Darkness, Take My Hand (Kenzie & Gennaro 2)

“She in there?” he whispered, shifting his body to my left as he drew a bead on the closet and dug the knife harder against my skull.

“I don’t know,” I said.

I heard her voice before I even knew she was there.

It came from two inches behind me and it was preceded by the hard metal crack of a pistol hammer pulling back.

“Don’t. Fucking. Move.”

Evandro twisted the point of the knife into the base of my skull so hard that I stood up on my toes and felt a stream of blood flow down the back of my neck.

The movement turned my head to the left and I could see the barrel of Angie’s .38 sticking out of Evandro’s right ear, see how white her knuckles were around the butt.

Angie knocked the gun out of Evandro’s hand with a quick swipe. When it hit the floor by the footboard, I expected it to fire, but it lay there, hammer cocked, pointing at the vanity chest.

“Angela Gennaro,” Evandro said. “Nice to meet you. Very slick pretending you were still on the phone.”

“I still am on the phone, asshole. It look hung up to you?”

Evandro’s eyelids fluttered. “No, it doesn’t.”

“What does that tell you?”

“It tells me someone forgot to hang it up.” He sniffed the air. “Smells like sex in here. The commingling of flesh. I hate that smell. You enjoyed yourselves, I hope.”

“The police are on their way, Evandro, so put the knife down.”

“I’d love to, Angela, but I have to kill you first.”

“You won’t get both of us.”

“You’re not thinking clearly, Angela. Must be the sex making you foggy. It’ll do that. It’s the stench of cave-dwellers really, the stink of sex is. After I fucked Kara and Jason—and believe me, it wasn’t my choice, it was theirs—I wanted to cut their throats then and there. But I was convinced to wait. I was—”

“He’s trying to lull you with talk, Ange.”

She shoved the gun harder against his ear. “I seem lulled to you, Evandro?”

“Remember what you’ve learned over these last few weeks. I don’t work alone, or did you forget that?”

“I’d say you’re alone now, Evandro. So put the fucking knife down.”

He dug it deeper and a white flash erupted in my brain.

“You’re out of your depth,” Evandro said. “You think we can’t beat you both, but instead you can’t beat both of us.”

“Shoot him,” I said.

“What?” Evandro said wildly.

“Shoot him!”

To our right, from the kitchen, someone said, “Hello.”

Angie turned her head, and I could smell the bullet when it hit her. It smelled like sulfur and cordite and blood.

Her own gun went off between Evandro and me and the muzzle flash was like fire in my eyes.

I jerked forward and felt the stiletto pop back out of my flesh and clatter to the floor behind us as Evandro’s nails tore across my face.

I drove my elbow back into his head and heard bone break and a scream and suddenly Angie’s gun roared twice and glass shattered in the kitchen.

Evandro and I wrestled our way blindly into the bedroom and then shapes began to take form again through the blaring white in my eyes. My foot hit Dunn’s service revolver and it discharged loudly and skittered out into the kitchen.

Evandro’s hands clawed at my face and I dug my hands into the flesh under his rib cage. I spun, tightening my fingers on his lowest ribs, and hurled him over Angie’s vanity chest and into the mirror.

The flash of white disappeared as I watched his slim body crest her makeup and crash through the glass. The mirror cracked in large, jagged pieces the shape of dorsal fins and the candle flames sputtered, then flared as they fell to the floor. I dove over the bed as he came down and the entire vanity came with him.

I grabbed my gun from Angie’s nightstand as I went over it, came up on the other side of the bed and fired without hesitation at the place where I’d seen him last.

But he wasn’t there anymore.

I turned my head, saw Angie sitting up on the floor, one eye squinting as she aimed down her barrel and steadied her arm, a fallen candle burning on the floor beside her. Footsteps paused on the kitchen floor, and Angie pulled the trigger.

And then she pulled it again.

Someone in the kitchen screamed.

And I heard another scream from outside, but it was the scream of metal, the howl of an engine, and suddenly the kitchen exploded in bursts of angry fluorescent, and the hum of electrical appliances followed.

I stamped out the candle by Angie’s arm and stepped out into the hall behind her, pointed my gun at Evandro. His back was to us, his arms held down by his sides. He swayed from side to side in the middle of the kitchen floor, as if to music only he could hear.

Angie’s first shot had found the center of his back and a large hole was torn through Dunn’s black leather patrolman’s jacket. As we watched, it filled with red, and Evandro stopped swaying and dropped to one knee.

Her second shot had blown off a flap of his head just over his right ear.

He raised his gun hand to it absently, and Dunn’s service revolver fell and skittered across the linoleum.

“You okay?” I said.

“Stupid question,” she groaned. “Jesus. Get in the kitchen.”

“Where’s the guy who shot you?”

“He went out through the kitchen door. Get in there.”

“Fuck that. You’re hurt.”

She grimaced. “I’m okay. Patrick, he can still pick up that gun again. Will you get in there?”

I came up behind Evandro and picked up Dunn’s service revolver, came around to face him. Evandro stared at me as he gingerly fingered the place where a piece of his head used to be, his face bathed gray in the sputtering fluorescence overhead.

He wept silently and the tears mixed with blood flowing down his face and his skin was so pale I was reminded of the clowns from long ago.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he said.

“It will.”

He stared up at me with those confused, lonely eyes.

“It was a blue Mustang,” he said, and it seemed important to him that I understand that.

“What was?”

“The car I stole. It was blue and it had white leather bucket seats.”

“Evandro,” I said, “who’s your partner?”

“The hubcaps,” he said, “gleamed.”

“Who’s your partner?”