Cemetery Dance

The blow came from behind, a stu

For a moment his mind, reeling with surprise and pain, staggered in incomprehension. Then he realized: it was the girl. He yelled, bucking and shaking, his free hand flailing blindly at her, but the girl's tight, digging grip didn't slacken and he felt his eyeball pop out of its socket with a wet, sucking sound, the horror and pain such that for a moment he lost all capability for rational thought.

He fell to the ground with a roar, the heavy blow finally loosening her grasp, but as he rolled and tried to bring the gun around he realized there was a second person fighting him now — surely the FBI agent — and the gun was roughly kicked from his grasp. He punched wildly, broke free, and scrambled to his feet and ran, slamming hard against the wall, then feeling desperately along it while the gasps of his assailants seemed to come from everywhere around him.

… The door! He stumbled through it and ran out into the blackness, dazed and disoriented, careening off props and walls and doorways like a pinball, losing his bearings in his pain and panic, crashing and scrambling among the forest of junk in an effort to get away. The girl and the FBI agent — how had they both survived? But as soon as the question occurred to him he knew the answer — and cursed his monumental, colossal stupidity. As he ran, he felt his eyeball — free, hanging by the optical nerve — bouncing with every movement in a swinging arc of pain.

The Browning! He'd forgotten about the second gun. Digging into his waistband, he pulled it out, turned, and fired back in the direction of his pursuers. A moment later his shot was answered by the boom of the Colt and the smack of a heavy — caliber bullet ripping through a prop next to his ear, spraying him with splinters.

Jesus, that was close. He turned and ran, scrambling frantically among the old sets, trying to reorient himself. He could hear their fumbling pursuit. To fire on them again in the dark was only to make himself a target.

He crashed into something and realized he had gotten turned around, somehow, in his desperate attempt to escape. Where the hell was he? What prop was this? A massive plaster wall — the outline of blocks… was it the castle turret? Yes, it had to be! He shoved the gun back into his waistband and scrambled up to the battlements, feeling his way along. A little farther, just a little… The battlement ended and he jumped down to the other side, landing on what felt like a ramp. What was this? He'd expected to find himself by the faux — stone sarcophagus of the Egyptian pharaoh Raneb, but this was something else entirely. Had he gone the other way? His mind reeled as yet again he tried to orient himself amid the endless props, his mind reeling from the pain. He crawled up the ramp, stumbled and fell, and lay on a wooden platform, heaving. Maybe if he just lay there, absolutely silently, they wouldn't find him. But no, that was stupid. They would find him, find him and… Hehad to get out, get to where he could fight them. Or run.

He could hear them in the blackness, moving along the battlements, searching for him.

The sudden reversal of his hopes left him stu

Nora heard a scratching sound, followed by a hiss, and then a wavering yellow light appeared. Pendergast was holding a twisted piece of newspaper, one end afire. The open casing of a bullet lay on the cement floor, from which he had extracted the cordite to start the fire.

"Come and look," he said weakly.

Pendergast held out his hand and Nora took it. She was a mass of pain; all the ribs in her back seemed broken from the force of the gunshots; her concussed head throbbed. Pendergast's bulletproof vest, which the agent had passed her in the darkness of the cell, was an unfamiliar weight beneath her hospital gown. She came around an old section of a medieval castle wall and there, in front of her, was a guillotine, blade down, a body sprawled on the platform; and in the tumbrel below, a fresh head. The head of her captor, one eye wide open in surprise, the other horribly mangled, dangling by a ropy nerve.

"Oh my God…" She put a hand over her mouth.

"Look well," said Pendergast. "That's the man who was responsible for the murder of your husband and Caitlyn Kidd. The man who killed Colin Fearing and Martin Wartek, and who tried to kill you and me."

She gasped. "Why?"

"An almost perfectly choreographed — or should I say storyboarded — drama. We will know the final reason why when we locate a certain document." His voice was so low, so whispery, she could barely make it out. "Right now, we need to call an ambulance. When… when you are done here."

Staring at the scene of horror, she realized that she did, in fact, feel a certain grim catharsis through the curtain of pain. She turned away.

"Seen enough?"

She nodded. "We have to get out of here. You're bleeding — badly."

"Esteban's third bullet missed my vest. I believe it has punctured my left lung." He coughed; flecks of blood came from his mouth.

Using the taper as a light, they slowly, painfully, made their way through the basement, up the stairs, across the shadowy lawn, and to the mansion. There, in the darkened living room, Pendergast helped Nora onto a sofa, then picked up the phone and dialed 911.

And then he collapsed unconscious to the floor, where he lay motionless in a spreading pool of his own blood.

Chapter 85

With the coming of night, the seventh floor of North Shore University Hospital had grown quiet. The squeaking of wheelchairs and gurneys, the chimes and a

D'Agosta heard none of it. He sat where he had remained for the last eighteen hours: beside the lone bed in the private room. His eyes were on the floor, and he alternately clenched and un — clenched his good hand.

Out of the corner of his eye he noticed movement. Nora Kelly stood framed in the doorway. Her head was bandaged, and beneath her hospital gown her ribs were taped and padded. She walked up to the foot of the bed.

"How is he?" she asked.

"Same." He sighed. "And you?"

"Much better." She hesitated. "And what about you? How are you doing?"

D'Agosta shook his bowed head.

"Lieutenant, I want to thank you. For your support through it all. For believing me. For everything."

D'Agosta felt his face burn. "I did nothing."