Gundown (5 page)

• • •

As Hank closed to within twenty feet of the stage, he understood why Mitch was worried. The crowd responded like a thirsty man looking at a glass of cold water. Well, hell, what was there to disagree with?

But how did Noah Stone use his appeal? Or, more likely, abuse it? Hank looked for guards but saw only fans and reporters with video cameras. He spotted a familiar face, the redhead from the hotel lobby. She looked adoringly up at her leader.

Or was it master?

A man behind him yelled, “You goddamn traitor, you can’t take away my rights!”

Hank spun, and a skinny man with a sweaty face pulled a pistol from his camo pants. Hank’s instincts kicked in and he charged the shooter, waving his arms to distract him.

• • •

A man ahead of Jewel aimed a gun at Noah Stone. The guy who’d helped her ran straight at the shooter, his hands high, and the gunman swung the pistol toward him.

She hooked a thumb under her purse strap on her shoulder and flung the purse at the gun.

• • •

Time slowed for Hank. As if he were a spectator, he watched the man’s finger tighten on the trigger. Saw the fierce, teeth-bared grin on his face. Hank planted a foot and started a shift to the right. He would never make it.

A purse whipped through the air and hit the gunman’s shooting arm. His trigger finger jerked.

Alone in the silence, the pistol’s report cracked.

The bullet nicked Hank’s left arm between shoulder and elbow before it sledgehammered into his side. He went down.

• • •

Noah Stone dropped to the stage floor.

A news cameraman whirled and centered his viewfinder on the man with a gun.

A woman yelled, “He shot Noah!” and threw herself at the gunman.

Jewel raced to the wounded man on the floor and shouted, “This man’s been shot. Help!”

Noah Stone got to his feet, jumped from the stage, and hurried to her side.

• • •

The other two times Hank had been shot, he’d known immediately that the wound wasn’t fatal. But not this time. He wondered how he ought to feel about death.

Close above him were Noah Stone on one side and a pretty woman on the other. The woman had a scar—the world faded away.

An Existential Threat to Law and Order

Marion Smith-Taylor turned from the view of cherry blossoms outside her office window and shook her head at the stacks of mail her assistant had added to the load on her desk that morning. Surely there must be a way for the attorney general of the United States to find a law making it illegal to send said AG a gazillion memos and reports. It would save her a lot of time and Suzanne’s back, too.

Her intercom buzzed, and Suzanne’s husky voice came. “Can you take a call from Alexander Atkins?”

Stifling an instant “No!,” Marion pushed back against the tightening in her stomach that always came with calls from the American Association for Justice’s lobbyist, said yes, and picked up her phone. She didn’t mean the cheery smile she hoped she projected when she said, “Alexander! How can I help you?”

“You can stop the lawlessness in Oregon, that’s what you can do!”

Now what? She had big issues with what was going on in that troublesome state, but what problem could a bunch of trial lawyers have there? “Is there any particular lawlessness you have in mind?”

“Damn right. I have a client there who allegedly brought a load of pink into Oregon. Their kangaroo court system forced him to admit he drove the damned truck into the state to sell the drug. Forced him! He couldn’t even plead not guilty!”

Marion aimed to stop Oregon’s abuse of the Fifth Amendment, but she had no desire to lighten this clown’s load. Her smile was genuine this time. “I can see the problem, drug dealers having to tell the truth.”

His voice pulled back to a milder, more reasonable tone. “Don’t get me wrong. If he was dealing pink, he deserves everything he gets. But his Fifth Amendment rights are being trampled.”

“Weren’t you there to defend him?”

“I could have been, but Noah Stone’s Alliance has some kind of legal support system where you don’t need to hire a defense lawyer, and the guy cheaped out on me.”

Aha, losing business, that’s what had him worried. Marion had lost far too many cases because of deft manipulation of the law—make that distortion of the law—by defense lawyers, and she couldn’t resist saying, “Gosh, that’s awful, too.”

Alexander sighed. He knew her opinion of him and his association. But his voice had an edge when he said, “It isn’t funny. You’ve got to stop this legal abomination. Now.”

She stiffened. In a tight voice that said, Don’t fucking tell me what to do, she said, “I’m investigating the possibilities. Have a nice day, Alexander.” She hung up on him.

He was right about one thing—Oregon’s legal system had turned into an abomination when they flipped the Constitution upside down with that goddamn “Truth for Justice” initiative—led by, who else, Noah Stone and his Alliance.

Now Oregon courts forced people to testify against themselves as if the Fifth Amendment didn’t exist. Hell, they were even citing the Fifth as the authority for violating it. A pal at the ACLU had told her that even they hadn’t found a convincing way to challenge them.

Her anger bubbled up just thinking about it. Well, maybe Tiffany was closer to something to quash the statute. She reached for her phone, and her top legal researcher’s soft voice soon answered. “Tiffany Horowitz.”

“Marion here, Tiffany. How are you doing on that crazy Truth for Justice statute?”

“I don’t have anything that helps us yet. My research suggests that it’s actually possible to interpret the Fifth Amendment to mean that courts can require a person to testify against himself as long as there’s due process of law. That actually makes sense in terms of the language of the amendment. I mean, we use the same due-process language to put people in prison, take their property, and execute them.”

Marion scowled. “I don’t like what I’m hearing, Tiffany. These people are undermining precedents for due process that go back to the Magna Carta.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

Regretting her irritation, she softened her voice. “I know, I know. What else?”

“It sounds crazy, but the Alliance says its initiative
is derived
from the Magna Carta’s mandate—you know, ‘fundamentally rational law applied in a fundamentally fair proceeding.’”

Marion shook her head. “I still can’t believe voters went for it.”

“The Alliance made it sound like it would stop criminals. People liked that.”

That was the trouble with initiatives—direct democracy led to rule by emotion. In this case, it was in a blue progressive state that had a tendency to steer to the left. Except, maybe, for the prison system they’d inaugurated; it sounded damn tough, and it had been a bipartisan effort. And it looked like they’d found a way to ban guns while they were pushing those new self-defense weapons—the state was like a hornet’s nest that somebody had whacked.

Tiffany said, “Ah, you should know that the Alliance has started Truth for Justice initiatives in California and Washington State.”

Oh, Lord. There were, what—twenty-four states that allowed initiatives? “Keep digging. We’ve got to find a way to stop it.”

Tiffany said, “I find myself wishing . . . Never mind.”

“No, what?”

“That things everywhere worked the way they do in Oregon. I mean, how rational or fair is it that so many rotten people dodge the bullet by taking the Fifth—”

“Listen to me! Oregon’s new system may appear to be legal—so far—but it’s not goddamn right. The Fifth Amendment is there to
protect
citizens!”

Tiffany’s voice tightened. “Yes, ma’am.”

Marion reined herself in. She said, “Good job, Tiffany. Keep trying.”

“I’ll do my best.”

Marion disconnected. She shouldn’t have lost it with Tiffany like that . . . but Oregon’s distortion of the Constitution threatened to cripple America’s judicial system. Noah Stone’s Alliance was a key player. Maybe he was the key to stopping it, too. She needed to know more about the man. There must be a weakness.

Was Stone a good guy gone wrong, or did he have a nasty hidden reason for emasculating the law? Whatever he was, he was a threat, and she had the power of the Department of Justice to take him down.

She thumbed her intercom. “Suzanne, get me Joe Donovan in Oregon.” One of her smartest field agents, Joe would dig out what she needed.

Going Undercover

Noah Stone stepped into the hospital room where Hank Soldado lay unconscious on a hospital bed, unconscious or asleep. An attractive young black woman stood on the far side of the bed. She looked up and said, “Mr. Stone. My name is Jewel Washington.”

Noah smiled and nodded to her as he went to the bedside. Bandages wrapped Hank Soldado’s torso and upper left arm. He seemed asleep, and his arms and legs twitched as if he were dreaming. “How is he?”

She shook her head. “They say he’s stable.”

He knew that face, those bright blue eyes. “You were there, weren’t you?”

“Yeah. When he got shot.”

The sound of the shot echoed in Noah’s mind, and a flare of dread punched him in the belly. He shivered and fought it back. He’d been fighting it back all morning, and his stomach was in a knot. He feared that fear was winning and that years of work would shrivel and die when he became afraid do it anymore. He’d never had to think about whether his cause was worth dying for, but he did now.

He didn’t want to die.

He’d learned his rescuer’s name, but nothing more about the man other than that he had taken a bullet intended for Noah. He hadn’t even seen what Soldado had done at the rally. Had the woman? “Excuse me, Miss Washington, did you see what happened?”

She shifted her gaze to him, and he was again struck by her blue eyes, unexpected in a dark-skinned face. Freckles across her nose formed a band of chocolate dots on warm brown, and a scar slashed down her cheek. She said, “Yeah. That nut was aiming his gun at you, and then this guy charged him.”

“Why, I wonder.”

She shrugged. “He did something like that for me yesterday morning, helped me out of a bad patch, and I’d never seen him before.” She turned her gaze to Soldado. “I can tell you that he’s very good with a gun.”

Soldado clenched his teeth and lifted his good arm until it was straight out from his body, and then he curled his index finger. His trigger finger. Shooting a gun? Tears leaked from his closed eyes. He moaned and twisted. Soldado whipped his head back and forth as if to deny something with everything he had.

Jewel reached for the call button, but Noah saw Hank’s eyelids flicker. He held up a hand and said, “I think he’s coming around.”

Noah put his hand on Soldado’s shoulder and squeezed just enough to let him know someone was there.

• • •

The lovely woman laughs and swings the beautiful child back and forth.

Words come from Hank, but he can’t make them out because they are muddled and slow, as if made of molasses.

The woman frowns at him. She pulls the child close and says molasses words that make no sense. The look on her face is angry. Wild.

Insane.

The beautiful child is in danger.

He reaches for his gun, sooo sloooow . . .

His hand rises in front of him
—
the pistol he aims at the woman is dead steady.

She laughs and raises the child high in the air.

He pulls the trigger.

“No!”

The cry ripped out of Hank. He lunged upright in the bed.

It had been his voice.

He was holding his breath, his jaws clenched.

Again.

Why?

Pain stabbed him in the side and his arm, and he lay back in the bed. The rails of a hospital bed enclosed him. The stringent odor of antiseptic dominated the air. A vase on a tray next to his bed held a bouquet of yellow carnations.

He was alive. Good. He wasn’t ready to be done yet.

Noah Stone gripped Hank’s shoulder. “Mr. Soldado. You cried out.”

A pretty woman on the other side of the bed took a tissue from the hospital tray and wiped at his cheeks. She said, “You hurtin’?”