“What’s wrong here?” Luther asked, heading toward the guy as thunder
tolled across the lowering sky and the palms in the south planter
thrashed against a backdrop of black clouds.
Jack started to follow Luther before he saw the suit jacket billow out
behind the blond, flapping like bat wings. Except the coat had been
buttoned a moment ago. Double-breasted, buttoned twice.
The angry man faced away from them still, shoulders hunched, head
lowered.
Because of the loose and billowing fabric of his suit, he seemed less
than human, like a hunchbacked troll. The guy began to turn, and Jack
would not have been surprised to see the deformed muzzle of a beast,
but it was the same tan and cleanshaven face as before.
Why had the son of a bitch unbuttoned the coat unless there was
something under it that he needed, and what might an irrational and
angry man need that he kept under his jacket, his loose-fitting suit
jacket, his roomy goddamned jacket?
Jack called a warning to Luther.
But Luther sensed trouble too. His right hand moved toward the gun
holstered on his hip.
The perp had the advantage because he was the initiator. No one knew
violence was at hand until he unleashed it, so he swung all the way
around to face them, holding a weapon in both hands, before Luther and
Jack had even touched their revolvers.
Automatic gunfire hammered the day. Bullets pounded Luther’s chest,
knocked the big man off his feet, hurled him backward, and Hassam
Arkadian spun from the impact of one-two-three hits, went down hard,
screaming in agony.
Jack threw himself against the glass door to the office. He almost
made it to cover before taking a hit to the left leg. He felt as if
he’d been clubbed across the thigh with a tire iron, but it was a
bullet, not a blow.
He dropped facedown on the office floor. The door swung shut behind
him, gunfire shattered it, and gummy chunks of tempered glass cascaded
across his back.
Hot pain boiled sweat from him.
A radio was playing. Golden oldies. Dionne Warwick. Singing about
the world needing love, sweet love.
Outside, Arkadian was still screaming, but there wasn’t a sound from
Luther Bryson.
Luther was dead. Jack couldn’t think about that. Dead. Didn’t dare
think about it. Dead. Wouldn’t think about it.
The chatter of more gunfire.
Someone else screamed. Probably the attendant at the Lexus. It wasn’t
a lasting scream. Brief, quickly choked off.
Outside, Arkadian wasn’t screaming anymore, either. He was sobbing and
calling for Jesus.
Hard, chill wind made the plate-glass windows vibrate. It hooted
through the shattered door.
The gunman would be coming.
CHAPTER TWO.
Jack was stunned at the quantity of his own blood on the vinyl-tile
floor around him. Nausea squirmed through him, and greasy sweat
streamed down his face. He couldn’t take his eyes off the spreading
stain that darkened his pants.
He had never been shot before. The pain was terrible but not as bad as
he would have expected. Worse than the pain was the sense of violation
and vulnerability, a terrible frantic awareness of the true fragility
of the human body.
He might not be able to hold on to consciousness for long. A hungry
darkness was already eating away at the edges of his vision.
He probably couldn’t put much weight on his left leg, and he didn’t
have time to pull himself up on his right alone, not while in such an
exposed position.
Shedding broken glass as a bright-scaled snake might shed an old skin,
unavoidably leaving a trail of blood, he crawled fast on his belly
alongside the L-shaped work counter behind which Arkadian kept the cash
register.
The gunman would be coming.
From the sound the weapon made and the brief glimpse he’d gotten of it,
Jack figured it was a submachine gun–maybe a Micro Uzi. The Micro was
less than ten inches long with the wire stock folded forward but a lot
heavier than a pistol, weighing about two kilos if it had a single
magazine, heavier if it featured two magazines welded at right angles
to give it a forty-round capacity. It would be like carrying a