head wound. He was leaning over, as it was nearly beyond him to
straighten. What had happened to his gun? Oh God, Adam
couldn’t believe what he was seeing, would have given five years of
his life if he could have changed it, if he could even have moved, at
least tried to save her. But there was nothing he could do. He saw
an agent raise a rifle. “No,” he said, “don’t try it. He’s off at an angle.
Don’t take the chance of hitting her. Where are the firemen?”
Flames had caught the roof on fire now, licking out of the balcony
off Thomas’s bedroom. It wouldn’t be long now until the
flames ate the roof and sent it crashing into the house, until it was
too hot on the roof for her to stand there, barefoot.
He heard her then, speaking loudly, very clearly.
“It’s over,” Becca said to the young man not eight feet from her.
“Finally, it’s over. You lost, Mikhail, but the cost was too high. You
killed eight people, just because they were there.”
“Oh no, I killed many more than that,” he said, raising his head,
panting with the pain. “They didn’t count, any of them. I used
them, then of what possible use were they to me?”
“Why didn’t you stop when your father died in that car accident?”
He laughed, he actually laughed at her. “It wasn’t an accident,
you stupid bitch. I killed him. He wanted me to stop this, said
I’d already done enough, that this was just too much. He’d turned
soft, he’d become a coward. I killed him because he’d become a
weakling. He wasn’t worthy any longer. He betrayed my beloved
mother’s memory. Yes, I clouted him on the side of the head and
drove him in his car over a cliff.”
There wasn’t a sound from anyone standing below. Then, the
sound of sirens in the distance. The flames were licking up over the
edge of the roof now. She had to get out of there. Adam stood
there, impotent. Becca, please, please. Get the hell out of there.
Becca said, her voice still strong, still clear and loud, “It ends
here, Mikhail. Since I knew you’d try to escape back through that
roof trapdoor, you had to know I wouldn’t let you get away. It ends
here.”
“Yes,” he said. “It ends here. I killed the bastard who murdered
my mother–your beloved father. I’ve done what I promised to do.
And I took pleasure along the way, cleaning out the vermin that
had invaded my life.”
He was standing very still, this handsome young man she’d spoken
to in the gym in Riptide. He was slowly straightening now,
standing tall.
“My father isn’t dead, Mikhail. He’ll survive. You failed.”
“The roof is going to collapse beneath us, Rebecca. It’s getting
hotter. You’re barefoot. It’s got to be burning your feet now, isn’t
it?”
Fire trucks pulled up to the curb, men jumping out, going into
action. Becca heard a man yelling, “We’ve got a two-story residential
fully involved structure fire! Jesus, what’s going on here?”
“Oh shit, there are people standing on the roof! That woman has
a gun!”
“We can’t ladder the building, it’s too late. Get the life net!”
Becca heard them, felt her feet now, the heat burning them,
wondered if the roof would collapse under her. “We’re going
down, Mikhail,” she said. “Look, they’re bringing one of those
safety nets. We’ll jump.”
“No,” he said. “No.” Then he pulled the lighter out of his jacket
again and lit his sleeve. He rubbed it on his shirt, his pants, even
while she watched, so horrified she froze. Then he smiled at her,
nearly ablaze now, and ran at her, yelling, “Come away with your
boyfriend. Come, let’s fly together, Rebecca!”
She pulled the trigger, once, and still he came, a ball of flame
now, running toward her, nearly at her, his arms outstretched. She
fired again, then again and again, fired until the Coonan was empty.
He fell forward, nearly into her, but she jerked away just in time
and he rolled over and over, a flaming ball of fire, off the roof to the