The Adder watched her, standing there, completely unaware of the hidden threat. Then the bullets came.

One – a miss.

Two – another miss.

And then three – the most perfect, wonderful shot he had ever seen. A lightning bolt from an angel. And suddenly Detective Felicia Santos was reeling. She arched backwards, landed hard on the pavement, and lay there with a stunned look in her pretty eyes.

The camera angle was bad, and the Adder had to zoom in to see the expression on her face. And that was when he discovered the God-awful truth of what had happened. She opened her eyes, and touched her chest . . .

The vest.

The goddam Kevlar vest.

‘NO!’ he screamed. ‘NOOOO!’

Shaking all over, uncontrollably, he took the disc from the tray and snapped it in half, slicing his hand as he did so. Then he stepped forward and kicked the cabinet. Hard. The entire thing swayed back and forth, as if it would tip over and come crashing down on the concrete.

The Adder could not have cared less.

His moment of pure, untainted beauty – stolen from him in an instant.

‘No,’ he said again, though softer this time. And now there were tears leaking from his eyes. Big salty drops rolling down his cheeks.

It was unfair.

So terribly unfair.

Soon his head began to pound, to throb. It was as if there was a worm inside his skull, eating away at his brain tissue. And then the sounds came back, flooding him, deluging him, drowning him in great, awesome waves.

The laughter.

Then the snapping and cracking.

And then the silence. That horrible, horrible silence.

With unsteady hands, the Adder scrambled for his iPod. Jammed in the headphones. Hit Play. And listened to the white noise. Turned it up to full volume.

But this time, it did little good.

The sounds of the outside world did not matter now, for they were overpowered by the ones that echoed inside his head. All he could hear was the loud cracking sounds of ice and that coldness washing all over him again.

Relax, he told himself. You have to relax.

But it did little good.

He was unravelling.

Fifty-Eight

By the time Striker made it to Burnaby General Hospital, his heart was racing and his mood was darkening quicker than the five o’clock skyline. No matter how many times he tried to erase the memory of the MyShrine taunt the Adder had left him, the image remained.

He parked the undercover cruiser out front in the Police Only parking, climbed out, and walked in through the Emergency Room front doors. Inside, the hospital was packed. A line of weary-looking patients snaked along the hall, and another group lined up all the way to the entrance doors. It was busy, but still nowhere near the chaos that ruled at St Paul’s.

Striker made his way down the hall to a patient room that consisted of six beds, separated only by hanging drapes. Felicia was in the sixth one. Striker was surprised to see her already in the process of tightening her suit belt, and wincing from the pressure. She looked up and spotted him. A look of relief fell across her face, and she smiled.

‘Hey, Tiger.’

Striker walked over and helped her with her coat. ‘You’re done?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah. Fast Track – it pays to be the police.’

‘And what did they find?’

‘The body of a twenty-year-old woman,’ she said with a grin.

‘Hell, I can find one of those.’

She smiled at his comment and when she did Striker felt something tug at his heart strings. At thirty-two years of age, Felicia was almost ten years his junior. It was not a lot of time, but enough to feel the difference. Sometimes she seemed generations away from him. And then, at times like these, time didn’t even exist.

‘How are you?’ he asked, the humour all gone from his voice. ‘Really, Feleesh.’

She shrugged carefully. ‘Some of my ribs are bruised, especially around my breastbone, but nothing got broken. Not even a hairline fracture. Trauma plate took the full brunt of it. I think I’ll have the thing framed and put on the wall . . . I got lucky this time.’

‘Not as lucky as me,’ he replied.

She reached out and touched his face. Striker grabbed her around the waist and gently pulled her close and gave her a long soft hug. He buried his face in her hair. Breathed in. Smelled that familiar vanilla scent.

She felt so, so good. He never wanted to let go.

Felicia pushed him back softly. ‘Jacob, people are looking.’

‘Let them look,’ he said. ‘Hell, let’s give them a show.’

She laughed at that, then winced. ‘My ribs.’

When he finally pulled back from her, her cheeks were slightly red from blushing and she stood there looking awkward. Striker wanted to kiss her. Right there in the hospital.

But something else broke into his mind. He turned his eyes from Felicia to the rest of the unit and saw that each and every bed was already filled with someone he didn’t recognize. He frowned.

‘Where the hell is Dr Ostermann?’

Felicia frowned. ‘The good doctor checked himself out as quickly as he could. I told him to wait here for us, that we would need a written statement from him and all that, but he kept saying he was worried about his staff – it seemed like a line to me.’

‘A convenient one.’

‘Either way, he took off outta here once he was done. When the nurse was checking me over. He left.’

Striker didn’t like it. Honest men didn’t run. And he didn’t buy the fact that Ostermann was worried about his staff. For one, he didn’t seem like that kind of boss. For two, they’d already told him everyone was fine. He was about to comment on it when his cell went off. He looked down at the screen and saw the name Jim Banner displayed. He picked up.

‘What you got for me, Noodles?’

‘How’s Felicia?’ he asked.

‘She’s okay, she’s right here with me.’

Noodles let out a relieved sound, then got right down to business. ‘I managed to pull another print off the fridge in unit 305,’ he said. ‘A palm print.’

‘It comes back to Mercury, right?’

‘Actually, it comes back to no one.’

This startled Striker. Mercury was a soldier. His prints were on file. ‘You mean the print wasn’t good enough?’ he asked.

‘No, I mean the print doesn’t belong to Billy Mercury.’

Striker felt his mood darken a little further. ‘Anything else?’ he asked.

‘That’s it.’

‘Then I’ll get back to you later.’

Striker hung up the phone and relayed the information to Felicia. She didn’t seem concerned one way or the other. ‘A thousand people might have been in that suite,’ she said. ‘We never knew for sure if the print belonged to the suspect. Obviously, it doesn’t.’

Striker said nothing; he wasn’t so sure. He stood there, brooding, and thought of everything from the bad print to the way Ostermann had run out of the hospital. And the more he thought about it, the angrier he got. After a long moment, he met Felicia’s stare again.

‘You done here?’ he asked.

‘I was twenty minutes ago.’

‘Good, then let’s go find Dr Ostermann . . . The man has a lot of explaining to do.’

The moment they were back in the cruiser, Striker started the engine and Felicia turned on the heater. The sun was still out, but just barely. It was half-past five, and the oncoming winter evening was invading everything in its path.

While the car warmed up, Striker brought Felicia up to speed on everything that had happened while she was being escorted to the hospital – everything from Laroche’s accusations of Officer-Created Jeopardy to the conflicting evidence he’d found inside Billy Mercury’s apartment. When he was done with the debrief, his mind felt more settled. More focused.