Grunting, Sam got his feet under him and clamped his left arm to his side, like Reynolds had pinched the nerve to the point of paralysis. While Sam dragged himself toward me, I waited for him to convey an escape plan or hint at a weapon. But the heaviness in his eyes extinguished my hopes.
A hard
crack
broke the air, and my shoulders jumped up to my ears. I looked up, expecting another tree limb had snapped. Someone gasped.
Sam's mouth gaped for air, his arm hovered for balance. Then he dropped to one knee. He touched his left hip, then stared at his fingers.
Oh, God, no
.
CHAPTER 40
"No, no, no," I whispered as I jumped the divide between me and Sam.
Crack
. I stopped short. Snow settled at my toes where a bullet had struck ground.
"Ace shot, remember." Reynolds was having a fucking play date while Sam bled out. I vowed to kill this evil sonavabitch. As soon as James pulled up with a shotgun.
But James and Malta's arrival would only trigger a shooting spree: one surly mechanic versus an ace marksman. There was no winning this fight.
"I'll do whatever you want," I said, watching Sam slump into the snow. My frozen, bruised fists clenched. Only yards between us, and I couldn't hold him. "Just let me go to him."
"You'll stay where you are and watch him die. Drop by drop, till the life leaks out of him." Reynolds approached Sam, bent over, and peered sideways at his victim. "I know exactly where to put a bullet to disable a man, don't I, Fields?" He poked Sam's shoulder with the gun muzzle. "I find it fascinating to watch a man struggle against his own mortality. Like the way you watched Anthony struggle against his death. Anthony was the cost of your disloyalty. Had you accepted Troy's offer, he'd still be alive, or at least wishing he was dead. You know he followed wherever you led. He would have joined us, had you cooperated. How impotent you must have felt to see him pay your blood debt."
Sam cringed, his body fighting the urge to drop on all fours again with Reynolds' ego towering over him
"Before they waste money on your funeral, Fields, I'll make sure the Bureau writes you off as the mole. And that your girlfriend's prints are on the gun." Reynolds examined the weapon with a sneer. "Twenty-two. Small caliber. Pathetic. Just like a woman would use."
Stall, Jules, stall.
"So tell me who set the bomb in my apartment. And why try to kill me three years ago? I had no connection to Goliath then."
"Leave it alone, Jules." Sam's words came out strained, airless as he pushed himself to a sitting position on his heels. The cabin light reflected the sheen on his forehead, the pallid of his cheeks.
"I need the truth, Sam. All of it."
Staring at me, Reynolds bent to Sam's ear. "Stop holding her back, Fields. She deserves to know her ruin. Besides, that will make me feel less guilty for shooting an artist. Award-winning artist, excuse me. You see, Fields, you already wrote her obituary for us. At least you got something right."
"You've had your fun," said Sam. "She doesn't need to know. The past is done."
"You're kidding, right?" Reynolds swung his arm toward me. "The look of surprise on her face is precious. The look on yours as I put her through hell... priceless."
Sam's chin dropped to his chest. Snow flurries blurred the space between us, and I wanted to run to him.
"You brought unwanted attention to our men, Miss Larson." Reynolds circled my position, assessing me with a professor's eye, a predator's stalk. He smelled of cordite and Saks Fifth Avenue cologne mixed with a hint of megalomania. "We thought we'd gotten rid of you the first time, but you survived the car bombing. Then you disappeared from the hospital. Using an alias to slip into a mental ward—now that was clever. And a fitting end to your life. So we thought."
My gaze fell away from Sam. The last fact I wanted him to hear was that I'd already followed in my mother's footsteps. If Doctor Ramsey hadn't forced me into a psych ward, I'd be dead. Because the first time I'd tried swallowing my entire prescription, she'd caught me.
"But showing up on television," said Reynolds, setting the gun under my chin and gently pushing up till I yelped. The gun's mouth burned, the barrel hot from being fired. "'Famous photographer held hostage, news at eleven.' That, well... that salted old wounds. Leadership wanted you gone. Permanently."
"Don't do this, Jules." Sam shook his head. Like none of this was news to him. Jesus, he'd known. All along, he'd known. And still he'd loved me.
"I'm surprised you didn't tell her all this before, Fields." Reynolds sighed at Sam. "You really got hung up on this one. Must be why NYPD couldn't wait to dispose of you. I know Stone trumped up those charges, but you're worse than a crooked cop. You're soft."
"Whoever I pissed off, they screwed up the job," I said, pulling Reynolds' attention back to me. "Goliath must be pretty small-time if they can't manage a one-woman hit."
"Goliath is everywhere." Reynolds surged toward me, waving the gun at the trees, his eyes wide with awe. "We expand like capillaries into all areas of society. Law enforcement, legal and justice, medicine and politics. Even the schools. We're in your neighborhood, your stores, your home. You can't escape us, we own this city. We own your world."
I sneered at him. "Then how could one little photographer be a threat, if Goliath is so almighty?"
"Leave it alone, Reynolds."
Reynolds spread his arms. "Your books, Miss Larson."
I looked to Sam, having no idea what this egoist was rambling about.
"Your photographs," added Reynolds, when I didn't show the right expression of pain. "Your pictures of crews coming and going, bosses and foremen. Men reviewing plans and making deals to rebuild the Twin Towers site. Our men got those contracts, our uniforms were on that site to guard materials. We out-maneuvered and outbid every mafia family in town. And then you came and took our pictures." He took a leaping step to shove a finger in my face. "And you had the nerve to publish them. Photos of important men, Miss Larson. Goliath's men. My men!"
Sam shook his head. He'd looked through my photos of the Twin Towers site with that magnifying glass, making cryptic notes. All along, he'd known everything.
"Those handshakes were never meant to hit newsstands, Miss Larson. They caused a war with the Mob that set Goliath back years. We lost money, we lost men. Innocents were killed for your photos. Men, their wives, their children. You pushed the first domino. You, Miss Larson." Reynolds got into my face, his finger threatening my eyeball, his voice cutting like shrapnel. "One. Little. Fucking. Photographer."
Sam's face screwed up with pain. "I couldn't tell you."
Because he knew I'd blame myself for their deaths.
Jesus
.
I raised my chin to Reynolds. "So a few mobsters and crooked cops killed each other. You're not about justice. You're just a bunch of vigilantes."
"Of course we are." He scanned my face, like I was an idiot. "And we needed to clean the city of one troublesome little journalist. A woman who traveled foreign countries, received hate mail, bomb threats. A car bomb was not only believable, but appropriate, even elegant, don't you think?" He pursed his lips. "I designed the device myself just for you. Just hot enough to burn your entrails inside you, just explosive enough to detach your limbs. But you dodged that first bullet, and I vowed you wouldn't escape a second attempt. Unfortunately, Troy didn't follow my strict instructions. The second device wasn't supposed to trip until you and Sam were inside the apartment. Two fucking birds, one giant stone. I would have executed that moron myself, but Fields here beat me to that pleasure." His eyes crinkled. The man gave sadism a pulse. "You're always between me and my prey, Fields."
My hands in the air, I said, "You've won. You have us now. Just let me go to him."
"By all means. I love a sappy ending." Reynolds waved me toward Sam with the gun.
Crouching, I extended my arms, forgiving Sam everything in that moment, and held his head in my hands, felt his clammy skin. "Don't die on me now. I spent a lot of money nursing you back to health."
"Christ. I already owe for the truck."
"James will be happy to collect some payback," I whispered. Dropping hints was dangerous, but Sam needed a morsel of hope to keep him going. "If you hadn't sent Burke, I—" I choked on the rest, unable to confess he was dead.
"Called him last minute. Asked if he'd tasted any good ambushes lately." Sam tried to laugh, seethed instead. "Said he'd been thirsting for one. Good man."
Leaning on my Land Cruiser, Reynolds pulled a pack of cigarettes from his coat. Max barked behind him. Reynolds turned, laughing, and tapped the window to stir Max's fury. Then he lit his cigarette and circled his finger for us to continue the show.
"Mind not taking this off?" A pool of gold sparkled in Sam's bloody hand. He must have found the bracelet Stone had tossed onto the floor at Mo's when he collapsed.
"You barking orders at me, Detective?" I slipped on the bracelet. "Because I'm not very good at following directions."
"You're telling me."
Bracing him against my chest, I pressed on his hip. Sam clenched his teeth as blood seeped between my fingers. A slow leak, a slow death.
"By all means," said Reynolds, pointing with his cigarette, "put pressure on the wound, slow down the inevitable. Then I can shoot him a third time."
Third?
Dampness had spread over my chest where I was cradling Sam. I pulled back to find crimson ice. "Oh, God." I shoved a hand inside Sam's coat, found his right shoulder soaked. Sam groaned under my touches.
Fuck
. Reynolds had shot him before I arrived. No, when I arrived. Those weren't tree limbs I'd heard cracking in the storm.
"Asshole ruined my new coat," said Sam, his words slurred.
He reached back to clutch my arm, trying to raise himself, and I felt his weight dodging his control. Finally, he gave up trying. His core temperature had dropped, and I couldn't warm him with my wet arms and a wet dress in the snow, let alone staunch two wounds at once. Eventually he'd lose consciousness.
"Wish I'd met you on the street, Jules. That woulda been a day."
"Shut up and stop wasting energy." My voice had lost all composure and I was shaking. I needed to be his Gibraltar, his rock. But I couldn't pull out of my tailspin.
"Lady like you, rat like me."
"I love you, Sam, now please stop talking."
"Now you say it?" Sam's head slackened against my chest. I shushed him with a kiss to his cold lips, then rested my forehead to his.
Reynolds clapped, the cigarette drooping from his mouth. "Bravo. Very realistic. Under pressure, Miss Larson, you perform very well."
Penlights flashed in the forest behind him, a distant engine humming with my relief. James, finally. Sam heard the sound too, his face lifting in the car's direction.
"So what's in this for you," I asked Reynolds as I grasped Sam's hand, willing him to hold on a few minutes more.
Reynolds took a long drag on his cigarette and nodded. "Red ants." He knocked on my truck's back window, rousing Max for another explosion of barking. "They're small, but that stinging bite just pisses you off. You flick them away, and damn if they don't return and bite you again. Makes you want to kill them all. That's you, Miss Larson. You escaped once, twice, three times. And now you're just pissing me off. You and this damned dog." He held up his ripped pant leg. "Should have shot him instead wasting good drugs, but my wife heads up the SPCA. Ironic, don't you think?"
After twisting a toe on his cigarette, Reynolds shifted into that military-style tripod stance I'd seen Sam take, both hands holding the weapon dangling in front of him. He glanced over his shoulder at the car's skittering approach. "And look who's come to fetch his little princess."
A blue cop light illuminated the forest.
CHAPTER 41
Stone yanked me to my feet and Sam spilled out of my arms and hit the snowy ground with a grunt. Max barked so hard the glass on my truck seemed about to shatter.
"Like I told you on the phone, she's not going anywhere now." Reynolds aimed the gun at Stone. From forty feet away and dusted with snow, he looked skinny and harmless, though I assumed he'd created the safer distance to get a clean shot at Stone. "You both lied to me, said she hadn't a clue about Goliath." Reynolds laughed. "You thought you were so clever for stalling me, Miss Larson, when we were really waiting for the detective to join the party."
Stone stiffened. I had only a second to enjoy watching fear seep from his pores before my head got back to recalculating ways to save Sam from the hail of bullets about to encircle us. But with the toxic mix of hypothermia, shock, and complete terror, my mind was a blank. All I had was the truth.
"Stone kept the evidence for insurance," I said. "He's going to bring you down, just like he framed—" Stone shut me up with a jerk of my arm, electrifying my injured shoulder. I wailed and stumbled
Sam struggled to sit using his good arm and blanched as white at the bed of earth around him. I shook my head so he wouldn't try to help me. He needed to save his energies. My heart sank when his gaze locked on Stone's hip holster, an impossible feat in his condition or from his distance.
"She goes with me." Stone shoved me toward his car, and I remembered his hidden BUG between the seat and doorframe, the revolver he'd used to kill Burke. But he still held my wrist of my bad arm. I'd no chance in hell of reaching the weapon without him or Reynolds firing. "That was the deal, Reynolds."
"That was the old deal. Now we're renegotiating."
"Same girl, same deal. Don't fuck with me."
"Or you'll do what? You work for Goliath now."
"No, I don't. And you don't call the shots for this operation. But I know who does. He's just waiting for you to blow this op too." Stone stepped forward. I didn't bother warning him about losing toes before two bullets punctured the snow near the tips of his damn perfect shoes.