15

When it became clear where Bolton was headed, Jack had been tempted to turn around and head home. No question about Bolton's first stop. But would he make a second?

The possibility bothered Jack, so he found a place near the woods where he had a view of Levy's street, fished a brand-new goody from the spare tire well, and made himself comfortable.

After a while his eyes wanted to close and he'd had to shake himself awake a couple of times. But the drowsiness fled when he saw a silver Miata pull up in front of the house.

Bolton, damn him.

Jack's plan had been to put a couple of degrees of separation between him and Bolton: Light his fuse, point him at Vecca, and let him deliver the payback for Gerhard and Christy. That done, Jack could sit back and watch from afar as the agency reeled him in and threw away the key.

But that wasn't going to be possible now.

Wait. Why not? Levy was almost as responsible as Vecca. Why not let him take a hit?

Because he wasn't alone in there. Bolton might very well kill everyone in the house.

Shit.

Jack was going to have to get his hands dirty. Just what he'd wanted to avoid.

He eased out the door and hurried toward Levy's house. When Jack caught up to Bolton—carrying that same old tire iron—he was halfway across the lawn, silhouetted in the light from the lamps flanking the front door. He stopped a dozen feet behind him.

"There you are! I've been looking all over for you!"

Bolton froze, then turned. Jack couldn't see his features, but knew Bolton could see his.

"You!" He started toward Jack at a limping run. "You ain't gonna sucker me this time, motherfu—!"

"Hey, now, wait!" Jack said, backpedaling. "That was all a big misunderstanding!"

He slowed enough to let Bolton get close, then speeded up as he took a swing.

"I'll show you a misunderstanding!" Bolton said as the iron cut through empty air.

Jack was off the curb now and backpedaling toward his car with Bolton in hot pursuit. He was glancing over his shoulder, making sure he was on course, when Bolton lunged forward for another swing. Jack felt the breeze from the tire iron, but no more. The move cost Bolton, though, twisting his knee and worsening his limp.

Just a little farther…

As Jack backed around the rear of his car, he pulled a Taser M-18. When Bolton reached the trunk area, he fired it. The darts flashed out and pierced the T-shirt and the skin beneath, sending fifty thousand volts into his central nervous system. The tire iron went flying as Bolton hit the pavement doing an epileptic variation on the worm. Jack released the trigger and he lay still.

He looked at Bolton, then at the Taser.

"Whoa."

First time he'd tried one. He tended to favor a blackjack or sap for this kind of work, but Abe was always going on about how unreliable they were—hit too hard and the joe never wakes up, or not hard enough and you've got to give him a second tap, which might put him in vegetable land as well. After all, the reason for a sap was to put someone down, not dead. So Abe had lent him this baby on a trial basis. Jack was sold. The Taser was a keeper.

He glanced up and down the empty street. No one about. He popped the trunk, then lifted Bolton and dumped him inside. One thing about this trunk: Plenty of room. Enough for three or four Boltons, easy. Maybe more. Could be why Vinnie Donuts liked Crown Vies.

After slipping into a pair of gloves, he grabbed his roll of duct tape and quickly fastened Bolton's wrists behind him. Then bound his ankles, then his knees—lots of tape. As he worked he envisioned this piece of crap drugging Christy, slitting her wrists, and watching her bleed to death, all after seducing her child—their child, for Christ sake.

No more community theater for Christy, no more listening to My Fair Lady…

He looked at this smear of human scum with a legacy of four corpses and a pregnant teenage daughter and sensed the darkness he kept bottled up breaking free. He felt his lips retracting, baring his teeth. He glanced over at the bloody tire iron lying in the gutter, temptingly near.

Don't lose it… don't lose it…

… yet.

He wrapped the tape extra tight, and as he worked, Bolton's eyes fluttered open. He gave Jack a dazed look, then tried to move. When he realized he couldn't, his eyes widened in shock, then blazed with anger.

"Pussy motherfucker! Can't even fight me straight up and fair!"

Jack tore a shori strip of tape off the roll.

"Fair? You mean as in meeting on a field of honor? This from a guy who shot two unarmed doctors in the back, water-tortured a detective, and murdered his own sister while she was unconscious. Fair? You gotta be kidding."

"In a fair fight my bloodline'd kick your bloodline's ass!"

Jack fought the driving urge to shove the tape down Bolton's windpipe. Instead he slapped it across his mouth.

"A fair fight presupposes I've got something to prove to you. Dream on."

Bolton's eyes blazed with wild hatred as he began kicking and thrashing. The Taser darts were still stuck in his chest. Jack reached down, grabbed the pistol, and gave him another dose.

Bolton began a different sort of thrashing.

16

Lying awake in bed, Aaron heard something that sounded like a car door slamming outside, then the roar of a big engine racing away. He got up and peeked out the front window.

Nothing moving out there. Could have been anybody.

He'd been jumpy lately. Well, why not? Bolton had killed again and might not be through. Who knew what he'd—

Aaron started as he noticed an arc of reflected light just beyond the corner of his front yard, behind the big junipers. It looked like the fender of a car. No one was supposed to be parked out there.

With his heart thumping he padded downstairs to his study where he grabbed his pair of mini-binoculars and focused ihem on the car. lie gasped as he recognized a Miata.

Bolton had a Miata.

Aaron stood paralyzed for a moment, then snatched up his phone and punched in 911.

17

Jack cruised the Thruway truck stop lot till he found what he was looking for: an idling eighteen-wheel rig parked facing the food court and between two others of its kind. He backed up to the space between it and its neighbor to the right, then opened his trunk and hauled Bolton out. He grabbed the coil of half-inch nylon cord he'd just picked up at a Home Depot along the way, then crawled under the refrigerated trailer, dragging the struggling Bolton behind him.

He'd gone on autopilot along the way, feeling nothing, almost as if he were watching himself from afar as he looped the cord around Bolton's taped legs, tying multiple knots on knots, then secured the other end to the cab's rear frame rail. All through the process Bolton twisted and thrashed, breath snorting through his nostrils as he made frightened squeals and moans behind the tape.

When Jack finished, he looked at him. Couldn't make out his features in the dark; all he saw was a wriggling, oblong shape making faint, muffled, panicky noises.

"Having a bad day, Jeremy?" he said, raising his voice above the sound of the engine as he patted him on a shoulder. "It's about to get worse."

More whining and thrashing.

"I want you to take this personally. I'm sending you off to your greater reward this way because I don't want you identified for a while, maybe not ever. I also don't want you to die too quickly. It won't take you near as long as it took Gerhard, but long enough."

He crawled out from under the trailer and stood listening: The noise from the idling cab drowned out Bolton.

Jack returned to his car and parked it halfway between the truck and the on-ramp to the Thruway. Then he took out a sheet with the phone numbers Russ had found for him.