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Santos was still.
Evan picked up his pistol and headed for the stairs. Scrabbling over Gordo’s wedged body promised to be painful and grotesque beyond compare.
But he didn’t have much of a choice.
There was only one way out of hell.
60
The Devil’s Work
Evan leaned against the walls of the ground floor, making handprints of blood not unlike the one Johnny had left on the fatal night. He was light-headed, but he would not pass out. And despite the throbbing in his shoulder, his grip on the ARES was intact.
A door slammed to the rear of the house, punctuated by the sound of breaking glass. Evan staggered in that direction. Stale cigarette smoke laced the air, the scent of Derek Tenpenny.
A French door swung free in the wet night air, one pane shattered from the force with which it had been flung open. Leaning out into the chill, Evan heard a big truck turn over in the blackness beyond and peel out.
Brake lights flared to life as the 4x4 shot up the side of the house and across Meadow Lane and then bounced over a sand dune and disappeared.
Tenpenny had fled, leaving his soldiers to die.
Evan pulled away from the French doors and moved back toward the foyer, his legs growing stronger beneath him with each step.
Rath squirmed against the marble floor, still trying to get at his gun, a windup toy that wouldn’t quit. He was whimpering wetly now. He’d managed to drag himself only about ten feet. The 9-mil was gleaming there on the floor just a few more away.
Evan gauged the distance.
It would be awhile.
He moved upstairs and pretended that nothing hurt.
The architectural doors of Devine’s suite were closed. Evan trudged through, his hand sticky against the doorknob. The brass-framed mirror threw back a macabre reflection, half of Evan’s face darkened with Santos’s blood.
Not surprisingly, the fireplace was roaring.
Luke Devine sat on one of the love seats, waiting patiently, it seemed, for Evan.
It took Evan longer than he anticipated to cross the vast room. His boots felt tacky against the silk splash rug. He sat on the facing love seat, rested the ARES on his thigh aimed at Devine.
The bizarre cuboid glass table with the trapped male mannequin had returned or, more likely given its obliteration, been replaced. Evan wondered how many spares of freaky art Devine kept around.
Luke had set a 9-mil pistol on the table between them, the magazine extracted and laid by its side, the slide locked back to show an empty chamber.
“No point trying to fight you,” he said. “I’d just hurt myself.”
Evan stared at him.
“You got to the bottom of it. You did the devil’s work.”
“No,” Evan said.
“Sure you did. My employees went off the reservation. They broke my code. It was unacceptable, and they had to answer for it. I promised you: My house will be set in order.”
Evan noted now that the passive construction had been intentional.
“But I don’t kill people,” Devine continued. “As I told you”—that white sickle of a grin—“I get others to do my bidding for me.”
The radius windows showed no flashing lights, no distant dump-truck fire, nothing but blackness and more blackness. From the beginning Evan had been warned about Luke’s gift of manipulation, his ability to get others to do what he wanted them to. In Echo’s apartment Evan had put the question to her:How does he make you do stuff?Her reply came to him now, a reverberation worthy of her name:If you meet him, you’ll find out.
