87

Mace James arrived early at the office of Dr. Aaron Gillespie. He waited alone in the shaded parking lot, secluded from Johns Creek Parkway, hoping David Brewster would keep his promise. At 8:00 he started getting nervous. At 8:05 he called Brewster and left a message. At 8:10 he texted Brewster and called Jamie. She didn’t answer either.

Gillespie pulled up at 8:15 and greeted Mace. “Is your client here?”

Mace explained that Brewster had promised to show but now wasn’t answering his phone. Gillespie suggested they wait inside. He unlocked the front door, and Mace followed through a lobby area and down a dark hallway.

“Don’t move,” a voice behind Mace said. “Hands behind your back.” Mace felt something like a gun barrel on the nape of his neck. He tried to glance quickly over his shoulder, but the man pressed the gun harder. “I mean it. I’ll blow you away in a second.”

Gillespie turned and looked at Mace. “Do as he says,” Gillespie warned.

Mace tried to size things up, but everything was happening too fast. Gillespie’s in on this? Mace knew he needed to make a move—try to catch the guy behind him with an elbow. If he let the man handcuff him, he would lose his one opportunity. He felt the gun pull back a few inches, no longer touching his skin.

In the next second, without warning, Mace felt a debilitating pain shoot from the small of his back through his entire body. He tried to jerk away but collapsed to the floor. The electrical current from a Taser had set every nerve ending on fire.

Stunned, Mace felt two men pull his hands behind his back and slap handcuffs on. He looked up, blinked, and saw Caleb Tate and Rafael Rivera.

“That was stupid,” Caleb snapped.

“It won’t leave marks. It went through his clothing.”

They yanked Mace up by his arms, and Caleb held a gun to the back of Mace’s head. Rivera kept the Taser a few inches from Mace’s side.

“My car’s out back,” Caleb said to Gillespie. “Have you got the girl?”

“She’s in the other car.”

Rivera and Caleb forced Mace out the back door and into the passenger seat of Caleb’s car. Caleb drove, and Rivera sat behind Mace, the Taser touching Mace’s right shoulder.

“Try something,” Rivera said. “I’d like to see you squirm again.”

Mace considered his options, none of which were appealing. “You won’t get away with this,” he said. “Too many people know.”

Caleb scoffed. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a black T-shirt, and for the first time since Mace had known him, his hair wasn’t perfectly in place. There were dark circles under his eyes, and he hadn’t shaved that morning.

“This isn’t TV,” Caleb said. “You can save your clichés.”

“Masterson knows. Finnegan knows. Plus, three or four of your former clients all know about this.”

Caleb kept his eyes straight ahead.

“Shut up,” Rivera said from the backseat.

“Masterson just got an e-mail thirty minutes ago from Jamie’s computer,” Caleb Tate said smugly. “It tells Masterson to ignore the prior messages. It says that your theories about me were all wrong. That you were just trying to get a deal for Rashad Reed. That Gillespie hypnotized this other client of yours—David Brewster—and found out there was no prior hypnosis. As for Detective Finnegan—nice try, but Jamie doesn’t trust him. He’s out of the loop.”

“Where’s Jamie?” Mace asked.

“You don’t get to ask the questions,” Caleb said. He switched on the radio and made a left turn. “Besides, you’ll figure it all out when we get there.”

It was dark by the time Caleb pulled into the long driveway that looped around to the front of his mansion. Motion detectors flicked on streetlamps, illuminating the scene in a hazy glow. Mace James had spent some time here when Caleb had first retained him. Caleb had escorted Mace through the house, showing him the bedroom where Rikki died, explaining what had happened step by step. Now Caleb was staging yet another drama at the house that murder built, and Mace would have a starring role.

“Get out,” Rivera said from the backseat.

Mace made no effort to move. Why cooperate? He realized that whatever plot these men had in mind depended on leaving no Taser marks or bruises from blunt blows. They were probably going to stage some kind of shoot-out.

When Caleb reached over to unbuckle Mace’s seat belt, Mace decided to make his play. He lunged at Caleb and landed a vicious head butt just above Caleb’s eyebrow. Caleb grunted in pain, but before Mace could land another blow, he felt the Taser dig into his shoulder and the current surge through his body. He convulsed in the front seat for five seconds, ten, while Caleb spouted obscenities and pressed his palm to his forehead to stanch the flow of blood.

“Get him up the steps! Now!” Caleb demanded.

Caleb half jogged to the front steps, trying to keep the blood from dripping on the sidewalk. Rivera pulled Mace from the car, but Mace had a hard time getting his muscles to cooperate. He fell once, stood up at Rivera’s prodding, and staggered toward the front steps. Rivera held the Taser inches from Mace’s body and pushed him along with his free hand.

“Make another move, big man,” Rivera taunted. “You like being a hero?”

Mace felt like somebody had clawed his insides out. He tried to focus and come up with a plan while he walked. When he reached the front porch, he saw an SUV pull into the driveway. Aaron Gillespie got out, wearing gloves and brandishing a gun. He stopped about twenty yards from the front porch.

“What happened to you?” he asked Caleb.

“Our boy wants to be a hero,” Caleb said, his face covered with blood. “We’re going to have to change this up a little. He’s going to have a contusion on his head, so we’ll need to make sure that when he falls, he hits that part of his head on the steps. I’ll twist out of the way and fall against the doorpost or something so I’ve got an explanation for this. Everything else stays the same.”

Mace still didn’t know the details of this script, but one thing was obvious—his character didn’t make it to the final credits. He suspected that Jamie was already dead. He realized it was her 4Runner that Gillespie had driven. He decided to at least give the medical examiner and cops something to work with.

He was still on the porch, not far from Caleb Tate, which was apparently where they wanted him to die. Gillespie was facing them, gun in his right hand. Mace could feel his muscles starting to regroup and he said a quick prayer. A thought crossed his mind—Samson in the temple. He might have to die, but why die alone?

He bolted down the steps, straight for Gillespie, gambling that Caleb didn’t want to shoot him in the back.

“Stop him!” Caleb yelled.

Gillespie pointed the gun but froze, his hand trembling. A few more steps. But just before Mace got to him, Gillespie lowered the gun and fired. Mace felt his left thigh explode with pain, driving him to the ground.

“Get Jamie!” Caleb yelled. “And finish him off right there!”

Mace’s left leg felt like it had been ripped apart. The pain was shutting down his thoughts. He tried to stagger to his feet, but Rivera pushed him back down and stood over him with the Taser. Caleb had a gun pointed at Mace’s head.

Gillespie jogged to the 4Runner and tucked the gun in his waistband. He opened the passenger door and pulled Jamie out. She appeared lifeless, a rag doll. Gillespie carried her down the sidewalk, his arms squeezed around her waist.

He stopped a few feet from Mace, close enough in the muted light that Mace could see the sweat on Gillespie’s brow, his eyes wide with panic. Caleb came closer, his gun still trained on Mace’s head. Rivera was there as well, finger on the trigger of the Taser. Gillespie propped Jamie up and positioned himself behind her, his arms wrapped around her. He pulled out the gun and wrapped her dead hands around it, pointing it at the front door. Using Jamie’s finger on the trigger, Gillespie squeezed off four random shots.

That’s when it clicked for Mace.

They were setting it up to look like Jamie had killed him. Like he had been at a meeting at Caleb’s house while Jamie was lying in wait outside. She had opened fire, killing Mace, perhaps thinking she had killed Caleb too. They would probably stage Jamie’s subsequent suicide, and Gillespie, as her counselor, would claim she had been suicidal for some time.

After Gillespie fired the shots at the front door, he turned the gun toward Mace. Three weapons—two guns—all pointed at Mace. It was time to pick one.

He took a deep breath, ignored the pain in his wounded leg, and lunged headfirst at Caleb Tate. But Tate sidestepped, managed to keep his balance, and threw Mace to the ground. Mace felt the pain bite at his leg as he hit the turf and rolled. He cringed, anticipating the impact of the bullet.

He heard a shot and looked up in time to see the bullet rip through Rivera. Gillespie had dropped Jamie and had the gun pointed squarely at Caleb Tate.

When he had lunged, Mace had knocked Caleb’s gun to the ground, but it was still several feet away. With his hands cuffed behind his back, Mace had no chance of getting to it in time.

He did a quick reassessment. Gillespie killed Rivera?

Before Mace could process it all, Gillespie fired two more shots, one that hit Caleb Tate’s left shoulder, the other exploding Caleb’s face. “That was for Rikki,” Gillespie said as Caleb crumpled to the ground.

Mace rolled twice, trying to get to Caleb’s gun, but Gillespie beat him to it. He stepped on it and pointed Jamie’s gun straight down at Mace.

“I saved Jamie,” he said. His hands were shaking, his eyes wild with fear. “I can’t save you.”

Mace closed his eyes, thought about the things in life he had left undone, and heard the next shot echo through the night air.