Shaw stepped away.
Suit’s shoulders lowered, hands drooping at his sides. This was a man programmed never to beg. He was now resigned to death.
But Parker didn’t fire. The gun lowered.
She called to him, loudly because of the deafening gunshots, “Month and a half ago you killed someone.”
He tilted his head in cautious acknowledgment.
She continued, “Marty Harmon hired you to kill a truck driver. There was an accident on the Hawkins Road Bridge. A truck missed a turn. It went into a tributary near the Kenoah.”
Suit nodded slowly, thinking maybe that honesty might be a way to survive.
So, this was the man who had killed the driver of the radioactive waste truck.
Suit looked toward Shaw. Then back to the woman who held his life in her hands, unfailing justice in the form of an efficient, mass-produced Austrian pistol.
Parker was nodding. “The driver was in the water trying to get the truck out. You went in too, to kill him. Your skin, it started right around then.”
Suit’s eyes narrowed.
“You’ve got radiation poisoning. It’s advanced. There’s nothing you can do about it now.” She shrugged. “Except die. Slowly.”
He was looking at his hands, then to her.
Parker said, “Get out of here.” When he didn’t move, she fired a shot at his feet. He jumped back. She raged, “Go!”
He looked around uncertainly, then backed away. He turned and began to jog into the darkness.
Shaw joined Parker and she offered him the pistol—just as carefully as her daughter had done. She said, “I don’tlikeguns. That doesn’t mean I don’t know how to use them.”
92
No, it’s all right. It’s our time now. Little sooner than we’d planned is all.”
“What’re you thinking, Marty?” Marianne Keller’s voice, through the phone, was subdued as she took all this in.
Marty Harmon was in his Maserati Quattroporte, in a tawdry truck-stop parking lot, thirty miles west of Ferrington. Overhead lights, green and fluorescent, lit the lovely camel-tan interior of the fine vehicle. Quite the contrast to the surroundings.
“We’ll have to be smart. Two separate planes. I’m going now. Yours is booked for eleven tomorrow.”
“Morning?”
“Morning.”
“Marty...”
Marianne usually wore the supreme confidence of beauty born. Now, though, her world was shaky. Still, while her voice hinted at concern, it wore a blush of pleasure. She’d be thinking of good outcomes looming. For two years she’d wanted him to leave his wife and be with her, and if it took the bottled water cover-up falling apart to move things along, well, okay. As long as she was... protected.
Harmon understood this about her.
“We’re leaving from Granton Executive Airport, the private one. You know where?”
“Off Fifty-five north.”
“I’ve got you a Learjet. The number is... Can you write it down?”
“Go ahead.”