“I have no choice in what I do. You can’t blame me for existing. I’m fulfilling a purpose.”

  “Whose purpose?”

  She cocked her hip and shifted her weight. “Do you really want to go there?”

  All around them, the remaining officers crept up, drew closer. They spoke in hushed whispers and subtle hand gestures, a practiced language known only to them.

  She eyed them warily. “Step inside with me, Walter. Maybe we should speak in private.”

  Before he could respond, she turned and crossed the human bridge back over the salt and disappeared through the shattered club’s door.

  Walter drew in a deep breath and watched her go, watched her walk away from him as he had so many other times in his life. He willed his shattered body to work, to move.

  Are you sure? Sealey had said.

  He was.

  Walter squeezed the handle of his cane, heard a soft click, and crossed the intersection to the club, the weight of his thick bulletproof vest making the movement all the more awkward.

  Chapter

  90

  There had been a mirror on the wall behind the cash register. It was shattered now. The glass crunched under Walter’s feet as he stepped through the entrance. The frame still hung there, several shards still clinging to the cardboard backing, but most on the floor. The remains of the club’s phone were on the floor, too—an old wired landline, yanked from the wall and crushed.

  She stood deeper in the hallway, held by the shadows, watching him move with pity. “Oh, Walter. What the years have done to you. The real enemy here is time.”

  Not just time, Walter thought. For one brief moment, he felt her hand on his chest again in that alley all those years ago, the mark she left behind.

  Walter looked beyond her, toward the quiet dance floor and seating areas off to the sides. Several people were still back there, at least three police officers, too. Probably whatever was left of the bomb squad. “I want them all out. Let them go.”

  “I’m not stopping them.”

  Walter met the eyes of one of the officers. “Get everyone out. Now.”

  There were bodies, too. Walter couldn’t tell how many. Several were missing fingers; others had been drained like Rigby and so many others Walter had found in this woman’s wake.

  As the police officers rushed the remaining people outside, Amy followed Walter’s eyes and almost looked embarrassed. “I had to, Walter. I needed the strength. I only took a few of them. No more than I had to. I’m glad you’re here.”

  “Goddamnit, Amy…”

  “Amy,” she repeated. “You and all your names.”

  She looked down at her feet as the last of the clubgoers ran by them for the door. Outside, officers hurried everyone onto the buses, warily watching the door.

  In a voice so low no one else could hear but her, Walter asked the question that had nagged him for as long as he could remember. “What’s your real name?”

  She seemed to consider this, and for a moment, Walter thought she’d feed him some other bogus name rather than answer, but in a voice equally low, she told him, “Isabella.”

  Isabella.

  When they were alone, she said, “I’m so lonely, Walter. Aside from you, I have no constant in my life. I’ve gone months without speaking. Years, even. When I learned you were here, in Detroit again…I couldn’t resist.”

  Walter remained still.

  She sniffed the air again, scenting the death emanating from his pores. “But oh, my poor Walter.”

  Several of the news crews had repositioned in order to get direct shots into the club. The remaining police officers had gotten bold, too, drawing close. All these eyes watching them.

  He’d given them enough.

  There was a red velvet curtain on a rod over the destroyed door. He tugged it closed and sealed them all out.

  When he turned back to her, much of his weight on the cane, she said, “You might be the only one who’s ever understood me.”

  Walter had denied it. His entire life, denied it. He didn’t want to understand her. Didn’t want to care for her. He didn’t want to love her. But he couldn’t switch off those things any more than he could will himself to no longer breathe or taste. He’d never married or found in another what he felt for her. She’d given him life even as her touch stole it away. She gave him purpose. She’d occupied his every waking thought since the first moment he laid eyes on her all those years ago. Was that love? Was that understanding? At the very least it was a bond. An unbreakable bond linking them together. She completed him as much as he completed her, and without the other there was nothing. He couldn’t exist without her. The thought of that was unbearable. He knew how foolish that all sounded, but knowing didn’t make it any less true. Love was never meant to be understood.

  From somewhere in the distance, the steady chop, chop, chop of multiple helicopters drew near.

  Backup arriving.

  There would be armored vehicles. Large weapons. Possibly soldiers. The feds knew they were here, and given the chance, they’d take her someplace, cage her, study her. Try to make sense of something that shouldn’t exist. That had been Sealey’s original mission, and with him out, that meant someone else was in charge. That someone else was coming.

  Walter didn’t have much time.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw her reflection in what was left of the mirror. This hideous thing for which there were no words. In the image, a clump of hair fell from her head, the roots moist with glistening black blood. It landed at her feet and joined a fingernail and two teeth on the carpet. If Golston were still alive, Walter imagined those things would quickly find their way into jars. If she were alone, she might scoop them up and hide them.

  But it was only them now.

  He turned away and tried to wipe the terrible image from his mind. He didn’t dare look down at the carpet, because he knew those things would be there. He didn’t want to think of her that way. He understood why she always smashed the mirrors, why there was always a trail of broken mirrors behind her.

  Walter looked back at her, standing in the shadows. This beautiful woman, with flowing brown hair and gray eyes deeper than the darkest night, her flawless skin and body sculpted to perfection.

  His Amy.

  His Iele.

  Isabella.

  This was how he wanted to remember her.

  Not the thing in the mirror.

  Never the mirror.

  It had been some time since Walter had been willing to look into a mirror, either. She was studying him, too, and he didn’t want her to.

  She walked up to him slowly and pressed her palms against the thick vest on his chest. “You are so broken. Let me show you something?”

  She raised a finger to his temple, and for one instant, Walter thought that was it, the moment he would die, but he didn’t.

  His vision shifted.

  He saw them, him and Amy, standing atop a hill overlooking a small cabin in a green valley below. She was wearing a light cotton dress. It fluttered in the breeze, and the sun twinkled over her. Her hand was in his and she was smiling, this infectious smile brighter than all else. He had no cane. He didn’t need it. His body was young again, strong. Life coursed through his veins and filled him with energy, vibrance. A small child, a little girl of maybe five or six, stepped around the side of the cabin, saw them both and waved, then started off toward a creek about a hundred feet away, a bucket and shovel in her hand.

  Amy looked up at him, stroked his hair. “This is what I’ve always wanted for us. Thousands of years I’ve searched for some kind of meaning. Since the day we met, this is the image that carried me. Sustained me. The simplicity of it. The completeness. This is ours if you want it, too, Walter. Please tell me you do. I can make it real for us. I can make it forever, for us.”

  With a blink, they were back in the dark club, their bodies so close, her looking up into his eyes with a longing matched only by his desire for her.

  His hand slipped into his pocket; his fingers searched for the familiar leather of the dog collar he had carried with him every day since he was a child, they but found nothing. It wasn’t there. Not anymore.

  He pictured the cancer growing in his lungs, reaching out across every inch of his body. As if in response, it answered him with a twinge of pain in his lower back, another in his leg, more in his chest.

  The helicopters were loud now, either hovering directly above or landing. Shouts came from outside. The clang of heavy metal weapons moving, targeting.

  She heard it all, too, and repeated something she had told him all those years earlier, as they sat in that Italian restaurant together. “There are bad things waiting for both of us outside that door. I don’t think you’re ready for them any more than I am. So how about this? Let’s pretend we’re on a date. Our first. I’m from a small farm in Dubuque, Iowa, and we met today in the checkout line at the grocery store. You asked me out, and against my better judgment, I agreed.”

  Walter looked down at her, met her gaze, got lost in it. “I can’t think of anything I want more right now.”

  She rose on her toes, brought her soft lips to his, and kissed him.

  Walter wrapped his arms around her, drew her close, and felt his life force shift from him to her, felt all that he was move from him to her. And as the club vanished one last time, replaced with that sunny vision on the hill, he released his grip on the cane.

  He heard the soft click of the dead man’s switch embedded in the handle and wondered if she heard it, too. In his mind’s eye, he saw the spark of electricity triggered by the wireless transmitter, saw it ride the wires concealed beneath the fabric of his bulletproof vest into the explosives packed tight. The thousands of ball bearings soaked in oxenberry. He saw a blinding white light. Then he saw nothing at all.

  Chapter

  91

  The Ford Taurus pulled into a parking garage near Comerica Park, pausing only long enough to get a ticket from the automated kiosk at the entrance before speeding forward and up the ramp, the sound of the engine echoing off the concrete walls.

  Sealey felt his stomach tighten. “Why are we stopping here?”

  The man driving didn’t answer. Didn’t even acknowledge him. Instead, he pulled into a space on the third floor between two unmarked white vans, running over the orange cones that had kept it vacant, and shut off the engine.

  “Why are we stopping?” Sealey repeated. His heart thumped, and he felt a bead of sweat form on his brow. He didn’t like this one bit. He pulled at the restraints on his hands, fully understanding what a waste of effort that was, but doing it anyway.

  The man got out of the car, looked in the side window of the van on their left, then opened Sealey’s door. “Get out.”

  Sealey did, only because he understood resisting would do nothing but waste time.

  Whatever this was, he wanted it over fast.

  “Turn around.”

  Again, Sealey obeyed.

  There was a soft tug on his wrists, then a snap as a blade sliced through the plastic restraints, cutting them free.

  Sealey spun and smacked the man in the shoulder. “You just couldn’t resist, could you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You handed that woman your business card with your left hand. You wanted her to see your missing finger, you dumb shit.”

  Red Larson grinned. A mischievous, childish grin. He felt more alive than he had in years.

  He had gotten out of the office building early, within a minute of firing his last shot at the officers trying to stop the salt truck. About the same time Walter was handing that USB drive off to the SWAT commander. He wanted to wait. It felt good to have a gun in his hand again, but he was no idiot. He saw them rolling out their spotters and knew if he didn’t get out of the building before they got organized—got a solid handle on the heat signatures and positions—he was done. It was one thing for them to zero in on the Sterno cans, another entirely if they saw him scuttle across the roof and down the chain ladder to the next building over. At his age he wasn’t outrunning anybody. They’d eventually find his clothes up there. He’d left them in the bag where he’d stashed the suit. Unfortunately, he had to leave the rifle, too. He liked that rifle. He couldn’t walk out the front door with it and that’s precisely what he did. Down the chain ladder to the roof of the next building over. Through the access door. Elevator to the lobby. And right out the front to the growing crowd and down the sidewalk and around the block. He’d waited things out in the Taurus until it was time to play FBI, close enough to remain on comms in case things went wrong.

  Sealey was still shaking his head. “That woman was sharp. You’re damn lucky she didn’t figure you out.”

  “What are they gonna do, lock me up for life? I’m not opposed to living out my days in a box with three squares.”

  “Good for you. But you’re not alone in this, and I enjoy my freedom. You jeopardized the entire operation.”

  “Blow me,” Red replied, before pulling off his tie and tossing it into the back seat of the Taurus. He pointed out over the concrete railing at the thick plume of dark smoke rising against the night sky in the west. “Op’s over. He did it.”

  Sealey rubbed his wrists and stepped over to the railing.

  He’d known Walter for nearly thirty years, almost half his life. The man was like a brother to him. “I just hope he finally found peace.”

  His hand slipped into his pocket and wrapped around the tattered leather dog collar Walter had given him.

  Within an hour of receiving the text from Amy Archer, Walter had told him what he wanted to do. He’d laid it all out step-by-step with care and precision, and Sealey understood this wasn’t something he’d come up with on the fly but something he’d been thinking about for a very long time.

  “We go in there,” Walter had said, “and try anything else, and she’ll slip away again. You know she will.” He was emphatic. “We phone in the bomb threat, shoot up the entrance as people come out, make her think we’re willing to shoot every female who comes out that door in order to identify her. When that falls apart, she’ll think she’s got the upper hand. That’s when I go in wearing the bomb.”

  “Why not just plant a bomb in advance? Blow the place while she’s inside?”

  Even as Sealey suggested it, he knew Walter would never agree to kill civilians. He wouldn’t leave things to chance or risk someone finding and disarming the bomb. He’d thought it through.

  “I go in, wearing the bomb,” Walter repeated. “I make sure everyone gets out. I get nice and close before detonation. That’s how we end this.”

  Sealey knew Walter was dying, but that didn’t make this any easier.

  “They’ll crucify you in the press. Make you out to be some nutcase or terrorist. All of us. Our old employer’s been tearing apart our reputations for years to cover their own involvement. They’ll just build on that.”

  A glint had entered Walter’s eye, one Sealey hadn’t seen in a very long time. “I got an idea about that, too.”

  Watching the dark smoke, Sealey said softly, “Op’s almost done.”

  Red nodded and pointed at the van on their left. “That one’s yours. I’ve got the other one. Clothing, IDs, and some money are in a bag in back. We split up here, and no contact until Iowa.”

  Dubuque, Iowa.

  A spot on the map.

  They’d picked it because Walter had mentioned it once a long time ago. Seemed fitting.

  From the trunk of the Taurus, Red removed a plastic gas can and began splashing the car’s interior, soaking the seats and floor. “I’ll finish this up, you make the phone call.”

  “They took my sat phone.”

  “There’s a burner on the driver’s seat of the van.”

  Sealey looked out at the smoke for a moment longer, then rounded the van and found the phone. He gave the dog collar another squeeze and dialed.

  This one’s for you, buddy.

  Chapter

  92

  The explosion nearly knocked Russell Hurwitz from his chair. His knees cracked against the bottom of his desk, his half full can of Red Bull taking an epic flight across the interior of the SWAT van and spilling across the floor. All his equipment flashed bright and went dark as something not meant to be rattled by a blast that size snapped and disconnected. Most likely the main circuit connecting the hardware to the van’s generator on the roof. He couldn’t hear it running anymore.

  He sat there in the dark, the only sound coming from the ringing in his ears.

  He’d listened to that ringing for nearly twenty seconds before he realized it wasn’t actually coming from his ears but from the phone Walter O’Brien had given to Rigby, still wired up to his tracing equipment.

  Through the video feed, Hurwitz had seen what happened to Commander Rigby; he’d seen everything that had happened outside the club right up to the explosion. He still wasn’t sure exactly what he’d seen, because none of that could have possibly been real, but that didn’t change the fact that he had seen it.

  She’d come out of the club like some ancient goddess. Maybe the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. The thought struck him as odd, because he hadn’t been able to make out her face, not clearly. Even when he zoomed in—shadows, blur, floodlights—something obscured her, but he somehow knew. He couldn’t explain what came next—she threw people around like they were dolls. Took enough rounds to take down an army. And Rigby—what the hell had she done to Rigby?! If he hadn’t seen it…he captured it, though. Recorded all of it.

  He’d watch the footage back when he got his equipment online again. Slow it down, clean it up. He had a feeling a lot of people would be asking him for that footage. Then he remembered all the cameras outside. The newsfeeds. Had they captured it, too?