Pushing it open, stepping over the threshold and then out into a wet and chilly freedom. The rain was coming down in cold, big drops, the ground beneath them slick and filled with mud holes, forcing them to tread with caution. Still, they jogged and didn’t stop until they were at the van. Jonathan’s hands were shaking as he pulled out the keys.

Decker opened the driver’s door. “Go find a phone booth and call up the State Police. Then call up NYPD and ask for Detective Mick Novack from the two-eight. Don’t tell him any details, just to get his butt out here. Don’t come back here. The less you’re involved, the better.”

“You’re not coming with me?”

“I can’t leave him alone.”

Jonathan stared at him. “You can’t be serious. Didn’t you just tell me this wasn’t worth getting killed for?”

“I don’t intend on getting killed-”

“You’re relying on Donatti for protection?”

“If I don’t go back, Jonathan, your brother-in-law is dead!”

Jonathan looked away. “My wife’s obligation may be toward her brother. My obligation is with my brother. You’ve got a wife and children. You’ve got to leave.”

“I can’t do that.”

Jonathan regarded him with tears in his eyes. “And how do I comfort Rina at the shiva?” He hugged him tightly. “You don’t know what’s going on. He could be setting you up.”

“Perfectly true. But if I don’t return, he’ll think I froze. I can’t let that maniac have that kind of superiority over me.”

“You’re crazy!”

“Then you should be concerned. Insanity is genetic.” He patted the driver’s seat. “In.”

Jonathan paused, then climbed into a damp, cold seat. Though clammy, it was still better than squatting, taut with terror. He regarded his brother. “I still have the gun you gave me.”

“I have protection, so you keep it.” Decker shut the van’s door. “With God’s help, you won’t need it. Go!”

Jonathan placed the key into the ignition. It coughed, it sputtered, it choked, but eventually the pistons kicked in. The motor was breathing, albeit asthmatically.

“Drive carefully,” Decker cautioned.

“You be careful,” Jonathan cautioned back.

When the taillights were dots in the distance, Decker started a gentle jog back toward the barn, gun in hand.

Armed and dangerous, he was a force with which to be reckoned.

35

The barren night reminded Decker of funerals, specifically of cops murdered while doing the job. Those left behind-the grieving parents, the prostrate spouses, and the bewildered children-had a sameness to their wretched faces like the sameness to the color black. In Judaism, Torah is light and light is God. Hell wasn’t fire and brimstone and devils and torture. Hell was an abyss without sensation, without end.

Slashes of rain slapped Decker’s face. Without the protection of the plastic bags, his shoes and socks had become soaked, but that was of little consequence. There were other things on his mind-Chaim… Donatti… Merrin… Rina and the children. As he neared the back door, he felt adrenaline kick in, his senses heighten.

Opening the door a fraction of an inch. Playing mental games to ward off that terrifying fear of a gun’s bore suddenly popping into his face. Only his heartbeat and breathing for company.

A few more inches, then Decker made the commitment. He slipped inside the warehouse and took refuge, hiding behind a stack of three-foot square boxes. Once again, surrounded by phantasmagoric nothingness: by violence lurking behind an eerie stillness. His inhalations were deep. He was sweating profusely, and salt bathed his eyes. He wiped them with the back of his gloves, still wet from rain. He peeked over the edge of the cardboard stack and peered through the Walther’s scope, but saw only aisle after aisle of cartons and boxes. Nowhere could he spy Donatti or the platform on which they had been squatting. With no specific landmarks, he was disoriented. He only knew that he was in the rear of the warehouse.

With nothing to go on, he figured he might as well go for the action and head toward the lit room in front. Hopefully, Donatti-if he did spot him-would look before he shot.

Provided he wasn’t after Decker.

Jonathan’s words: He could be setting you up.

Donatti had had ample opportunity to pop him, and had yet to exercise the option. But Chris was a pro and picked his scenery like a stage director choosing his set designs. The opportunity had never been better: a headfirst, out-of-town cop trying to rescue his brother-in-law, getting shot in the cross fire.

Again he scoped the place through the infrared lens, scanning the aisles for anything in motion.

Everything appeared inert.

He plotted a path, one that had lots of big cartons and crates to hide behind with plenty of escape routes. Of course, if he could hide behind walls of cardboard, so could a sniper. But maybe they were too busy guarding the door and watching their own asses to worry about an itinerant cop.

He inched out from his current position and gave a last-minute check to his surroundings. As quickly and quietly as his shoes would allow-he had to tiptoe because his sneakers squeaked-he started toward the other side of the warehouse.

First attempt, he hotfooted it about fifty feet before taking shelter behind a pallet.

Second try, he slithered out another hundred feet, then crouched behind a forklift to reevaluate.

Third time, he found a niche in back of a six-foot-high pallet.

His face was hot and wet, and large drops of sweat fell off his nose. His armpits were soaked; his clothes smelled rancid. His breathing was fast and shallow. His rib cage hurt from tension and his oxygen-starved inhalations.

A piece of concrete whizzed by his ear, landing on the ground and breaking into little tippy-tappy noises. Decker whipped around but saw nothing.

Donatti.

But where had it come from?

Decker sucked up oxygen from the frigid air and tried to get a fix on the direction of the projectile. He zigzagged in and out of merchandise, until another stone whizzed by his head.

He veered to the left, then scoped out the new area.

He still didn’t see any platform or staircase.

Darting from aisle to aisle, from box to box and carton to carton. He paused a moment, leaning against a pallet marked COMPUTER DESK AND HUTCH. FRAGILE. Sweat was cleaning out his system. The adrenaline rush was subsiding, fatigue taking its place.

Catching his breath…

Closing his eyes…

Just a moment…

His hand dropping to his side…

The barrel of the gun pointing to the ground…

Just a few more moments.

His eyes snapped open when he heard the voice.

“Freeze, motherfucker!”

Freeze, Decker thought.

Hit men don’t give warning.

But cops say “freeze.”

And good cops usually don’t say “freeze, motherfucker” without provocation. So this was probably a cop and not a nice one.

All this clicked inside Decker’s brain within a split second of decision-making. He dropped and rolled, while shooting in the direction of the voice, the semiautomatic spitting out muzzled fire because of the silencer-pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft. He scrambled to his feet, but remained stooped behind a crate, his lungs stinging as he panted, his gasping so loud it almost drowned out the moans. Slowly, he rose, but his shakiness forced him to lean against a wooden beam. Unsteady with pinpricks of starlight dancing in his brain, he tried to equalize his balance.

The moaning had stopped.

Decker peeked out.

Of sizable girth, the man had fallen with his head back, one thick arm across a padded chest, the other arm extended open and lying over the concrete. The torso had twisted so it was resting on the hip, the stomach spilling onto the floor. The legs were crossed over one another. The face was hard to make out, but the build certainly could have been Merrin’s.