An alley ran behind the restaurant. They followed it to an-other alley, turned right, and stopped just short of the next street. They stayed in the shadows, outside the circle of light cast by a nearby streetlamp. The street was dark and desert-ed.
"You weren't kidding about the police not coming to this neighborhood," Scott said. "Half a dozen people shot in-side a church and not one cop car in sight."
"They've been told to say away," Benny said.
Scott looked both ways along the empty street but couldn't get his bearings after traveling a couple of hundred yards underground. "Do you know where the car is?"
Benny pointed left. "That way." Then she slipped the Beretta from the back of her pants.
"Remember," Scott said, "you only have two bullets."
Benny nodded. "I'll make them count."
Scott turned to Victoria and the children. "There's a car we can use parked a few blocks from here."
"Where are we going?" Samantha asked.
"Home, sweetie," Scott said. "We're going home."
"Are those men still chasing us?"
"I don't think so," Scott said. "But we still have to be careful. And quiet." He pulled out the empty Beretta.
"Aren't you out of bullets?" Jake asked.
"You saw that, huh?" Scott said.
"I was watching you."
"Let's hope the bad guys didn't notice." Scott looked at Benny. "You ready?"
She nodded.
Scott led them down the sidewalk. Victoria and the three kids were behind him. Benny was last. They walked through two empty blocks. A car drove past and Scott tensed, but nothing happened. Just punks with Latin techno blasting from the speakers and rattling the windows. As Scott neared the next intersection, Benny gave a low whistle. He glanced back and saw her signal for him to turn left. He turned and kept going. Everybody stayed close and walked in the shadows as much as possible.
At the next street, Scott stopped when he recognized the intersection. The cross street was the one the church was on. The one where they had parked the car. The church was a block to the right. He looked left and saw the Oldsmobile at the end of the next block. He turned and led everyone to-ward it.
Scott was twenty feet from the Oldsmobile when two men stepped out from the shadows at the edge of the side-walk. Jones and G.I. Joe. Both pointed pistols at him, Beretta M-9s, just like the ones Scott and Benny were carrying, except the guns these guys carried probably had plenty of bullets in them.
G.I. Joe's suit jacket was soaked in blood, and his right arm hung limply at his side. Blood dripped from his finger-tips onto his shoe. The pistol was in his left hand, but he held it steady.
Victoria screamed when she saw them. Scott reached back and nudged her directly behind him.
For several seconds Scott and the two men just stared at each other. Then Jones sighed. "Are you really going to make me say it?"
"Say what?" Scott asked.
"Put your pistol down on the sidewalk. Set it down easy. Don't drop it. The way things are going for me today, if you drop it, it will go off and I'll get killed by an accidental discharge."
"I'd sure hate for that to happen."
Jones smiled. "Point taken."
Scott didn't move. Just stared at the CIA man.
So Jones aimed his pistol directly at Scott's face. "I meant what I said."
Scott set the empty pistol on the sidewalk. "There aren't any copies," he said. "None that I know of, anyway. And no emails. Even if I had wanted to send it to somebody, the file is too big to email."
"You could have used Dropbox or some other file-sharing website," Jones said.
"I didn't."
"But you were able to watch it, right?"
Scott nodded. "On an old donated computer in the church rectory. Check it out. It doesn't even have an Internet connection."
"I believe you."
"Even if I had a copy, I wouldn't use it," Scott said. "The safety of my family is a lot more important to me than what's on that video."
"So I have, in effect, permanent leverage over you," Jones said, lowering the pistol. "Because no matter what happens, I, or one of my associates, could always get to your family."
"Exactly," Scott said, feeling the faintest glimmer of hope. "You won. You have the video. Which means it doesn't exist. And never has."
"You make a good case," Jones said. "Maybe you should have gone to law school instead of joining the DEA. Think how different your life would be right now."
"That's exactly what my wife tells me," Scott said, won-dering how this guy knew so much about him. "Maybe I will."
Jones laughed. "I'm not sure how to take that, the fact that I sound like your wife." He rubbed his eyes with his left hand like a man who was very tired. "As for law school...I'm afraid that's not going to happen. I'm sorry." He aimed the pistol at Scott.
"Wait!" Benny said as she stepped in front of Scott, her hands raised in surrender. "He's telling the truth. We don't have any copies. We're not a threat to you."
Scott opened his mouth to tell Benny to get out of the way, but then he noticed the Beretta stuck in the back of her pants, just a foot in front of him, grip angled to the right. An easy draw for him.
Jones reached into the pocket of his suit coat and with-drew the flash drive. Holding it by the lanyard, he said, "You people are still acting like this is what's important. This is not what's important." As he talked, the pistol in his other hand drooped until it was pointed at the sidewalk. "I'm sure that someone, somewhere, has a copy. If not you, then someone else. And it will get out. That's why this is not what's important. What is important is-"
Scott snatched the pistol from Benny's pants. Benny shouted, "Everybody down!" as she ducked and spun around behind him. Victoria said something to the kids. Scott sensed a lot of movement behind him, but he ignored it. His brain was in hyperdrive, totally focused on finding the white insert on the Beretta's front sight and lining it up with his target.
Then G.I. Joe fired.