both hands, and the light beam went up too, and all went dark, leaving Rourke a cardboard cut-out against the sky.
“Dion?” Rourke shouted. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Dion shouted back, not at Rourke but Frank. “Move it, now. He’s got a gun. Get away from the cliff.”
As seemed to happen in Dion’s world these days, things went from bad to worse. With bewildering speed, Rourke turned and seized the younger man by the scruff of the neck, it looked like, but it was probably his coat, and yanked him toward him into a chokehold. Just like in the snapshot, but without the sunshine or smiles. “Oh, man,” Rourke said now, more a whine than a roar. “You don’t know what you’ve done here. He was going to go out painless. He wasn’t going to know what hit him, you dumb shit. Look what you done.”
Dion was doing just that, looking at what he’d done, and he felt that familiar slide of ice through his veins. He’d put Frank Law in a noose, gun muzzle against his temple, inches from a deadly fall. He watched Frank fight the grip, saw Rourke totter a bit, find his footing and hold fast, pure sinew, a wannabe Mohawk, a man not afraid of heights.
“I don’t understand,” Dion called out. He had knitted the plan together on the long drive up, custom designed for Scott Rourke, who was the home-grown religious type, rabid, reflexive, fiercely protective. Unless he had it all wrong, and having it wrong was a big possibility too, Rourke would rather see Frank dead than raped and ravaged in jail for the next twenty years. He called out, “He’s not going to jail, Scott. You got it wrong. He didn’t kill Kiera. We got a new lead on a guy, and it’s not Frank, and it’s not Rob either. It’s one of Rob’s employees. We have the guy locked up tight, man.”
The air cracked at his left, and he dropped to a crouch and froze. The bullet had whistled past his ear, he could swear it was Rourke’s way of saying “Don’t bullshit me.” He hitched his flashlight to his belt and stayed crouched. Stretch this out, he told himself. Things had shifted again, and yes, backup would be good now. They might not save the day, but they would resolve matters fast enough.
He could hear Rourke saying sorry to Frank, and he thought he heard a click, and he definitely heard Frank’s yell of fear, almost a shriek, and it got him up out of his crouch to give it one last try, no longer a hostage negotiator talking but a pal to the rescue. “C’mon, Scott. We can sort this out. It’s not the end of the world. You need help, and I can help you get it. And by the way, Frank wants to live as much as you and I. Right?”
“Frank doesn’t know what he wants,” Rourke shouted. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
Dion breathed hard. His options were running low, and a last-ditch plan had sprung to mind, and it was a shitty one. Worse, it was comical. But it was all he had, his last grenade. He raised his voice once more, trying for an emphasis he was not trained for. “Don’t be an idiot, Scottie. You want to protect him? Well, guess what. I care too, and a lot more than you do.”
If nothing else, Rourke would lose his train of thought, and that would buy some time. Rourke’s response was angry but puzzled. “Hey? What d’you mean?”
“I mean I don’t want him going to jail, and I have my reasons that are none of your business. And I’m going to keep him out of jail if it kills me, and you’re going to help me by taking the rap. Right? I also have the means, and all you gotta do is hear me out.”
He had Rourke’s interest. The man’s face lifted, tuned in, leery but wanting to hear more. “Don’t know what the hell you’re talking about here, Dion. Explain yourself, and make it fast.”
Frank made a gagging noise, his boots scrabbling against the rocks and grit and grasses on the lip of a chasm. Dion could hear pebbles cascading, falling away into the abyss. He called out, “I’m not saying anything till you swear you’ll take the rap for him. Would you do that? You love him enough to trade your soul for his?”
“’Course I would. Any day.”
This was better than Dion expected. No bullets this time, but an actual dialogue. “Great, then I can make him get away with it. I can plant evidence. He’ll get six months for being accessory after the fact, probably on probation. He can do that easy. But you’ll go down for the murder itself. I’ll see to it.”
Rourke soaked up the information and then was bellowing again. “Why? Why would you do that? I don’t get you. You’re playing with my head here.”
“I said I have my reasons,” Dion bellowed back. “Take it or leave it.”
Rourke seemed to lose patience and yanked Frank again, pulling him against him like a rag doll, cocking the gun against his skull, and again Frank cried out. Dion cried out too, the last resort, the punchline that would make him the laughingstock of the police community for years down the road. “I love him more than you ever will,” he yelped. And cleared his throat and gave another hoarse shout. “You stupid bastard, that’s why.”
There. Ha ha ha, he had the asshole’s undivided attention now. The muzzle lowered, and Rourke was staring his way. Dion spoke more calmly now, like a man who’d gotten a load off his chest, like there was nothing left but gentle persuasion. “I saw it in your eyes, Frank. You felt it too, didn’t you? That night at the bar.”
There was no night in the bar, no love at first sight. In fact, he hadn’t seen the guitar man up close and in person until this very night. Frank made a noise, more a rodeo calf in distress than a man in love, but Rourke was diverted, still trying to get a handle on what he was hearing. “You? You have a thing for Frankie?”
“It’s more than a thing,” Dion said bitterly. “He’s what gets me through my day. And I don’t care if you don’t feel the same for me, Frank. It doesn’t change what I’m trying to do here. I’m going to get you off the hook, promise.” He searched his mind for a handy catchphrase, something gay-sounding, but drew a blank. He watched Frank struggle.
Rourke let loose a laugh. “Holy Jesus, and I thought you were into girls.”
“You can’t help what you’re into. Let him go, and we’ll talk it out, okay? We’re all freezing to death, and we better get our story straight before we go back down that mountain.”
“I can tell you one thing, Frankie’s straight as an arrow,” Rourke said. “Right, Frank?”
Frank snorted and kicked and tried to twist out of the older man’s grip, but he was losing steam, starting to sag.
Dion was starting to sag too. Ridiculously, he still held gun in one hand, flashlight in the other, neither aimed anywhere meaningful. He looked at his own boots, inhaling the mountain air, trying to stay on track. It was the stress, the humiliation, the wound in his side. The grass and mucky snow beneath had a rotten earthy smell, and now that they’d all done shouting, there was quiet, and beyond that a muted conversation, millions of branches sawing together whenever the wind gathered force. And there was something else, too. Mountains were great auditoriums in the dead of night, and sound carried. He heard a distant grumble and knew what it was. Engines. Three or four gutsy V8s working upward at speed.
The timing was incredibly bad, too late and too soon. He raised his voice, which was worse than hoarse by now, breaking up like bad reception. “If you don’t let him go, he’s going to the pen, and he’s going to end up with a scar like yours, but worse. Let him go. Let me save him. Only I can save him. I have an ironclad story for you to tell the cops, and long as you get it straight, this is going to work. But we have to get on it now.”
