chapter fifty-nine

Nieto held Jo as a shield in front of his body, his left arm locked tight round Jo’s throat, his right hand with the gun pointed at her head. Eyes glued to mine, Nieto shoved Jo back inside the door of Maclaren’s office.

I stood to Maclaren’s right in front of his desk as he stood behind it, cradling his hand. If I tried to shoot Nieto now, I might kill Jo. I strained for the sound of sirens.

Shadowing Nieto and Jo step for step, I searched for the clear shot as I edged closer to the door. “Let her go, Nieto. You can’t get away.” I was about five feet from the coffee table to the right of the door. “The chopper car won’t even make it past take-off. There’s already an APB out. Back-up’s closing in.”

“I’ve beaten worse odds,” Nieto said, voice calm, eyes dead. “Get his gun,” he snapped at Maclaren, hauling Jo another foot inside the office. “Let’s get out of here.”

Maclaren edged his way out from behind the desk. He slowly walked towards me, still holding his sore hand. His gun lay on the floor between Nieto and me.

Maclaren knelt. With his left hand he retrieved his Glock. But instead of rising and taking mine, he turned his head towards Nieto. “No.”

Maclaren’s gun was aimed at Nieto, not me. “I want to save lives,” the CEO said, “not end them. I never wanted anything to do with Sandy Rose and her fertility clinic.But Dr. Lee, he dragged me in, and with her came you. No more bloodshed. It stops here.”

“What a punk-ass back-stabber you are, Maclaren.” If Nieto was surprised by the betrayal, he didn’t show it. “You were happy as long as you didn’t have to see the real work close-up. You knew what was gonna happen when you called Ms. Sloan with that bullshit about being Piedmont’s egg donor. Sounds plausible. She was a teen when she made the donation. And she’s had nano-work done that makes her look ten years younger now. But you knew it was a lie. So, don’t pretend to yourself that you’re so noble.”

“See, Jo,” I said. “I told you it was a lie.”

Jo’s eyes were bright with tears.

“Of course it was a lie.” Nieto pressed the barrel of the gun to Jo’s temple so tightly I could see the red impression it left on her skin. “But we needed to lure her here so you’d come after her, detective. See, you’ve become a problem that has to go away.”

“What are you saying?!” Maclaren said. “We were going to offer them a deal. I never planned to hurt Eddie or Jossie.”

“No?” Nieto cocked his head. “Then why’d you empty out the place and turn off the security cameras? You figured I’d kill them. Then you’d shoot me in the back. Leaving you in the clear to spin more lies to the cops.”

I heard the distant whine of approaching sirens. Nieto heard them too.

We were three points in a line: Nieto holding Jo at the door to the CEO’s office, me at the coffee table, and Maclaren kneeling between us both.

Nieto’s grip had loosened. Jo must have felt the change in pressure.

She dropped her weight and broke free. Nieto’s lipless smile vanished as he realized he was open. He let Jo go and lifted his gun to me.

I saw the blur of motion and fired at Nieto.

Maclaren’s body jerked like a marionette on strings. Gun in hand, he’d risen from the ground just in time for my shot to punch a hole the size of a blood orange just below his rib cage. Maclaren looked down, stunned, as he crumpled and slid to the ground. He reached for the coffee table to steady himself, but grabbed only a handful of air. The katana mounted atop the glass table rattled as he fell and dropped his gun once more.

Nieto took cover right outside the office door. I was pressed flat on the wall just inside. Jo was lying flat on the ground behind the coffee table and sofa on my right. I signaled her to stay put. She nodded.

The smell of cordite and seared flesh rode sharp in the air. Yet the room had gone eerily quiet. Bubbles of blood frothed at the corners of Maclaren’s mouth. As he tried to speak, the words were drowned in blood.

Then came the burst of bitter laughter from right outside the door. “Motherfucker,” Nieto called out. “You shot your own father, detective.”

My father . . .?

Then Nieto charged through the doorway. His first shot went wide. I pulled the trigger, but my Glock jammed.

Nieto’s second shot punched my left shoulder before I could clear my gun. The impact slammed me back a foot even as my Second Skin tightened into armor. I rolled with the blow, aiming my body as I came out of the back-flip and hurled the jammed Glock at his head. It sliced open his hand as he batted it away.

The flesh on the side of my head burned. My eye stung. Blood poured down my cheek.

From the floor Maclaren whimpered. “Not Eddie. No.” His gun barrel was raised towards Nieto. But his wildly shaking hands had triggered the laser. He’d hit me instead.

Nieto laughed and raised his gun barrel to my head.

In one fluid motion I unsheathed the katana on the coffee table. The sword moved in my hands with a life of its own.

He never got the chance to fire again.

As the blade connected with his temple, Nieto’s face became a mask of blood. He looked down, stunned, as the top of his head fell into his hands. Nieto crumpled, face down in a pool of blood glistening around his head like a perverse halo.

The whine of sirens grew until they blared loud from just outside the building. My eyes were clouding up. Probably the blood from the laser scalp wound. I wiped them, but the fog didn’t clear.The light hurt my eyes. The seared flesh on the side of my head was blistering. My ribs started to throb.

“Jo,” I said, squinting. “You okay?”

“It was just a lie, Eddie. A sick lie.” She wiped her mouth and flashed me a faint smile.

“Paramedics are right outside.” I could hear the clatter of ambulance and police personnel scrambling in the hall.

Jo wasn’t my blood relative, but Maclaren . . .

My mother’s IVF confession at my father’s funeral—how she’d used a sperm donor, some medical student picked from a digital menu. Jo’s offhand comment that Maclaren had earned some extra cash that way back when he was in med school. It all tracked.

Maclaren lay on the floor, barely breathing.

“Nieto wasn’t lying,” I said out loud, “About you being my biological father, was he.” It wasn’t really a question.

I didn’t think he’d heard me, but Maclaren opened his eyes and nodded. “Sorry,” he croaked, his voice a hoarse whisper. “You deserved better.”

Suddenly the counselor’s words to my fifteen-year-old self echoed back over all the years—how if I didn’t change course, I’d kill my father. Or he’d kill me. Of course, she’d meant Piedmont Sr., not this man in a three-thousand-dollar suit. Maclaren just wanted the golden goose with the cure to Alz X in his blood, not a son. Not me.

“When did you know?” I said. But Maclaren had closed his eyes. His head fell back. He didn’t move again. “When?!” I grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. Maclaren’s body hung like a rag doll in my hands. I rose to my feet again.

“Jo?” I said. “We’re safe.”

I turned around. But Jo wasn’t moving.