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My perception changed, from shock perhaps. Everything had a hazy element to it. Events progressed in a slow, deliberate fashion. Every inch of my body throbbed, feeling as if I swelled with each heartbeat. I couldn’t understand why Ortega had been alone, why Baker and a whole platoon of cops weren’t with him.
I lifted my head and muttered, “Ortega?”
He didn’t move.
Gabe stood. Bloody fingers opened, and he dropped the knife to the floor with a clang. His other hand clutched Ortega’s gun. He smiled at me as he took in my body, then his smile fell. For the first time since I’d been bound, his manic gaze narrowed.
Looking at my injured arm, he shouted, “He damaged my mosaic!” Gabe fired the gun over and over into Ortega’s body.
“Stop!” I screamed.
My ears were overwhelmed with a high-pitched screech cause by the gunfire. Gabe turned to me, his expression reflecting two levels. In one, I could see the affection he’d always felt for me. And the other reflected intense lust. Terrified, I tried kicking and yanking free. Pain shot through my injured arm, so I concentrated only on the rope that bound my right wrist. I tugged and felt the rope move. Turning my head as much as possible, I looked at that iron stake. Gabe had hammered it into a seam between two pieces of hardwood flooring. I pulled, and one of the wooden boards lifted a quarter inch. If I hadn’t been so traumatized, I might have laughed at how Nick’s lack of home restoration skills could lead to my escape.
“What are you doing, Lise?” Gabe asked as he stood in front of the door. Then there was an explosion and a burst of red mist at his side. He spun like an Old West gunslinger and fired two shots into the hall. A grunt was followed by the sound of someone tumbling down the stairs.
Gabe glanced back at me, wonderment in his eyes. “How about that? I hit him.” Oblivious to the bullet wound in his side, he ran from the room.
I yanked on the rope again and pulled the stake from the floor. Grasping the handle of the butcher knife, I wrenched it from the wood and set to work cutting the ropes. As an amateur chef, Nick kept his knives sharp, and I freed myself in seconds. When I stood, my head swam, and I dropped the knife, though I managed to keep on my feet. My arm was on fire where the wood shard pierced me. I started to barricade myself in the room, but Gabe had shot someone, a cop, then gone after him. I bent down for a weapon and ended up with the circular saw. It was heavy and clunky, but I gripped it hard. Wearing only a cut piece of rope around each wrist and ankle, I shuffled to Ortega. He was dead.
I hurried through the door and down the hallway. Gabe stood two steps down from the top of the staircase, his back to me. He aimed Ortega’s gun down the stairway. Baker lay on the floor at the bottom of the stairs, a hand over a spreading bloodstain on the front of his shirt. He held the other hand up in front of his face as if it would ward off bullets. I tried to use both hands to bring up the weighty saw, but my left arm was pretty much useless. I swung the saw backward then forward, awkwardly lifting the tool in my right hand.
Baker saw me, a pained smile grew, and I could just hear him mutter, “Atta girl.”
Another step, and I pushed the saw blade against Gabe’s back and pulled the trigger. The tool and Gabe both screamed as the saw cut into flesh and meat. The spinning blade caught on bone and skittered into his left shoulder blade. Gabe’s hot blood splashed my face and body. Still, I squeezed the trigger. Gabe thrashed about, somehow tangling fingers in my hair. Our legs got ensnared. We fell down the stairs together, the saw bouncing with us. One roll smashed my side against a step and pushed the chunk of wood deeper into my arm. I screamed. With a loud crack, we hit the bottom. The saw skittered past us and came to rest at Baker’s feet. On top of Gabe, I tried to stand then found it was a skill I no longer possessed, so I quickly crawled to Baker, who sat up a few feet away, his stomach bleeding.
“Oh God, Baker. He shot you.”
“I’m okay, a little dizzy is all.” He licked his lips. “Fuckin’ lucky shot.”
I heard a gasp behind me and turned as Gabe shifted into a sitting position, his back against the wall at the base of the stairs. He looked at his right leg. It was broken and wrenched at an unnatural angle. Next, he took in the gunshot to his side. I watched, amazed, at the amount of blood puddling the floor from the wound I’d opened in his back. His expression was tight with pain, his face pale and shadowed with gray smudges. Yet he smiled.
“Gun?” I said to Baker.
“Lost it.”
“I still have mine.” Gabe held up Ortega’s gun. He aimed it at me then at Baker. Back and forth. One then the other, like the eyes on a Felix the Cat clock. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
“This was the perfect hideout, don’t you think?” Gabe laughed and shook his head. “You told me about the sketch of The Floating Ballerina.” Gabe spoke calmly. “As an art scholar, I had to see it. Since Nick’s in Vienna, I broke into his office at the university and took it. With Nick out of the country, his home was the perfect studio to prepare a model. But the artwork had to be shared, so the actual creation of The Floating Ballerina was conducted back where the model was found. Created in the medium of death.”
“You left that photo of the sculpture in the Medici Chapel, the one made by Michelangelo. How did you know that was what the police were calling you?”
“Remember when you were arguing on the phone with this cop?” He used the pistol to point at Baker. “You said something about the case he was working and the psycho, Michelangelo. It was pretty easy to figure out.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why do any of it?”
“Why? Why? Why? Don’t you understand?” Gabe paused then shouted, “Because I’m an artist!”
We heard distant sirens.
“I called for backup, asshole,” Baker rasped. “You’re done.”
Gabe smiled at him. He brought the gun barrel up so that it lay over his lips like a finger. “Shhh. Wait a minute. Quiet please. Wait a minute.” He lowered the gun, once again pointing at us. “I’ve just had a brilliant idea, an inspiration. My final piece, the three of us in death.” Gabe gasped. “Oh, Lise, with you in the nude, and Baker and I dressed, it will be like Manet’s The Luncheon on the Grass. A lovely tableau—no—a triptych! Yes!” The smile and wonderment left his face and were immediately replaced with a sneer. “A triptych! Who’s first?”
I laughed, the kind of laugh that came out of my nose, more of a snort, like I was trying to hold it in, to hide it, but couldn’t. Gabe’s face reflected my confusion, and in my peripheral vision, I saw Baker look at me. They probably both thought I’d lost it. I hadn’t, or maybe I had, which was why I was going to try something.
“Oh, you’re funny, Gabe.” I reached out and squeezed Baker’s leg, trying to signal him to follow along. “You are so not a gun person.”
Baker chuckled, though it sounded anything but sincere. “You got that right.”
Gabe angled his head inquisitively. “What are you two going on about?”
I grinned at Baker. “Should we tell him?”
Baker shrugged then grimaced, the gesture causing him pain. “Yeah, why not?”
“Gabe?” I paused for effect. “You only have one bullet left.”
Gabe looked at the pistol, as if a cursory glance would tell him if it was true or not.
“Yep,” Baker said. “I was counting too. Between what you fired up in the room and the two you shot at me, you only have one bullet left.”
“So that leaves the question—who will you shoot?” I said. “You hit Ortega with all your shots because you stood right over the body.”
“The fact you shot me was just plain luck.” Baker took his hand away from his bloody stomach as if to show Gabe.
“It’s not easy to hit someone at a distance, even as short a one as between us,” I said.
“Yeah, you’re—what? A dozen feet or more away? You’re bleeding out. I bet that gun’s getting heavy, ain’t it? My guess is you miss whichever one of us you choose.”
I grimaced at a fresh burst of pain in my arm. “And you’ll still be alive and have a lifetime of prison ahead of you.”
Gabe’s eyes flashed back and forth from me to Baker as he tried to assess our truthfulness. A smile broke on his face. “Well, damn.” He reached up and knocked the drywall behind his head with the gun barrel. “On this canvas. A masterpiece in red to rival anything by Rothko.”
A part of me wanted to try to stop him and beg him to embrace life, no matter what lay ahead. But that entreaty would be for the Gabe I’d known for so many years. Not this one.
Gabe placed the barrel of the pistol in his mouth, looked back to the wall as if checking the angle, turned back to us, and smiled around the gun. With a muted explosion, a splash of red painted the wall.