The Hunt Club

It wasn't far-a few hundred yards uphill-to the crossroads where Juhle and Chiurco were to have met, and Hunt stood in the middle of the road, where a driveway broke off and led to the barn off to his left. Hunt, paralyzed, standing tall here where the roads met, where Juhle and Chiurco couldn't miss him, held his breath and tried to listen to the sounds of the night over the beating of his heart.

Where were his guys? And on the other side of the barn, where was Tamara?

Automatically, he glanced at his watch, although it told him nothing. He realized that he had almost no idea of how much time had passed since he'd left Juhle-maybe as much as an hour. Certainly no less than forty-five minutes.

But whatever it had been, his men weren't where he thought they'd meet up or where they were supposed to have been waiting for him. Which meant that something else had gone wrong. Or Devin and Craig had given up on him and forced something. And if that were the case, judging from the silence, it was already over.

He turned back to the barn and stared at its looming form. Moving to one side, then another, he tried to get an angle through its ancient redwood planks. Were there places he could actually see through the structure? Did he just imagine it or was there a dim light out in the junkyard beyond it on the other side?

Now, without his goggles, without his flashlight, he had to depend upon the moon, but as he advanced on the barn, the promontory's shadow engulfed the road, and again he was in darkness. But here, because of the contrast, he could see that he hadn't been mistaken. Someone had turned on some kind of a light, perhaps over the barn door on the other side.

He kept moving forward, slowly, quietly. Now into the barn, stall by stall, letting his vision grow accustomed to the space. The front door wasn't completely closed, and a thin shaft of weak yellow light drifted through the crack.

And then, so faintly he couldn't at first place where it came from, he heard a man's voice. He waited, patient now, unwilling to expose himself until he was completely certain about what was transpiring out there. At last, he came around the low wall of the last stall and crossed the no-man's-land of open space in the center of the barn, coming to rest in the shadow still far back behind the door.

Now a woman's voice. Sharp and imperious, although the words were still indistinct. It definitely wasn't Tamara, but Hunt didn't imagine that Carol Manion would use that tone to Juhle. So who did that leave?

He moved to his left and forward toward the door. Quietly, quietly. The gun flat down against his side. One more step, and then he finally could see Juhle, obviously still alive and even well, sitting with his arms behind him, next to Chiurco on the edge of an empty trough in the middle of the junk-strewn foreyard. A great relief flooded him, and he even dropped his guard and took another step toward the door-now as the whole scene opened in front of him.

Shiu was here, too!

Juhle must have relented and called him earlier while they'd been killing time at the base camp and told him he'd probably want to come up after all. Obviously, Juhle wanting to let him in on the arrest, covering his sorry partner's ass, when it might otherwise look bad for Shiu, who looked as though he hadn't wanted to investigate the people for whom he'd done so much security work.

Shiu's presence hadn't been part of Hunt's original plan, but not much this night seemed to be working out in textbook style. Besides, Dev was always such an incorrigibly good guy, and if calling Shiu up without telling Hunt had been an element in making the plan work, he wasn't going to complain about it.

Shiu was standing in front of a rusted-out old tractor, next to Carol Manion, his own gun drawn.

An instant before he got to the door and stepped out into the open, something about the arrangement of the characters stopped Hunt in his tracks. His eyes darted back to Juhle-with his arms behind him.

He looked more closely, caught a glint of metal.

Christ! Juhle was handcuffed.

Which could only mean that Shiu…

Shiu?

"What's your girlfriend's name again?" Shiu raised his gun to Craig Chiurco's face.

"Tamara."

"Call her."

"She's not here," Chiurco said.

"Juhle said she was."

"I was mistaken," Juhle said.

"Shut up, Devin. I'm talking to your friend here."

"Juhle's telling the truth, sir. He was wrong. She went out the back way, when he was coming up."

"Then that's going to turn out very badly for you, I'm afraid."

Carol Manion spoke up. "Mr. Shiu, please don't…"

"Not now, Mrs. Manion." Shiu never took his eyes off Juhle, but he was talking to Carol. "If you hadn't panicked and taken Parisi, we wouldn't even be here. But no, you had to talk to her and find out what she knew, didn't you? And that's what's screwed it all up. Don't you understand that? If you'd left it all up to me, none of this would have happened. So don't tell me how we're getting out of this. Right now it's a work in progress and I'm making the calls."

"So what'd she do with Parisi?" Juhle asked. "Is she dead?"

"Probably," Shiu said, "by now." He came back to Chiurco. "Call your girlfriend."

Craig took a shallow breath and swallowed. "I told you. She's not here."

Shiu took a fast step forward, sighted along his barrel, and pulled the trigger-a huge blast that echoed across the valley. Craig let out a muffled scream and dropped to the ground. "Tamara!" Shiu called out. "That was a warning. The next one's in your boyfriend's head. I need to see you right now."

With a cry, Tamara broke from around the far side of the château, ru

Shiu turned his gun quickly to Juhle to make sure he still had his attention, then turned again to Chiurco. Stepping back, he made room to let Tamara get up next to Craig. He was getting himself back up, his face spooked and his hand over his right ear.

"You didn't have to do that, Mr. Shiu." Carol Manion, used to giving orders, spoke in that sharp tone of hers. "She would have come out eventually."

"We don't have eventually, Mrs. Manion. We've got now, and she is out now, so let's call the way I did it a success."

"Enjoy it while you can," Juhle said. "Would that be your first? Success, I mean?"

"Why, no, Devin. Since you mention it, locking you up with your own handcuffs ranks right up there. Or is it the thought of shooting you with your own gun here?" Shiu gave his head a disappointed wag. "What? No clever comeback? I don't know why, but I keep expecting you to come up with something pithy, suitable to the occasion. I'm begi

"Considering the source, that's a compliment. And speaking of imagination, what do you plan to do now? Have you given that any thought, you fucking moron? You think you'll be able to get away with killing us all?" Juhle took a chance on the ongoing dynamic between Shiu and Carol Manion. He turned to her. "What did he mean, you took Parisi, and she's probably dead by now? You didn't have him take care of that like you did the judge and Staci? I'm assuming you paid him to do them."

Shiu raised the gun again. "Shut up, Devin."

But Juhle had had guns pointed at him before. The current threat left him so unfazed that he actually produced a chuckle. "Or what, Shiu? Or you'll shoot me here where I sit. I don't think so. I'd bleed all over the place, and even you should know that will leave traces. In some jurisdictions, most of the homicide cops are competent."

Carol Manion crossed her arms over her chest, worry now written all over her face. "Mr. Shiu, he's right. We can't…"