was pushing Malloy aside as she cleared her Glock.

“Drop it!”

She was a second late.





15




The first bullet struck her in the chest. She wasn’t sure where, only that she felt as if she’d been flattened by a truck. The second hit her in the same place, and even as she tumbled backward and her head hammered the doorframe, she knew that he was a professional. What kind of professional, she wasn’t sure, because by then she’d hit the ground and she couldn’t breathe, and even though her eyes were open, all she could see were skyrocketing colors.

Alex tried to raise her head, but nothing happened. The thought came to her that she was wearing her vest so the bullet couldn’t have penetrated the Kevlar plates and injured her spine. She tried again, with only a marginally better result. She didn’t like slackers, or anyone else who refused her orders, and the same went for herself. Angered, she ordered her fingers to curl, but for all her efforts, she remained as immobile as a petrified rock.

Gunfire battered the air, the bangs and concussions so loud that her ears hurt worse than her chest. There was a thud on the floor beside her, and like that, she could see again. Malloy was lying next to her. Blood spurted from his neck in messy arrhythmic geysers. He’s a goner, she thought. No one can lose that much blood. She knew this was a terrible thing, and that later she was going to be heartbroken. But for now she was too stunned to feel anything.

The floorboards shuddered beneath her. Feeling rushed back into her limbs. She raised her head in time to see Shepherd running up the stairs. He stopped halfway and fired his pistol. The shot sounded louder than the others and brought her back to her senses. More gunshots followed. She was in a shooting gallery at Coney Island, if every shot made you wince and rattled your insides. Jason Mara came out of the kitchen, firing across the room at Shepherd. He and DiRienzo had taken the back door to insure against Shepherd’s pulling a runner. Mara’s head snapped back. Blood splattered the wall behind him. He fell. She knew he was dead.



Shepherd continued up the stairs. Alex aimed her pistol and fired. And fired again and again. Filaments of plaster and wallpaper erupted around him. He twisted and pointed his pistol at her. He was 20 feet away, but she felt close enough to count the grooves in the barrel. He had her dead to rights. The muzzle flash blinded her. Wood splintered an inch from her ear. All this time, she kept firing. Sixteen rounds, she told herself, though she had no idea how many times she’d pulled the trigger. Her hand was sore from squeezing so hard, and her wrist was shaky. She paused for a second—less, even—trained the sights on Shepherd’s chest, then fired three times in succession. Shepherd appeared to hurl himself against the wall, rebounded, and flipped forward over the balustrade. His head struck the floor first, cracking the rotting planking. He didn’t move after that.

The silence was louder than the gunfire.

Alex struggled to a knee and turned her attention to Malloy. “Hang in there, Jimmy,” she said. “I’ll get help.”

Malloy’s eyes beseeched her. His mouth hung open, lips trembling. He was speaking, but the words were incomprehensible. He repeated himself and she understood. “My girls,” he was saying. “…love them.”

“Stay still, baby. It’s going to be okay.”

Alex avoided his eyes. She had to find his carotid artery. Her fingers probed inside the gaping wound, but there was too much blood and half his goddamned neck was no longer there. Malloy’s hand shot up and grasped her arm, his fingers digging into her flesh. Slowly the pressure relaxed. The hand fell back to the floor.