Page 58 of The Devil's Advocate

Then I saw that his head had slumped to the side. Maybe he was sleeping.

Maybe not.

A thought came unbidden. Two words that repeated in my mind.

Not again.

Not again.

And instantly, while my body struggled desperately up a muddy track in the middle of swampy Alabama, my mind was in a hospital corridor and I was still in high school. My dad was dying. I’d held his hand for eleven hours that day. My mom had told me to take a break I don’t know how many times, but I wouldn’t. I didn’t want to leave him. I didn’t want him to die without me being there – holding his hand. For most of that day he’d slept. The rare cancer had almost finished him. He had woken just for twenty minutes that day. Too weak to talk, he watched someStarsky and Hutchon the portable TV in the room. He’d always loved that show – the car in particular. It was a 1976 Ford Gran Torino, in bright red, with a white vector stripe and a Windsor V8 engine rolling on black-walled tires with five-slot mag wheels.

When the show was over, and the credits started, my mom asked me to get her a soda from the machine in the hallway. I let go of his hand, took the change from her purse and left the room. As the can of grape soda crashed to the dispenser drawer, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was Mom. I was about to ask her what she was doing – that she shouldn’t have left Dad all alone. But I didn’t say anything. I knew by the look on her face he was gone. And he had died hard in those last few moments. She saw it coming – sent me away on an errand. She didn’t want me to see that. I know that now, but back then I felt like I had let him down. I had not been there when he died, and it haunted me for a long time. In the hallway that night she gave me my father’s Saint Christopher’s medal.

I could feel that same medal bouncing around my chest as I pounded up the hill toward the SUV. I just knew that night, in the hallway of the hospital, that my father was dead. That same feeling hit me now, in the center of my chest. It had happened again. Harry was dead – I had not been there for him.

As I got closer, panting now, the moonlight slashed across the rear window, touching the Chevrolet badge on the rear door, and then it was gone as a cloud claimed the light. The further uphill I got, the wetter the track became, and each step sent an ever-increasing amount of mud onto my pants. I didn’t care about that, but I didn’t want to fall, so I cut right onto the grass and moved along the tree line. It was tougher in the grass, but I could at least move without losing my balance.

From this angle I could see a little of the interior with another brief pool of moonlight. I almost fell when I saw that ethereal light hit something silvery and white. As I approached, at speed, I couldn’t tell what it was.

I reached the SUV, put my hand on the driver’s door to fling it open and that’s when I froze.

The hilt of a knife protruded from a bloody mass of gray hair. I fell back, hands covering my mouth. I had no air with which to scream. All I could do was stagger backwards as I felt a hard ball growing in my chest. It felt like I was being strangled from the inside. Panic, shock, and terrible pain hit me all at once and I fell to my knees.

I could smell the bleach from the hospital. My mother’s slender hand on my shoulder. The metallic taste in my mouth. It was all happening again, as if it was real.

Then I heard something that had no place in my dark memory.

I could hear a whine. It grew louder. At first, I thought I was the one making the sound, and then the pitch changed as it grew louder still. The sound of a big engine, revving high. I glanced to my right, toward the highway, and I saw the headlights tearing through the trees, straight down the lane toward me. The car was going way too fast.

If killing Harry was meant to be a trap to lure me into a dark wood to be murdered too, then I was damn sure I was going to take that bait. Only I wasn’t the one who would end up dead. My fists balled and the pressure in my chest eased. I got up, roared, and charged down the lane, tears stinging my eyes. The car kept coming. It accelerated around the same time the beam of its headlights fell across my face.

‘COME ON YOU MOTHERFU—’ I couldn’t even finish the shout. Not enough in my lungs.

The car slowed. Stopped. I heard a door opening.

I was only forty feet from it.

I was not stopping. Even if they had guns. They had killed my friend. The best friend I ever had. Harry had been a mentor, a father, a brother … he was everything to me.

I couldn’t see past the lights. No point in squinting to try to make out a face. A figure stepped in front of the beam. Only a silhouette to me.

The torso, the legs and the arms. And the gun in their hand.

Thirty feet away, and I saw them raise their right arm. The gun hand. Leveling the barrel center mass.

There was no way I was going to get close enough to do any damage before I lost a vital organ.

The silhouette’s arm straightened.

My left foot slid out from under me. My hands flew out to the sides as I tried to regain my balance and stay on my feet. It was no good. I went down face first into the dirt.

Scrambling around, trying to get my feet beneath me I heard footsteps coming closer, squelching through the mud. The ground was so slippery, and the shock of seeing Harry dead, the run up the track in the heat – I couldn’t stand. One last effort got one foot under me, and then I slipped and went down hard.

The footsteps stopped.

I heard theclickof a pistol hammer being pulled back.

And then the man with the gun spoke.