42

The sun bathed Hobbs County in a beautiful mélange of reds and golds. This could be such a breathtaking town, I hated to think so much evil had taken place here. When I parked the car in the lot by the construction site, I took a moment to take it in, to breathe it in. You didn’t get many views like this in the city, one of the trade-ins you had to make to live there. I didn’t mind so much. Spending my whole childhood growing up way out West, I’d seen enough sunsets to quench a lifelong thirst. Living amid the steel and bustle of New York didn’t quite feel like home yet, but it was getting there.

I turned off the car and parked outside the site.

The mall was coming up well. Steel beams were exposed everywhere. Tools and wheelbarrows and mixers were scattered about. I had no idea where I was supposed to meet Reggie Powers. I figured there would be some sort of office structure set apart, or he’d just be waiting for me outside. Yet as I took a quick look around, there was no sign of him.

As I walked through the construction area, dipping under low beams, peeking around corners, I felt a queasy sensation in my stomach when I realized there wasn’t a single person in sight.

Powers’s secretary had told me Reggie would be at the site all day. But there were no other cars on the lot. No discarded papers or bags. No sign that any human beings had even set foot here today. Why would Reggie be here all day if nobody else was?

A terrible suspicion grew that I was alone here. Or even worse, not as alone as I thought.

“Hello?” I called out. My voice echoed through the structure. A chill ran through my body, and I held the backpack tighter. “Mr. Powers?”

Still nothing.

I exited the structure, walked around the exterior.

Several cranes were standing tall over the skeleton, long steel beams lying at their feet. The cement trucks were quiet, side elevators dark.

“Reggie Powers!” I called again. When again there was no answer, I decided it’d be best to get the hell out of there.

I began to jog back toward the car, winding my way around the side of the building. As I passed a blue van, I saw something that made me stop in my tracks. My breath caught.

Beside the van I could make out a human hand splayed out on the ground. As I crept closer, I could see the fingertips coated with blood. The hand belonged to a black man.

The body was on the ground in an awkward position. The right hand was splayed out above the man’s head, the left arm at a ninety-degree angle. The legs were crumpled, one stuck beneath the man’s torso. A single hole was in the center of his head, and a pool of blood had begun to dry.

I didn’t need to check the wallet to know that Reggie Powers had been murdered.

I whipped around, looking for something, anything. He’d clearly been dead a little while, so whoever had done it had either fled the scene, or was waiting for me.

I took the cell phone from my pocket. Dialed 911. I felt panicked as I waited to be connected, every second not knowing what the hell was happening. Was Powers already dead when I called his office? Or had he come here with the intent to meet with me, then was murdered by someone who knew…

Then I knew it. Powers meant to set me up. He knew nobody would be at the construction site. He must have told somebody before he arrived. And that somebody took him out. Somebody who’d begun to think Powers was better off dead. Somebody who felt he’d become a liability.

And when I heard the click of a gun safety being removed, I knew immediately that Raymond Benjamin had killed him.

“Step away from the van, Parker.”

I put the cell phone in my coat pocket. Every muscle in my body was numb.

I recognized the voice. I’d heard it that night at the house on Huntley, as this man tried to torture information out of me.

I slowly turned around. Hands above my head.

Raymond Benjamin was standing ten feet away from me. He held a gun in one outstretched hand. The scar on his cheek seemed to glisten in the darkening sky. His face was a mask of anger and frustration.

“I didn’t want it to come to this,” he said. “Killing is an ugly, ugly thing. If you’d just let it be, Parker, this wouldn’t be happening.”

“Petrovsky. Powers. You killed them both, and for what? To hide your dirty secret? I know what all this is,” I said. “All this by your hand.”

Benjamin took a step closer. “Parker,” he said. “I’m sorry you won’t have a chance to know any better.”

The sky exploded, a yellow blast echoing in the night, and I shut my eyes and waited to die. When after a moment I felt no pain, felt nothing at all except the wind on my face, I opened them. Raymond Benjamin was dead on the ground. Smoke wafted from a bullet hole in his back, right where his heart had beat its last breath. And standing there, smoking gun in his hand, was Senator Gray Talbot.