Final Sins (35 page)

Faust slipped along one wall of the gallery until he reached the nearest hologram, a large wall-mounted display, very bright in the surrounding darkness. The image projected two feet into space, and pinned behind it he was invisible, like his countryman the Red Baron diving out of the sun.

From this position of concealment he could scan the gallery with no risk of being seen.

The noise might have meant nothing, but he was too cautious to rely on assumptions. It was perhaps not out of the question that Sinclair had guessed where he would go. He could not imagine how. Although she had been to the gallery, she had no reason to connect it with him, and she could not know that he was an owner. He had kept that fact well hidden in a maze of dummy corporations and offshore accounts.

No, she could not—could
not
—be here.

Yet there she was.

He saw her enter this room, the last room before the skulls gallery. She moved slowly in the dark, her gun leading her.

Somehow she had divined his whereabouts. She was smart, this one. Intuitive. A worthy adversary.

He lifted Tess McCallum’s gun. He was no marksman, but he had sufficient experience with firearms to know his limits and his capabilities. From this distance, aiming at a stationary target, he would not miss.

One round to the head. She would never even know what happened.

He only needed her to come a little nearer. When she passed the first hologram in the room, the glow would illumine her face, and he would shoot.

* * *

Abby had been en route to Cafe Eden when a snatch of her conversation with Faust had come back to her.

Do you remember my telling you that death is art?

Why use that metaphor again? It had seemed to come out of nowhere. And statements that arose with seeming irrelevance were often the most meaningful clues to the speaker’s state of mind.

She recalled what Elise had told her about the art gallery. Faust, she’d said, was a part owner, but he kept his ownership secret.

An owner would have a key. Would know the alarm system code. And if his financial involvement with the gallery was unknown, no one would look for him there.

Or maybe she was overthinking it, and the coffee shop was still the better bet. She had hesitated, considering both options, knowing that time was of the essence. Finally she went with her gut, which rarely failed her. Her gut said the Unblinking I was the place to look.

And it had been right. She’d found an FBI sedan stashed in the alley behind the gallery. Faust was in the building. Tess must be with him, unless he’d disposed of her already.

She doubted it. He would want to take his time.

Despite her aversion to authority, she was momentarily tempted to call
Michaelson
and let his shock troops handle the situation. It would make more sense. Going in alone was the kind of boneheaded, reckless stunt she was ordinarily smart enough to forgo.

Not tonight, though. Tonight Wyatt was dead, and she wanted blood.

She spent less than a minute picking the lock on the gallery’s back door. She wasn’t worried about the alarm system. Faust couldn’t move around inside if the motion sensors were on.

She eased open the door to face a tunnel of darkness. Faust had left the lights off. That was okay. She was nocturnal. She could hunt in the dark.

She entered, her .38 already drawn—the .38 that killed Brody.

Soon it would kill again.

Down a black hallway. Ahead, a glimmer of ambient light. She went toward it and found herself in the foyer, where a penlight, its beam slicing the darkness, lay on the front desk. She wondered why Faust had left it there. She picked up the flashlight, turned it off, and stuck it in her pocket.

Beyond the foyer were the exhibition rooms. She remembered the layout from her previous visit. The main body of the building was L-shaped, with most of the exhibit rooms occupying the long arm of the L, and the gallery of skulls taking up the base at the far end.

The ceiling spots had been turned on. Piers Hoagland’s ghastly holograms hovered against walls and pylons.

She rounded the desk and moved forward. Something crunched under her foot. The noise seemed loud in the stillness. She retreated, ducking low, and could just make out a rectangular box on the floor—some sort of telephone console, it looked like. She’d stepped on it and broken the speaker.

What the hell it was doing there, she had no idea. Evidence of a struggle, presumably. The more important question was whether Faust had heard the noise.

She listened. She heard nothing. No movement, no footsteps.

Moving away from the desk, she crept along the wall into the first exhibit room. As she approached the first hologram, she averted her face and half shut her eyes. Didn’t want to lose her night vision by staring into the light.

She reached a partition and crabbed along it to the doorway to the next room. More holograms in there, some mounted on pedestals or displayed on pylons. The garbage dump with the flash image of a skeleton’s hand.
Roadkill
. A nest of dead wasps. In a shoe box, the remains of a cat.

Death all around. And more death to come.

She passed through two more rooms. Faust must be in the back, with the skulls. She had one more room to cover before she got there.

She entered carefully, nearing the first of several holograms on the wall. It was beginning to look like this would be easy. She could burst in on Faust and take him out before he had a chance to return fire. She could—

“Abby!”
Tess’s shout, echoing in the dark. “He knows you’re here!”

Instinct took over. She pushed herself away from the wall, and in the same instant the hologram where she had been standing shattered and winked out, and a gunshot rang in the stillness.

She looked up in time to see the muzzle flash. Then she was diving to the floor in a snap-roll that carried her behind one of the pylons. She snapped off two rounds in the shooter’s direction, then plunged sideways, behind a second pylon, changing her position so Faust couldn’t shoot back.

Her ears were chiming, her night vision compromised by the purplish afterimages of the muzzle flares. She could hardly hear or see, and in the blackness Faust could be anywhere.

Gun battle at close quarters in near total darkness. Not a good situation. She could hope that the handgun reports would attract the attention of passersby, who would summon the police—but at five a.m. there weren’t likely to be any passersby, and police response time in West Hollywood had to be at least seven minutes.

She didn’t have seven minutes. These things never lasted that long.

Two options, then. She could stay hidden and let Faust wear himself out searching for her. There was a good chance he wouldn’t find her. He might even flee.

Or she could take the offensive, go after him. A less intelligent strategy. In a shoot-out, the mobile and aggressive party was always more vulnerable.

But Tess altered the equation. Faust could retreat to the skull room and use her as a hostage or a human shield. Which meant sitting back and waiting wasn’t a viable plan. She had to intercept him, if possible.

She scrambled out from behind the pylon and made her way to the closest wall, staying well clear of the holograms and their telltale glow.

The clamor in her ears was dying down. Her vision wasn’t as badly impaired as before. She scanned the room, looking for movement. She saw only the holographic images of decay, each one shimmering with its sickly monochromatic glow. The
minispotlights
overhead glowed feebly like distant stars.

And then they were gone.

All the lights, out. The holograms, vanishing like ghosts.

Faust had reached the master controls and darkened the gallery. She didn’t know where the controls were. She hadn’t seen them on her prior visit. They could be anywhere, and so Faust could be anywhere, and now with the spotlights dark and the windows blacked out, there was no light at all.

She couldn’t search for him in total darkness. She wouldn’t know where he was, even if he was a foot away.

All she could do was crouch by a corner of the exhibit room, still her breath, and listen.

Creak of floorboards.

From where? She wasn’t sure.

Faintly, a soft metallic whine. Hinges. A door, opening.

There were only two doors—the rear door by which she’d entered, and the front door in the foyer. Both too far away.

No, wrong, there was a third. The door to the basement.

A click—the door had shut.

He had retreated into the basement. She was almost certain of it.

Unless it was a ruse. He might want her to think he’d left this floor, so she would get careless and show herself.

She crawled along the wall to the nearest doorway. The bend in the L was close by, the room of skulls just beyond.

Could he be waiting for her to go in there? Hoping she would do the obvious thing and make the simple, fatal mistake?

Slowly she stood up. She held the gun in both hands as she pivoted at the hips, sweeping the darkness.

She heard nothing, sensed nothing.

The penlight was still in her pocket. She took it out and held it in her left hand, her arm extended well away from her body, and turned it on.

The pencil-thin beam cut the blackness. If Faust were here, he would fire at the beam, with any luck missing her main body mass.

But no shots were fired. She played the beam around the room and saw only blank walls and the
mirroriike
glass panels of the holographic plates.

In one of the plates, movement. A figure, reflected, emerging from the back room.

Abby spun and almost fired, realizing only at the last moment that the figure was Tess.

She lowered the gun.

By now she was convinced Faust was gone. Had he been present he would never have passed up this opportunity to take down both of them at once.

“You okay?” Abby whispered.

Tess was holding one hand with the other. “Hanging in there. He tried to KO me. Took me a few minutes to shake it off and get free of the gag. And some more time to untie myself.” She smiled. “I thought you never wanted to see me again.”

“I decided one more time wouldn’t hurt.” She looked closer and saw blood on Tess’s left arm. “You’re cut.”

“It’s nothing. Where’s Faust?”

Abby heard a low tinkle of breaking glass. It came from below.

“The cellar,” Abby said. “He’s getting out.”

* * *

Faust had not wanted to retreat from the field of combat, but he knew he could not best Sinclair in a gunfight. His only chance had been to shut off the overhead lights, then escape into the cellar.

Narrow windows lined the rear cellar wall, looking out on the alley. The windows were protected by the alarm system, but the system was off.

It was easy enough to find a monkey wrench among the janitor’s tools, smash one of the windows, sweep away the shards. He hoisted himself up and climbed through.

Sinclair would be after him, of course. She would have heard the shatter of glass.

He thought of crouching in the alley and gunning her down when she emerged from the building, but somehow he knew she would anticipate this maneuver. He could not outwit her in this arena. He must flee. There was no shame in it. He would save himself, and live to fight under more opportune circumstances.

The FBI sedan was blocked in by Sinclair’s Miata. That was all right. He smashed the sports car’s window with his elbow, unlocked the door, and used his knife to pry open the nest of wires under the steering column. It took him only seconds to hear the motor rev.

When he looked up from behind the wheel, Sinclair was there, already in the alley, McCallum at her side.

He could get them both.

He stamped on the gas pedal and the Miata blew forward, tires screaming. Sinclair turned, saw him, but did not run. She stood with feet planted wide apart, the gun in both hands. He ducked low as the first bullet cracked the windshield, then the second.

He risked a look. She was yards away. Still not fleeing. McCallum still beside her.

He braced for the double thump of impact.

But McCallum was too quick. She grabbed Sinclair and pulled her back, the two of them sprawling onto the asphalt, the car missing them by mere inches.

He half considered throwing the Miata into reverse. The snap of a gunshot from behind made him think better of it.

He accelerated out of the alley, fishtailing onto the street, gunning the motor as he raced away.

They would live, it seemed.

For now.

* * *

“Damn,” Abby said, lowering the gun. “I
really
wanted to nail that guy.”

Tess got up slowly, holding her left hand high to reduce blood loss. “Not long ago you wanted to nail me.”