Backfire

by Catherine Coulter

  Who was he? Was it the same idiot who had shot Judge Hunt at the wrong moment and blown the Cahills’ trial apart? Had he shot the agent purposefully to save Xu? Why?

  Who was he?

  When the knock came on the door of his motel room, Xu grabbed his gun, gasped at the rip of pain through his arm, and shouted, “Go away!”

  Another knock.

  Xu raised his Beretta, aimed it at the motel door. “Who is it?”

  A hard rasping smoker’s voice called out, “I’m the one who saved your bacon.”

  Xu stared at the man standing in front of him, his back to the motel door. He was wearing a Giants baseball cap, sunglasses, a loose blue Windbreaker, jeans, sneakers, and gloves. He smiled at Xu, not moving since Xu’s Beretta was steady on his chest.

  “Who are you?”

  “I already told you, I’m the one who saved your bacon. Good thing I followed you here from that doctor’s office in Sausalito, since it looks like you’re going to need some more saving.”

  “How did you find me?”

  “Well, now, I’ve got to admit I had a bit of luck there. My car was near that white Infiniti you stole—nice job, incidentally, yanking that guy right out, no muss, no fuss, and you were out of there. I lost you for a while because of all that snarled traffic you caused at the Fairmont, but then I thought about it and decided you’d probably headed to the Golden Gate, so I did, too. And there you were ahead of me, going through the tollbooth. I followed you off at Spencer Avenue, watched you leave the Infiniti and steal the blue Honda. Then I sat back and waited for you just down the block from that doctor’s office.

  “Yeah, I heard the gunshot. You killed the guy. Why? He saved your bacon, too.”

  Xu’s arm hurt from holding the Beretta steady, but it didn’t matter. The Beretta didn’t move. “I overheard the moron calling the cops. I had no choice.”

  “Good to know you don’t just go around shooting folk for no reason.”

  “No,” Xu said, “there’s always a reason. Then you followed me here?”

  “Sure, not a problem. I was surprised you made it so far the way you were driving. Gotta say, you sure don’t look so hot. You’ve still got some blood on your face from when that agent planted you on the sidewalk.”

  There was blood on his face? What did this guy want? Xu said slowly, “But that was yesterday afternoon. Why did you wait until today to knock on my door?”

  The man said matter-of-factly, “The Feds might have been following you or you might have had some other help coming. I had to wait, seeing as how I’m not too fond of the cops myself. You know, there’s a chance the clerk in the dinky motel office might have seen the blood on your face, and if he did, he must have wondered. Surely he wondered. If he sees your photo on TV, he’ll know.”

  “Nah, the kid doesn’t know anything; he was too busy playing video games when I checked in. I don’t even remember a TV.”

  “Like I said, you don’t look too hot. Do you want another pain med? Once we get you feeling better, we can decide where to go. Look, if I’d wanted you dead, I wouldn’t have shot that agent off your back. I’m not here to hurt you. You’re already in bad shape. I’m here to help you. Stop pointing that ridiculous gun at me.”

  Xu ground out the words “Why would you care?”

  “I’m thinking we’re a lot alike.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “Nah, I kill because I want to, and you kill because you have to. See? Not so different.”

  Xu stared at the guy for a long time, and nodded. “The pills are on the night table.”

  The guy shook two pills out onto his gloved palm, handed them to Xu, waited until he swallowed them, and gave him a glass of water.

  Xu still didn’t pull down the Beretta. He motioned the guy to step back, then held himself still and waited for relief.

  “I see from the number of pills still in the bottle you’ve been going light on the pain meds. Not a bad idea, given who could come through that door.”

  “Take another step back. I don’t want you so close to me.”

  Xu watched him take two steps back.

  “Why did you kill that FBI agent who was on my back?”

  “Well, you see, when she knocked you down, she was out there in the open. I had a nice clear shot, and I took it.”

  “You’re saying it wasn’t about me? You wanted to kill her?”

  “Oh, yeah, I wanted her dead, but I figured what I was seeing was pretty interesting, so why not see where it led me? Hey, kill one bird and save the other.”

  He opened his mouth, but the man raised a gloved hand. “No reason for you to ask me any more right now. Maybe if we become BFFs, I’ll tell you everything.”

  The medication was numbing the pain in his arm but blurring his brain as well. Xu said, “Were you the one who tried to kill Judge Hunt?”

  The guy nodded. “I thought I nailed the bastard, but he turned at that last second. Can you believe the rotten luck? But still, it was a good shot, he should have died.”

  “But he didn’t. Did you try to take him out again in the hospital?”

  Xu would swear the guy puffed up with pride.

  “I gave that plan a lot of thought, even got me some blood from a patient in the hospital to smear on the walls of the elevator shaft to drive the Feds nuts, but—”

  Xu interrupted, “It was a ridiculous plan.” He stopped talking at a fierce jab of pain, held himself perfectly still, waiting for the meds to kick in and kill the pain once and for all. This idiot who’d shot through an elevator hatch wanted to help him?

  Xu said, “I want to see you. Take off those sunglasses and that ball cap now or I’ll drill you between the eyes.”

  “Okey-dokey, fair enough, but ready yourself. You’re in for a big whopper surprise.”

  The ball cap and the sunglasses came off. Xu stared, so stunned that for a moment he didn’t feel the pain in his arm.

  “Got you, didn’t I?”

  Xu could only nod.

  “Fact is, I mean, who can you trust in this sad world?”

  “You,” he said. “Maybe I can trust you. You’re as bad as I am.”

  “No, you’re wrong about that. I’m worse.”

  Judge Sherlock’s home

  Pacific Heights, San Francisco

  Wednesday evening

  Sean was teaching Cal and Gage how to play Flying Monks, the latest computer game his grandmother had presented to him when they’d first arrived. It was always a treat for Sherlock to watch her five-year-old teaching younger children, and three-year-old Cal and Gage looked utterly absorbed, nodding and all serious about the rules Sean was laying on them. Flying Monks—another new game Sherlock would have to master.

  She caught herself thinking that kids were so different now, an observation probably made by every single generation in man’s long timeline. She smiled to herself. Time always passed, and everything always changed. No kid today could imagine the world without a small device called a cell phone that would soon do everything but make them Kool-Aid. And now you could ask your phone a question and it would answer. But people, she thought, people themselves never changed.

  Cal shouted, “I got you, Gage. I’ve moved up two ranks. I’m flying! I’m a Major Monk now.”

  Sherlock felt bone tired, and was trying not to show it, but she didn’t mind, because she’d succeeded in fooling Sean. She’d hidden her bandage well enough—thank God for all her curly hair—and he’d accepted her being gone Tuesday night, inquiring only if Emma had wondered why he hadn’t come to see her. Sherlock had lied to him cleanly. “Of course Emma wanted to know where you were, Sean. I told her you’d promised yourself to your grandparents and you’d never break a promise.”

  “You didn’t tell her I went to see Rory an
d the Last Duck, did you, Mama?”

  “Nope.”

  “She doesn’t know Grandpa and I ate two buckets of kettle corn, does she? I don’t want her to think I’m a pig.”

  “Nope.”

  Sean looked thoughtful, an identical expression to his father’s. “There’s so much to do, Mama. Sometimes I just don’t know.”

  His grandmother had walked in then with a freshly baked plate of chocolate-chip cookies, and Sherlock forgot to ask him what he just didn’t know.

  She sensed Dillon behind her and heard his deep voice. “Here, sweetheart.” He leaned down, kissed her mouth, and handed her a cup of hot tea. “Drink it down. Then I’m thinking it’s time for you to hang it up for the night.”

  “But—”

  “Dr. Kardak said you’d give me grief and I was going to have to be the enforcer. You’ve done well, stayed nice and quiet all afternoon and evening. Now it’s time to let your brain and your body knit themselves back together while you have pleasant dreams.” He paused for a moment. “I’m thinking I have some good ideas on how to help you make that happen.”

  She took a sip of tea, looked up at him. “You’re going to read me a bedtime story?”

  “I could, but I hadn’t planned to.”

  “I wonder what you could possibly have in mind?”

  He smiled at her. “You finish your tea and we’ll see. Molly called, said Ramsey misses you since you were a civilizing influence on all those males around him. She’ll be here with Emma soon to pick up Gage and Cal. Ah, if you like, I can remove Sean before Emma comes in.”

  “I’ll watch Cal and Gage,” Evelyn Sherlock said. “I’ve got the power as long as I’ve got these chocolate-chip cookies.”

  Sherlock said, “Maybe it’d be good to take Sean upstairs, otherwise he’ll be so excited about seeing Emma it’ll be difficult to get him to bed.”

  Half an hour later, Sherlock was lying in bed, the pill Dillon fed her quashing the remnants of pain in her head.

  Now, what else did her husband have in mind, as if she couldn’t guess? She heard him singing a country-western tune in the bathroom, a song James Quinlan, a fellow agent and musician, had written about a man who loved wild broncos, wilder women, and black gold. When he came into the bedroom a few minutes later, he was wearing only pajama bottoms, slung low on his hips.

  Sherlock thought she’d swallow her tongue. “Don’t move, please.”

  He obligingly stood still, arms at his sides, backlit in the bathroom doorway, smiling at her. “I missed you scrubbing me down.”

  “Me, too.” It was true. As a shower mate, Dillon was a keeper.

  “How’s your head?”

  “What head?”

  He was grinning when he came to stand over her. “Life’s been a tangle, hasn’t it? I say we take a small break from the madness. What do you think?”

  It was amazing how good she felt in that moment. This was probably the best idea she’d heard in a very long time.

  Eve’s condo, Russian Hill

  Tuesday night

  “You’ve got a burn just there.” Harry lightly touched his fingertip to a red spot on Eve’s neck.

  She never looked away from him. “I could put some more burn cream on it, or maybe you could kiss it and make it well.”

  “Not a good idea,” he said, and took a step back from her.

  Harry, Eve, and Griffin had been treated by the EMTs at the Fairmont, had been pronounced good to go, had been debriefed at the Federal Building, and had showered and cleaned up at Harry’s house before he’d brought her back to her condo.

  Eve felt punch-drunk, both hyped and exhausted. The weird thing was, this potent mix had her seeing Special Agent Harry Christoff with new eyes. The new eyes really liked what they saw.

  Harry knuckled his own eyes. “I keep seeing Xu coming into the suite, and then I hear Griffin yell for him to get his hands in the air. Then everything happens so fast, all at the same time—the explosion of bright light and that god-awful noise, and fire everywhere.

  “I still can’t believe Xu was carrying a flash-bang. And he knew exactly what to do with it.”

  Eve said, “I want to learn how to use one. Talk about effective; my ears didn’t stop ringing for an hour. It was as if that light slapped right into my brain and I was as good as blind for five minutes.”

  Harry said, “Xu certainly came prepared, you have to give him that.”

  Eve said, “I don’t have to give him a damned thing. However, I wouldn’t mind shooting him in both knees. I guess you’d have to be in the military to learn how to use a flash-bang.”

  Harry said, “No Flash-bang Escape Weekends for civilians?”

  “Not that I’ve heard of. You want a beer?”

  He shook his head.

  Eve waved him into her living room, eased herself down onto the sofa.

  Harry sat in the chair opposite her and gave her a brooding look over his steepled fingers. “I’m wondering if the State Department can get the Chinese government to tell us anything about Xu now that he’s blowing up hotel suites and killing people.”

  “I doubt they’d even own up to knowing who Xu is. If we pursued it, accused Xu of being a Chinese spy, they’d claim he was probably an innocent bystander the FBI was trying to nail as a scapegoat. I’ll bet the State Department will back off, without more proof, and even then—”

  Harry tapped his fingertips together. “I keep asking myself—is there anything we could have done to stop him?”

  “If we hadn’t been blinded and mule-kicked, we could have put a dozen bullets in his chest. That would have ended things nicely. At least one of us got him in the arm. I wonder which of us it was. I don’t suppose the medical examiner will want to examine our weapons?”

  “If it got out that the M.E. was going to check our SIGs, there’d be a pool started up to see which of us had popped Xu.”

  She got up, went into the kitchen. She called out, “You want some Fritos and queso dip?”

  Harry laughed. “Sure, why not? I can’t remember the last time we ate.”

  Eve brought in a tray with a huge bag of Fritos and a bowl with the queso dip, steaming from the microwave, and set the tray on the coffee table. “Well, come on over and sit next to me unless you want to drag that chair over.”

  Harry dragged over the chair opposite the coffee table.

  Eve gave him a long look. “I usually like it when a guy is scared of me, but you? You won’t sit next to me on the sofa, you won’t even give me a mother’s kiss on my neck to make my owie better again.”

  “Mama didn’t raise me to be stupid.”

  She scooped up dip onto a big Frito. “Do you know I overheard Cheney saying you weren’t a nasty git any longer, only nasty.”

  “When did you hear that?”

  “At the hospital last Friday morning. I was standing in the corridor outside the ICU when you and Cheney came waltzing in.”

  “What I really am is a mild-mannered agent, only no one will believe me. Okay, maybe it’s true I haven’t been too much fun for the past year and a half.”

  “Amazing, we only met last Friday.”

  “We’ve seen each other on the elevators, in the Federal Building garage.”

  “Yeah, well, you pretended you were this tough guy who shaved himself with a hunting knife. Hard to reconcile that image with what all of us deputy marshals know to our guts, namely, that FBI agents are all wimpy clones made in the FBI factory.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “It’s common knowledge.”

  “You want to know what FBI agents think about the fricking Marshal Service?”

  She grinned at him. “Nope.”

  When he opened his mouth, she raised her hand. “You asked and I answered, so keep quiet.
”

  He said, “The few times I’ve seen you, I always thought you were too pretty to be a marshal, since nearly all of them are ex-military buzz-cut hardnoses. And look at you—you wear that black-and-red getup with your butt-kicker boots so you can be one of the boys. Have you found they take you more seriously?”

  He was spot-on about that, she thought.

  “It’s the boots that win the day,” she said. “No one messes with the boots.”

  “The fact is, though,” he continued after eating a Frito, “the unmarried FBI agents keep trying to figure out how to get your attention. Word is, you never give any of us the time of day.”

  “Nope, you’re all pantywaists. Who wants to hang around a pantywaist with wingtips on his big feet?”

  “Yeah, yeah, blah, blah. You know what it is about you—it’s that blond ponytail and those big blue eyes, makes all the guys want to take you home to Mama.”

  “The blond ponytail wouldn’t have anything to do with it. Nope, Mama would admire my black boots.”

  He laughed. “Maybe.”

  She studied his face a moment and liked what she saw—the hard planes, the sharp cheekbones, and his eyes, green-as-the-Irish-hills eyes. There was an inbred toughness in him. She said, “You know, the past five days have made me understand a little why there were so many wartime marriages. Men and women thrown together in extraordinary circumstances—I guess to survive they needed to reaffirm they were alive by making connections, by making another human being matter to them so they were able to ignore death, if only for a little while.”

  Harry said, “Nah, it doesn’t work like that.”

  “What? Hey, that was all sorts of philosophical and you say ‘nah’? Haven’t you heard of the bazillion wartime marriages?”

  “I think regardless of how people meet, they’re either meant to be together or they’re not.” He ate his Frito, then quickly dipped another into the dip. “I’m starving and I hadn’t even realized it.” He toasted her with it. “Thanks for the best Frito I’ve had in a week.”