“I didden… nooooo.”

She started to slip from her perch, but Twilly hauled her up roughly by her arm.

“The prosecutor lost her case,” he said, “and took her own freaking loser life. It’s the money shot. Get it? Bang. Clean shot to the temple and another big chunk of dough goes into my bank account -thanks to your dramatic, tragic, movie ending.

“Plus, Yuki, it is personal. I’ve really come to hate you.”

“What time is it?” Yuki asked, blinking up at the starburst pattern that was somehow Twilly’s face.

Chapter 98

I WAS FRANTIC.

The audio had been coming in loud and clear from the transmitter in Yuki’s wristwatch, but now we’d lost her! We’d gone out of range! I grabbed Conklin’s arm, stopped him in the path that had petered out onto a small clearing before snaking out in three directions.

“I’ve lost the transmission!”

“Hold it,” Conklin said into his mic to the SWAT team that was moving through the woods in a grid formation.

And then the static cleared. I couldn’t hear Yuki, but Twilly’s voice was tinny and clear.

“See, when I was thinking about this earlier,” Twilly was saying, “I thought I could get you to spread your wings and fly off this cliff. But now I’m thinking, you’re going to shoot yourself, Yuki.”

Yuki’s scream was high-pitched. Wordless.

Twilly was threatening to kill her! Why didn’t Yuki use her gun?

“Up there. Top of the ridge,” I shouted to Conklin.

We were at least two hundred yards away from the summit. Two hundred yards! It no longer mattered if he heard us. I ran.

Brambles grabbed out at me, branches snapped in my face. I stumbled on a root, grabbed out and hugged a tree. My lungs burned as I ran. I saw their forms between the tree trunks, silhouetted against the sky. But Twilly was so close to Yuki, I couldn’t get a clean shot.

I yelled out, “Twilly! Stand away from her now.”

There was the crack of gunshot.

OH, GOD, NO! YUKI!

Birds broke from the trees and flew up like scattershot as the report echoed over the hillside. Eight of us boiled out of the woods into the clearing at the ridgeline. That’s where I found Yuki, on her knees, forehead touching the ground.

The gun was still in her hand.

I got down on the ground and shook her shoulders.

“Yuki! Yuki! Speak to me! Please.”

Chapter 99

TWILLY HELD HIS HANDS in the air. He said, “Thank God you showed up, Sergeant. I was trying to stop her, but your friend was determined to kill herself.”

I pulled Yuki into my arms. The smell of gunpowder was in the air, but there was no blood, no wound. Her shot had gone wild.

“Yuki. I’m here, honey, I’m here.”

She moaned, sounded and looked dopey. There was no liquor on her breath. Had she been drugged?

“What’s wrong with her?” I shouted at Twilly. “What did you do to her?”

“Not a thing,” Twilly said. “This is how I found her.”

“You’re under arrest, scumbag,” Conklin said. “Hands behind your back.”

“What are the charges, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“How do you like attempted murder for starters?”

“You’ve got to be kidding. I didn’t touch her.”

“Yuki was wired, buddy. You teed her up for a dive off this cliff. We’ve got it all.”

Conklin squeezed the bracelets tight enough to make Twilly yelp. I called for a medevac, sat with my arms around Yuki as we waited for the chopper to arrive.

“Lindsay?” Yuki asked me. “I got it… on my watch… didn’t I?”

“You sure did, honey,” I said, hugging my friend, so very grateful that she was alive.

While I held her, another part of my mind was turning it all over. We had Twilly in custody for the attempt on Yuki’s life, but the reason we’d tailed him was because of what he’d hinted to Yuki this morning: that he’d killed Michael Campion.

What he’d told Yuki in the last ten minutes contradicted that.

Conklin stooped beside us, said, “So this was all a trap? He set Yuki up to create an ending for his book?”

“That’s what that psycho said.”

And he’d almost done it. Now the ending was him. His arrest, his trial, and, we could always hope, his conviction.

Yuki tried to speak, but ragged sounds came from her throat.

She was struggling to breathe.

“What did he give you, Yuki? Do you know what drug?”

“Water,” she said.

“The medics will give you water in a minute, honey.”

Yuki’s head was in my lap when the chopper’s arrival sounded overhead.

I looked down to shield my eyes – and saw a glint in the path. I shouted over the racket.

“Twilly drugged the water. Is that what you mean, Yuki? He put it in the water?”

Yuki nodded. Moments later Conklin had bagged the evidence, two plastic water bottles, and Yuki was in a carry-lift up to the chopper’s belly.

Part Five. BURNING DESIRE

Chapter 100

HAWK AND PIDGE left the car around the corner from the huge Victorian house in Pacific Heights, the biggest in a neighborhood of impressive, multi-multimillion-dollar homes, all with stunning views of the bay.

Their target house was imposing and yet inviting, so American it was iconic – and at the same time, completely out of reach for everyone but the very wealthy.

The two young men looked up at the leaded windows, the cupolas, and the old trees banked around the house, separating it from the servant quarters over the garage and the neighbors on either side of the yard. They had studied the floor plans on the real estate brokers’ Web site and knew every corner of every floor. They were prepared, high on anticipation, and still cautious.

This was going to be their best kill and their last. They would make some memories tonight, leave their calling card, and fade out, blend back into their lives. But this night would never be forgotten. There would be headlines for weeks, movies, several of them. In fact, they were sure people would still be talking about this crime of all crimes into the next century.

“Do I look okay?” Pidge asked.

Hawk turned Pidge’s collar up, surveyed his friend’s outfit down to the shoes.

“You rock, buddy. You absolutely rock.”

“You too, man,” Pidge said.

They locked arms in the Roman forearm handshake, like Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd in Ben-Hur.

“Ubi fumus,” said Hawk.

“Ibi ignis,” Pidge answered.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Pidge twisted the gold foil tight around the bottle of Cointreau, and then the two boys advanced side by side up the long stone walkway toward the front porch. There was a card taped to a glass panel on the front door. “To the members of the Press: Please, leave us alone.”

Hawk rang the bell.

Bing-bong.

He could see the gray-haired man through the small-paned living room windows, followed his silhouette as the famous figure walked through the house, turning on the lights in each room, making his way to the front door.

And then the door opened.

“Are you the boys who called?” Connor Campion asked.

“Yes, sir,” Pidge said.

“And what are your names?”

“Why don’t you call me Pidge for now, and he’s Hawk. We have to be careful. What we know could get us killed.”

“You’ve got to trust us,” Hawk said. “We were friends of Michael’s, and we have some information. Like I said on the phone. We can’t keep quiet any longer.”

Connor Campion looked the two boys up and down, decided either they were full of crap or maybe, just maybe, they’d tell him something he needed to know. They’d want money, of course.