“Give him your phone!” Caitlin screams. “And your gun. TWO!”
Blood rolls steadily down Royal’s neck.
Turning my head slightly to the right, I say, “Give me the gun, man.”
Regan’s eyes are filled with indecision. He jumps at the sound of a closing door.
Caitlin whips her head around Brody’s, her eyes wild with suspicion. To my right, the van crew has slipped back into the basement. Probably drawn from upstairs by the screaming. Caitlin curses and drags Brody backward, into the corner shooting station. Crew Cut heads for the firing range door, while the older man takes a pistol from his belt and moves cautiously closer to Caitlin, angling for a shot.
“Watch that guy!” I tell her, pointing at the man making for the door.
“THREE!” Caitlin cries, her eyes jittery. “FOUR—”
“Stop!” Brody screams. “Put down your guns! Give Cage the phone. Stay out of there, Dwayne!”
The Glock’s barrel falls away from my temple.
Caitlin’s eyes flick back and forth, trying to read every intention. As Regan digs in his pocket for his cell phone, Brody sags with relief, then cracks his elbow into Caitlin’s ribs and tries to wrench himself away. With a cry she rips the razor upward, spraying blood—and then they are two, not one.
Brody’s shirt is a fountain of scarlet, and blood pours through his hands, which are at his throat. I leap forward to shield Caitlin, afraid Regan will shoot her outright, but he appears stunned by the sight of Royal frantically probing the wound in his neck. Caitlin still has the razor in her hand, but it’s useless now, except as a tool for suicide. Crew Cut and his partner have now trained their guns on us. They walk forward, bodies turned at an angle, lining up their shots. When I turn and find Caitlin’s eyes, I see something I’d rather have died than witness: despair.
“Take them into the range!” Brody bellows, still probing his lacerated neck.
“Are you all right?” Randall asks, incredulous.
“I will be. Get me some goddamn superglue!”
Energized, Regan yells, “Put the mayor on the chain! The bitch gets the pole!”
This is the end. As Crew Cut reaches me, I grab his gun and twist hard enough to tear ligaments from bone. He shrieks, and my left hand closes firmly around cold steel. I sense more than see Caitlin flailing the razor to my left, but then something crashes into my neck, stunning me nearly senseless. I try once more to twist the gun free, but a second blow batters my skull, blotting out the light.
CHAPTER 92
HENRY SEXTON FORCED himself to keep the Impala’s speedometer on forty as he drove up the lane toward Brody Royal’s lake house. The IV narcotics were fading; he knew because his abdominal pain was climbing quickly up the scale. He’d taken a second OxyContin to compensate for the missing pump, and a couple of minutes ago, he’d realized he was only driving ten miles per hour.
He was breathing pretty well, in spite of his swollen tongue, and the pounding in his head had settled down to a tolerable backbeat. The cast on his left arm gave him no difficulty driving, but he worried about what might come later. As he neared the lake house, he tried to keep his mind engaged with reality. He couldn’t allow the combination of white-hot anger and potent painkillers to handicap him.
He braked as he spied a pickup truck parked on the street beneath some trees at the border of Brody Royal’s property. There was a man sitting behind the wheel. For a moment Henry was paralyzed. If he stopped and tried to turn around now, he’d look suspicious as hell. But if he went on …
He must be a guard of some sort, Henry decided, posted to stop people like me. Henry lifted his foot off the brake, thanking God he hadn’t removed his mother’s wig from his head. My brights are on, he thought. I should just drive past like I’m headed home after a late night.
As he came within a few feet of the pickup, Henry realized that the man sitting outside Brody’s house was black.
That made no sense.
Twenty yards past the truck, Henry braked again. A black security guard? Here? He shook his head. Emboldened by the drugs, he put the Impala in reverse and backed up until he was even with the truck. Then he pulled off his wig and rolled down his window.
The man in the cab of the pickup turned his head casually toward Henry, peering through his window with open curiosity. Something about him seemed familiar. He was about Henry’s age, for one thing. Maybe I know him, Henry thought. But … no. He couldn’t place the man.
“Are you Henry Sexton?” asked the black man, sounding far from certain.
Henry nodded slowly.
“You shaved off your goatee?”