DiRisio's first shot took Galway in the arm, the impact a hammer blow, spinning him. The second bullet punched his chest. A third and fourth rode the echo of the second.

Jason didn't wait to see him fall. He barreled into Scarface, using his momentum as a weapon. The mercenary started to twist, but Jason threw a knee, and the connection bent his opponent over just as Jason jackhammered his bound hands up as hard as he could. He felt something snap in the mercenary's neck, saw the muscles around his eyes go limp.

Then everything exploded. The world fell to fragments, sight and sound out of sync. Snippets of scenes flickered past his eyes.

Cruz launching herself off the couch toward him.

Galway's face framed in a flash of sodium white, teeth clenched and chest blooming red as he fired a wild dying shot.

The bullet cracking drywall like the finger of an invisible giant.

DiRisio turning with a funhouse grin, weapon raised, sniper eyes.

Scarface falling, drooping like a child's doll, his weight and mass a lead blanket.

Kent rising behind the desk. Shirt impeccably white.

The dark hole of the SIG, a chasm he could lose himself in.

Billy squirming on the couch.

Jason's hands fumbling for the gun Scarface held, the grip slick, his hands slow, so slow, he could see the pistol dropping, knew that he wouldn't make it.

DiRisio's finger tightening on the trigger.

A blur of pale skin and brown hair connecting with DiRisio's arm. Oh God. Billy, trying to help.

Fire jerking sideways.

DiRisio's snarling growl, mouth wide and feral. Left hand reaching for Billy's neck.

Down, down, Scarface's gun falling, rebounding off the polished hardwood as Jason dove for it.

DiRisio plucking Billy off the couch and tossing him like a pillow. All fifty pounds of the boy flying, his hands spinning wild pinwheels as he tumbled through the air.

Billy's head connecting with the wooden back of a chair.

His body falling.

No.

No.

No!

With a final shove, Jason threw Scarface away from him and stretched for the gun with his bound hands. The grip was sticky. He jerked it upwards, realizing even as he did that he was too late, that DiRisio had him. He stared at the man who had killed his brother, wanting his last emotion to be hate, waiting for death even as he tried to fight. Wondering if he would hear the bullet.

An explosion.

DiRisio spun sideways. His left arm flew to his shoulder. The SIG-Sauer slipped from his right in slow motion. He staggered, and another blast tore a hole in the wall where his chest had been. With a growl he gripped the edge of the doorway and threw himself out of the room.

Not understanding, Jason turned.

Elena Cruz stood perfectly straight, arms together in front of her. A ribbon of smoke drifted from the singed corner of her clutch purse.

CHAPTER 47

His first thought was that he'd never loved someone so much as he loved her in that moment.

His second thought was for Billy.

"Watch him!" Jason gestured at Adam Kent, who stood stunned and blinking behind his boxy desk. Cruz whirled, and he raised his hands high.

Jason scrambled across the floor, stepping over Galway's ruined corpse, the cop's vacant eyes staring at the ceiling. He found Washington already cradling Billy, hands stroking his hair. The old man's face was a mask of pain, and as Jason forced himself to look down, his mind was full of horrors, a cracked skull, the boy's face cyanotic blue. But though his eyes were closed, Billy's breathing seemed steady.

"He's okay," Washington rasped without looking up. "Just a cut, maybe a concussion. I don't know." His hands shook on the boy's pale shoulders.

Jason rose, the gun in his bound hands. Fire pumped in his veins. DiRisio. This time he would pay.

Kent's eyes grew wide as Jason stalked to the desk. "Mr. Palmer, I assure you, I wouldn't have hurt-"

Jason silenced him by raising the gun. "Scissors."

For a moment Kent just stared, but then his mind caught up. "Sure," he said, and reached for the desk drawer.

"Slowly."

The millionaire gently slid open a drawer and removed a pair of black handled scissors. Jason held his arms out, the gun level at Kent's belly. "Cut the zip-tie."

Kent glanced at him, at Cruz with her gun steady on his head. With exaggerated care, he slid one blade of the scissors under the tie and clamped down until the plastic broke.

"Now hers." He covered Kent while the man freed Cruz.

"Galway?" She asked, her voice cracking.

Jason shook his head, and her eyes narrowed. He stared at her for a moment, probably only a second, but it felt much longer. He was at once exhausted and jittery, every cell humming, and he let it all show in his eyes. All the pain and rage, his retinas playing a movie of Billy flying through the air. Looked at her and let her know what he was going to do.

Gave her a chance to stop him.

When she didn't, he nodded and turned for the door. Behind him he heard Cruz ordering Kent to sit down. Jason's fingers tingling with energy and the return of circulation. He paused for a moment and looked back at the scene: the slow spread of crimson from Galway's body, Scarface unmoving in front of the desk, Cruz with Kent locked dead to rights. And on the floor, Washington holding Billy, and crying.

He knew that somewhere out there, DiRisio waited. A guy like that, he wouldn't quit, not now, not over a shoulder wound. And remembering how fast he moved, the joy he took in killing, Jason wasn't sure he was a match for the man, even now.

It was ironic. Kent hadn't been wrong about him. For months, he'd half-chased death. Flirted with it. Teased it. Now that he had reasons to live, he had to gamble his life. He owed it to them. To Washington, a man of peace dragged into violence. To Ronald, killed or wounded trying to protect a boy that wasn't his. To Galway, who had turned out to be a cop after all. To Michael, who had dared dream of a better world. And to Billy, the only true innocent in the whole mess.

With the weapon in front of him, Jason stepped out the door, a soldier hunting an evil spirit in a cheap suit.

Cruz knew what Jason planned to do. In that long moment he'd stared at her, he'd told her as clearly as if he'd said the words. With that look he'd asked her permission to kill Anthony DiRisio, and she'd given it.

She supposed as a cop she ought to feel bad, but couldn't find it in herself.

"Put your hands on the desk." She cracked her voice like a whip, and Kent complied quickly. It made her sick to look at him, his former rich man's arrogance replaced by a pasty, nauseous expression. His eyes darted from body to body, the reality of costs right in front of him, no longer items on a spreadsheet. "I didn't know it would be like this," he said, his voice thin.

"Shut up," she said. "Don't move. I don't care if you're just trying to scratch your nose. Your hands leave that desk for a second, I'll blow you away." The words felt silly, something from an action movie, but they had the intended effect. Kent went rigid as a statue, palms flat and fingers spread.

Eyes still on him and gun up, she took four cautious steps back, feeling behind her with her feet to make sure she didn't trip. When she reached Galway's body, she stepped over him so that she could look down without letting Kent out of her peripheral vision.

Her partner lay on his back. He'd been hit at least three times, two in the chest, and he lay in a spreading lake of blood. His mouth and eyes were open, and his service weapon lay a foot from his hand.

An ache rippled through her. Goddammit, Tom. A day late and a dollar short, again. She thought of his son, Aidan, seventeen years old and sullen, but with his father's bright eyes and sharp mind. He would go to college, get a job, marry, raise kids of his own, but he would never be able to say he knew his father. A man who had made mistakes and taken the easy path. Who had been, at times, a bad man, and at other times a hero. Who could only be defined, like everything else, in shades of gray.