Bourne couldn’t fire.
He didn’t have a clear shot, not without the risk of the bullet going wrong and hitting Abbey. So he dropped his Glock, closed the distance across the bed of ash with a few silent steps, and lifted Garrett into the air. He hurled him into the remains of the opposite wall, where the impact dislodged his gun and punched the air out of his lungs. The crumbling wall shuddered, dislodging a cascade of dust and stone.
Garrett landed on his feet. He staggered, his steps dizzy, and he searched the ash for the half-buried pistol. It hadn’t gone far, but when he bent to retrieve it, Bourne kicked him hard in the chin and sent him flying backward, arms and legs spread wide. The butt of the CZ 9mm lay at Jason’s feet, but he left it where it was. He didn’t want to shoot this man. He wanted to kill him with his bare hands. He wanted to clamp his fingers around Garrett’s throat and watch his skin turn purple and his eyes bulge out of their sockets.
Bourne closed on Garrett, who had struggled back to his feet. The man swung a fist at Jason, but Bourne dodged it. Then he snapped Garrett’s head back in a cloud of blood as he drove his knuckles into the middle of the man’s face and broke his nose. Garrett screamed. He bent down and grabbed a charred length of pipe and swung it into Bourne’s shoulder, but Jason shrugged off the blow. Behind Garrett, a brick tumbled off the damaged wall and landed with a puff of ash. Then a second brick did the same, popping from the middle of the wall like a missing tooth.
The wall was going.
A foul poison of blood, smoke, and sweat filled the air. Dust made a dense haze in the shadows. Garrett kept a wary distance from Jason. He sidestepped, his back to the wall, his eyes going from Bourne to Abbey to the two guns on the ground. There was no way to the door, no way out, and Jason didn’t bother hiding the ice-cold intent in his eyes. Garrett wiped blood from his face. His chest heaved with each breath. Jason let him tire himself out like a fish wriggling on the hook.
The Glock was closest. When Garrett made a move, he’d jump for the Glock.
Bourne watched the man’s eyes and waited. Like a base runner, Garrett dived with a grunt of energy, body crashing down into ash, fingers outstretched. Bourne spun toward him, but his shoes slipped on the damp ground. He lost a step, and in the instant it took him to recover, Garrett had his hand clenched around the butt of the Glock. As the man swung onto his back, Bourne landed heavily on his chest, but Garrett’s finger made it to the trigger and squeezed off a shot.
On the opposite wall, Abbey screamed.
Jason wrenched the gun from Garrett’s hand, then rolled away and saw Abbey, hand clutching her shoulder, blood leaking through her fingers. He ran to her. Her face was screwed up in pain, and a desperate whimper escaped from her throat. This was Abbey. Abbey—shot! Because of him. The sight of her drove everything else from his mind, and in that lost instant, Garrett struck again.
Abbey screamed a second time. A warning. “Jason!”
The knife drove two inches deep into his back, then made a bloody gash as Bourne twisted away by instinct. A stinging burn erupted behind his eyes. He spun, unleashing his fist, but Garrett slashed with the knife again, cutting across Bourne’s torso and jabbing it into his forearm. The Glock dropped at his feet. He twisted Garrett’s wrist sharply, dislodging the knife, and pushed into Garrett’s chest with both hands. Reaching out, Garrett clung to his jacket and pulled him backward.
Both men stumbled, wrapped up in each other’s arms. They jerked and spun in a crazy dance and then crashed into the wall, which groaned under the impact of their combined weight. Garrett let go, limping free, but as Bourne followed, he heard a roar. Like an avalanche breaking from the mountain, the wall collapsed, mortar and brick pummeling him and cracking against his skull. The impact drove him to his knees.
Garrett’s eyes shot to the CZ, which still lay in the ash. Bourne saw it, too, but his dizzied brain reacted too slowly. He leaped, trying to separate himself from the rubble, but Garrett got there first, scooping up the gun and then jumping out of reach. A step at a time, Garrett backed away, half choking, half laughing. His face was a mess of dirt and blood, his whole body shaking. He stretched out his right arm, aiming the barrel at Bourne’s chest. When his hand trembled, he supported his wrist with his other hand. The gun continued to wobble, but he was too close to miss.
“Didn’t expect me to win, did you?” Garrett mumbled. “You can go to hell, Bourne.”
Jason saw the man’s finger begin to tighten on the trigger.
Then an explosion filled the ruined house. A gun went off, one shot tunneling into Garrett’s head above his ear. The right side of his skull erupted in bone and brain, and he slumped sideways, dead, the CZ still clutched in his hand.
In the shadows, Bourne saw Abbey. She stood like a statue six feet away, blood soaking her shoulder, her other arm stiff, with Jason’s Glock in her hand. She couldn’t seem to move. Jason pushed himself slowly to his feet and took halting steps toward her, then carefully loosened her fingers from around the gun and restored it to his holster. He brought her arm down like the plastic limb of a doll. He ripped a sleeve off his shirt and tied it tightly on her shoulder to limit the bleeding, and she didn’t even flinch at the pain.
“Come on,” he murmured. “Let’s get you to a hospital.”
Abbey said nothing. She looked numb.
Bourne crossed the room to Garrett’s body and found the key fob to Abbey’s car in his pocket. He took the CZ—Abbey’s gun—and secured it in his belt. He went back to her, but she still hadn’t moved, her muscles frozen in place. Her eyes stared with horror and disbelief at her dead husband on the ground.
“I killed him.”
“Abbey, you had no choice.”
“I shot him. Me. I pointed a gun at his head, and I pulled the trigger.”
“I know.”
He felt a wave of blackness cross his soul. When they were together, he’d trained Abbey for a moment like this, because he’d known it would come eventually. A moment when someone came for her and she had to fight back. But training wasn’t the same as reality. Shooting a target and shooting a man—her husband—were two different things. You never knew what you could do until you had to do it, and after that, you could never go back.
When they split up, he’d hoped that she was free. She could go on with her life and forget the things he’d taught her. Instead, here they were. Abbey now knew what Bourne had known for years.
What it felt like to be a killer.
Abbey’s head finally turned. Her wide eyes stared at him. He watched her soul get ready to break, the numbness draining away. It only took a single touch of his hand on her face and she crumpled against him, sobbing with pain and anguish. He held her up because he felt her legs collapsing. Seconds turned into minutes as she cried, and then he gently separated her from him and wiped the tears from her eyes.
“We have to go.”
Biting her lip, she nodded.
They turned to the light of the empty doorway. Abbey leaned against him as they walked outside. Her Audi was parked among the hulks of burned vehicles on a road that didn’t exist anymore. He knew the laptop was inside. The Files. This was the end of the road; he had what he was looking for. But the women in his life had paid a terrible price. Tati. Abbey. Johanna. None of them would be the same.
His Highlander was parked behind the Audi. He guided Abbey that way, then stopped as he heard a voice.
“Don’t move.”
He didn’t have time to draw his Glock from the holster at his back, not with Abbey in his arms. When he glanced to his left, he saw an Asian woman emerge from behind the ruins of the house. She held a Daniel Defense DDM4 V7 rifle nestled in her arms, ready to cut both of them down.
It was Vix.
*
“I wanted to be the one to kill that piece of shit myself,” she said, “but at least he’s finally dead. Thank you.”
Bourne’s mind raced, looking for options to strike back, but with Abbey wounded in his arms, there was nothing he could do. Even if he were alone, his Glock was no match for the firepower of a DD rifle. He could also tell, based on the way Vix was holding it, that she knew what she was doing.
“Aren’t you supposed to be dead, too?” he asked.
“Garrett thought I was,” Vix agreed.
Abbey pushed herself off Bourne’s shoulder. Her voice was weak. “The body in the house. Who was it?”
Vix’s eyes shifted to the burned-out house. A tight, stricken expression crossed her face. “Garrett showed up that day. I thought it was Callie Faith, but it was him. He hit me and took the laptop. He left me there, unconscious. Then he went to start the fire. If I’d been alone in the house, I never would have lived through it. But I wasn’t. He didn’t know that.”
Bourne thought about the photo from the cover of Wired magazine. Mr. Yuan, his wife, and his two daughters. The one daughter was standing in the ash in front of him. The other had disappeared from Shanghai at the same time Vix went underground. But she wasn’t in hiding on the other side of the world.
“Your sister,” he concluded. “You got her out of China. You brought her to the U.S.”
Vix nodded. “Once I sold the Files, she and I were going to make new lives together. She was upstairs when Garrett surprised me. When my sister realized the house was on fire, she came downstairs and revived me. By the time she did that, we only had seconds to get out. I made it. She was only steps behind me. But then the roof collapsed on top of her. There was nothing I could do.”
“I’m sorry,” Abbey murmured.
“Well, Callie thought it was me. So did Garrett. No one knew about my sister. I soon discovered that being dead has its advantages. I could make my plans and carry them out without the pressure of being on the run. Garrett destroyed my entire family, so I’ve made it my passion since then to destroy him. And get the laptop back. My father’s legacy. With that, I’ll be able to build a new life anywhere in the world.”
“You hired Holtzman,” Bourne said.
“Yes. I knew about him because of Wilson Scott. I wanted him to take Garrett. Torture him. Find out where he was hiding the laptop. Then kill him slowly. But you got in the way and stopped Holtzman. I took his failure as an omen that I should do it myself. I planned to do that today. But dead is dead.”
“What about us?” Abbey asked. “Are you going to kill us, too?”
“You haven’t wronged me. In fact, you were Garrett’s victim, too. But the laptop belongs to me.” She took a hand off the rifle long enough to gesture at Bourne with her fingers. “The keys to both vehicles. Toss them to me. Your guns, too. Slowly and cautiously. I’d rather not kill you, but I’ve traveled a long road, and I’m finally near the end. If you get in my way, I won’t hesitate to use the rifle.”
Carefully, Bourne withdrew the key fobs for the Highlander and the Audi from his pocket. He threw them across the short distance, where they landed at Vix’s feet. She waited as he did the same with the Glock and CZ 9mm. He didn’t bother with his knife, but that wasn’t going help him now.
Vix took the guns and threw them over the ruins of the house. She sidestepped toward the Audi, the DDM4 still level and pointed at their chests. When she reached the car, she glanced inside through the window and smiled. Bourne didn’t have any trouble reading the meaning behind her expression.
The laptop was there. She’d won the race.
“Leave me the keys for the Highlander,” Bourne called. “I have to get Abbey to the hospital. Garrett shot her. She’s still losing blood.”
Vix shook her head. “You’ll follow me.”
“I won’t. I only care about Abbey.”
She opened the door of the Audi and glanced at the empty black landscape around them. “I’ll drop the keys out the window a quarter mile down the road. You can retrieve them there. That should give me a sufficient head start.”
When she climbed behind the wheel, she had to put the rifle down. Jason thought about charging at the vehicle. He had a one-in-a-thousand chance of getting there before she retrieved the gun and fired back. But he stayed where he was, holding Abbey. Something told him that Vix was a woman of her word.
Bourne stood there as Vix fired the engine of the Audi.
He watched her drive away with the Files.