edge of the pool. He had a gun, and he looked as if he would use it.
“What the hell happened to him? What the hell?”
Startled, not having seen the D.S.A agents until now, Ben stared at his
old enemy and said, “Same thing that’s going to happen to you, Sharp.
He did to himself what you’ll do to yourself sooner or later, though in
a different way.”
“What’re you talking about?” Sharp demanded.
Holding Rachael and trying to ease his body between her and Sharp, Ben
said, “He didn’t like the world the way he found it, so he set out to
make it conform to his own twisted expectations. But instead of making
a paradise for himself, he made a living hell. It’s what you’ll make
for yourself, given time.”
“Shit,” Anson Sharp said, “you’ve gone off the deep end, Shadway. Way
off the deep end.” To Verdad, he said, “Lieutenant, please put down
your revolver.”
Verdad said, “What? What’re you talking about?
I-” Sharp shot Verdad, and the detective was flung off the concrete into
the mud by the impact of the bullet.
Jerry Peake-a devoted reader of mysteries, given to dreams of legendary
achievement-had a habit of thinking in melodramatic terms. Watching
Eric Leben’s monstrously mutated body burning away to nothing in the
empty swimming pool, he was shocked, horrified, and frightened, but he
was also thinking at an unusually furious pace for him. First, he made
a mental list of the similarities between Eric Leben and Anson Sharp,
They loved power, thrived on it, they were cold-blooded and capable of
anything, they had a perverse taste for young girls… Then Jerry
listened to what Ben Shadway said about how a man could make his own
hell on earth, and he thought about that, too. Then he looked down at
the smoldering remnants of the mutant Leben, and it seemed to him that
he was at a crossroads between his own earthly paradise and hell, He
could cooperate with Sharp, let murder be done, and live with the guilt
forever, damned in this life as well as in the next, or he could resist
Sharp, retain his integrity and self-respect, and feel good about
himself no matter what happened to his career in the D.S.A. The choice
was his. Which did he want to be-the thing down there in the pool or a
man?
Sharp ordered Lieutenant Verdad to put down the gun, and Verdad began to
question the order, and Sharp shot him, just shot him, with no argument
or hesitation.
So Jerry Peake drew his own gun and shot Sharp. The slug hit the deputy
director in the shoulder.
Sharp seemed to have sensed the impending betrayal, because he had
started to turn toward Jerry even as Jerry shot him. He squeezed off a
round of his own, and Jerry took the bullet in the leg, though he fired
simultaneously.
As he fell, he had the enormous pleasure of seeing Anson Sharp’s head
explode.
Rachael stripped the jacket and shirt off Lieutenant Verdad and examined
the bullet wound in his shoulder.
“I’ll live,” he said. “It hurts like the devil, but I’ll live.”
In the distance, the mournful sound of sirens arose, drawing rapidly
nearer.
“That’ll be Reese’s doing,” Verdad said. “As soon as he got Gavis to
the hospital, he’ll have called the locals.”
“There really isn’t too much bleeding,” she said, relieved to be able to
confirm his own assessment of his condition.
“I told you,” Verdad said. “Heck, I can’t die. I intend to stay around
long enough to see my partner marry the pink lady.” Me laughed at her
puzzlement and said, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Leben. I’m not dut of my head.”
Peake was flat on his back on the concrete decking, his head raised
somewhat on the hard pillow of the pool coping.
With a wide strip of his own torn shirt, Ben had fashioned a tourniquet
for Peake’s leg. The only thing he could find to twist it with was the
barrel of Anson Sharp’s discarded, Silencerequipped pistol, which was
perfect for the job.
“I don’t think you really need a tourniquet,” he told Peake as the
sirens drew steadily nearer, gradually overwhelming the patter of the