Chapter 5 - Cornered
“He’s here,” Claire whispered, her voice choking with panic. She lunged forward, grabbing my sleeve with desperate strength. “David, you have to run. He has a gun in the car. He never goes anywhere without it. If he sees you alive, he won’t let either of us leave this house.”
“I’m not running from him,” I said, pulling my arm free. “We’re calling the FBI. Right now.”
“There is no time!” She grabbed my wrist, pulling me toward the hallway. “The glass door on the terrace—he’ll see it’s unlatched. Go through the laundry room, out the side service door. There’s an access path to the beach!”
The front door clicked.
The electronic chime sounded through the house: *Front door unlocked.*
It was too late.
Heavy footsteps sounded in the marble entryway. “Claire?” Evan called out. His voice was bright, entirely devoid of the tension that hung in the air. “I managed to get the harbor clearance documents signed. We’re moving the departure up to 4:00 a.m. The coast guard cutter shifts—”
Evan stepped into the great room.
He stopped dead in the doorway.
His eyes fell on me. Then on Claire, whose face was stained with tears. Then on the shattered picture frame on the floor.
For three seconds, the only sound was the refrigerator compressor humming in the corner.
Evan’s expression underwent a terrifying metamorphosis. The suave, sympathetic mortician who had patted my shoulder at the cemetery dissolved completely. What replaced it was a flat, dead lizard-stare—the face of a man who had long since discarded whatever part of the human spirit felt shame or pity.
“David,” Evan said smoothly. He didn't drop his keys. He placed them deliberately on the side table by the door. “Well. This is an unexpected complication.”
“Evan, don't,” Claire pleaded, stepping between us, her hands raised. “He just found me. He doesn't know anything. He came alone. We can just leave—we can leave right now!”
Evan ignored her. He looked at me, tilting his head slightly, as if examining a corpse on an embalming table.
“How did you track us?” Evan asked. “The flight? You were at DIA?”
“Gate B32,” I said, my hand closing around the screwdriver in my jacket pocket. “You kissed her forehead. That was a mistake.”
Evan chuckled. A soft, dry sound. “A sentimental slip. I suppose I earned that much. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to find a female corpse of approximately the right height and weight with no surviving family to ask questions? Do you know how much I had to pay the transport driver from Adams County?”
“She told me you were helping her,” I said, watching his right hand. His right hand was hovering near the pocket of his windbreaker. “She thinks you’re her savior.”
“I *am* her savior,” Evan said coldly. “Without me, she’d be in a fifty-five-gallon drum at the bottom of a reservoir in Utah. I solved her problem. And in return, she’s helping me solve mine.”
“The twenty-two million,” I said.
Evan’s eyes flicked to Claire. “You told him?”
“She didn't have to,” I lied, stepping slightly to the side to keep a clear line between us. “The FBI was at my office this morning, Evan. They were tracking the offshore insurance wire. They know about the Cayman trust. They know about the flight to San Diego.”
Evan smiled faintly. He shook his head. “You’re a terrible liar, David. If the Bureau knew, there would be six black Suburbans parked across the lawn, and two tactical snipers on the ridge behind you. You’re here alone. A broken, pathetic husband who couldn't let his dead wife go.”
His hand dipped into his windbreaker.
“David, look out!” Claire screamed.
Evan drew a compact black semiautomatic pistol from his pocket.
I didn't think. Thirteen years of domestic peace, of filing briefs and pruning rose bushes, evaporated in a split-second surge of raw survival instinct.
I lunged forward, not away from him, but directly at his chest.
The gun fired.
The sound indoors was deafening, a concussive roar that tore through the room. The round slammed into the marble countertop, sending chips of stone whistling through the air.
I hit Evan with my full body weight, tackling him into the glass dining table.
The heavy glass top shattered with a sound like an exploding windshield. We both went down hard into a jagged sea of glass shards. Evan’s elbow caught me in the temple, blinding me with white light, but I held onto his wrist with both hands, twisting the gun away from my face.
He was stronger than he looked. Beneath the expensive linen was the sinewy, hardened strength of a man who moved dead weight for a living. He brought his knee up into my stomach, driving the air from my lungs.
I gasped, my grip slipping on the cold steel of the weapon.
Evan rolled on top of me, his knee pinning my left shoulder into the floor. The barrel of the gun turned toward my forehead. Blood was running down his cheek from a cut on his brow, his teeth bared in a feral snarl.
“You should have stayed in Colorado, David,” he hissed. “You could have spent the rest of your life as the tragic widower. Now I have to burn two of you.”
*CRACK.*
Evan’s eyes rolled back. His head snapped forward.
Behind him stood Claire.
She was holding the heavy marble base of a designer table lamp, her knuckles white, her face twisted in a mixture of horror and fury.
Evan slumped sideways, collapsing onto the shattered glass, motionless. The pistol slid across the floor, coming to rest near the terrace door.
Claire dropped the lamp base. It landed with a dull thud.
She stood there, chest heaving, staring down at the unconscious man.
“David,” she whispered, her voice trembling violently. “David, are you hit?”
I scrambled to my feet, my jacket torn, my hands bleeding from half a dozen shallow cuts from the broken table. I checked my ribs. The bullet had missed.
I reached down and snatched the pistol from the floor, racking the slide back to check the chamber. A nine-millimeter brass casing glinted in the light.
“Get your bag,” I said, my voice raw and hoarse.
She looked at me, confused. “What?”
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“Get your bag, Claire!” I barked, adrenaline burning out the last vestiges of my shock. “He’s not dead, and his associates are expecting him at the harbor in five hours. We have twenty minutes before someone realizes something went wrong.”
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