in indecision. Maybe he was having second thoughts about how much he loved Frank Law, if he was worth going to prison for. Maybe he just wasn’t buying the lie, or maybe he was going back to the simpler Plan A, shoot the loved one to save him from grief.
Dion held out his arms. “Send him over here. You can do the time a lot better than he can. Nobody’s going to mess with you, that’s for sure.”
“I think you’re full of shit,” Rourke said. “It’s a trick, and a pretty sleazy one too.”
One minute, two minutes, and they’d be coming down the ravine, and in a panic Rourke’s trigger finger would twitch, and blood would spray all over the hubcapped gates of heaven. Frank’s blood. Frankly, Dion wasn’t sure he cared any longer, or if so, why. Who was he trying to impress, now that he had nobody to impress? Not the RCMP, not Looch in his grave, not Nadia from rehab, and not the old Indian Willy who thought they shared some kind of kinship but was dead wrong. He had nobody to impress, and what did it matter if Frank got a bullet in his head? In the spirit of resignation he told Rourke, “I’m coming forward so we can talk without yelling. Don’t you fucking shoot me.”
“I won’t shoot you,” Rourke said. “Just keep your hands up.”
Gun holstered, flashlight slung in its loop, Dion linked chilled hands behind his head and stepped forward, coming close enough that Rourke’s face became more than puddles of shadow. “I’m giving you my word, Scottie. All I want is for him to be free.”
Rourke studied him with wonder, and with revulsion, and then something else creased his brow, some kind of understanding. “I feel for you, man,” he said. “Being like that. Must be horrible.”
“It is horrible.” Dion reached out and touched Frank Law on the arm, claiming possession. Rourke released his chokehold, and Frank crashed to his knees. Dion helped him up and pulled him away from the madman, behind him to safety, and now that the danger was more or less passed, it crossed his mind almost irresistibly to whip out his own gun and put one through Rourke’s face, if nothing else just to get back at him for all this crap he’d put him through tonight. Flying backward, Rourke would sail over the cliff. Soar free like the eagle he always wanted to be. And that would be that.
He said instead, “First off, you’re going to have to break your alibi for the day Kiera died.”
“I can do that,” Rourke said.
“And I’m going to need your DNA.”
“You’re not getting my DNA how you’re thinking, y’queer,” Rourke said, but just joking.
“Spit into a baggie, that’s all you have to do,” Dion said. “Could you do me a favour and put that gun away? Makes me nervous.”
“No chance,” Rourke said. “You think I’m stupid?”
“I know you’re stupid,” Dion spat out, angrily, not wisely.
The engines were definitely there now, somewhere above, not loud but distinct. Rourke heard it too. “Cops,” he said in a furious rasp, and his gun was up again, pointing at Dion. “You lying fucking cheating piece of shit.”
“Wasn’t me,” Dion told him, too cold to care about the gun in his face, which he had come to realize wasn’t going to discharge anyway. He just knew it. Probably wouldn’t have discharged into Frank’s skull either, and what he should have done, instead of charging like a fool to the rescue, was wait at the crossroads as he was supposed to, and these two fucking hillbillies would have finished their Scotch and returned down the mountainside, where they would have been arrested without incident. But he hadn’t waited at the crossroads, and here he was in the middle of this big ugly mess he’d made, miles too late to go back, and so much explaining to do that it almost made his knees buckle. “They were going to track you down one way or another,” he said. “Just be cool. They’re going to arrest Frank, but they have nothing on him. I know the file. All they have is what Lenny’s saying, but Lenny doesn’t know anything, really, and he’ll change his tune. So until Frank confesses, they have nothing, and long as he sticks to denial he’s home free.” He pulled something from his pocket, a granola bar wrapper he’d forgotten to dispose of, and held it out. “Spit into that.”
Rourke did as he was told, and Dion pocketed the evidence that was supposed to dupe the entire North District Major Crimes Unit into a wrongful conviction. Rourke nodded at Frank, who was crouched down, massaging his neck, not returning the gaze. “Hear that, Frank? Don’t stop denying, and you’re home free, kiddo.”
“Fucking maniac,” Frank whispered, like his vocal cords were too sore to blare it out.
With no standing ovation for his grand performance, with nothing left to say, Dion puffed out a sigh and looked at the sky, and Rourke got the last word in, waving his gun. “One thing you better know, Constable Dion. You betray me, and I’ll kill you. That I promise. I’ll track you down and I’ll kill you, and it’ll be slow, and it will hurt.”
Dion nodded. The engines had been purring into position up on the ridge, and now they were cut, and there came instead the telltale silence of a stealthy descent, peppered with discreet noises, the crunch of snow, the snap of ground cover and rustling of shrubs. He opened his eyes from a waking doze and said to Rourke, “Better throw your gun down, ’less you want to end it right here.”
Rourke hesitated, maybe picturing that glorious showdown of his dreams, but his madness only took him so far into that imagined glory, and bottom line was he wanted to stay here, as most people did, eking it out until the last straw broke. Rourke leaned over and laid the gun in the grass. His hands were up as the team was still creeping forward. To speed things up, Dion might have shouted out to them, told them all was well, but he didn’t. He was starting to flatline.
They materialized from the dark and took command of the situation, and he explained to David Leith in his SWAT-like gear that he’d put Scott Rourke under arrest for the murder of Kiera Rilkoff. Leith asked him about shots fired, but the question was not quite connecting. Dion knew only that he was cold, and told Leith so. Leith told him to hand over his firearm, and Dion did so. There was a party-like chaos now on the mountainside around him, lot of hubbub, Rourke being arrested, shouting something about Frank, Frank being arrested, shouting something about Rourke, and it was almost funny, until some kind of animal went screaming over Dion’s head, a giant bat that was really just a piece of the sky flying off its axis. He raised an arm to fend it off, and when it was gone, so was the crowd, or most of it. A man’s voice woke him from some distance, asking if he was coming or what?
He followed Leith up a difficult path, but not nearly so difficult as the one he’d taken earlier, and like everything else, he’d messed up his pathfinding and come the long way round. His feet took him into a clearing where the vehicles were parked. Engines were starting up, SUVs pushing off. He wasn’t sure where Rourke had gone but knew somebody here must have the asshole under control. The ache in his side was now throbbing like a disco, and matching colours flashed behind his eyelids, red and blue and green. Leith asked him about keys, and he found them in his jacket pocket and handed them over. He was to ride with Leith back to the detachment, where he would give his statement. He wouldn’t have to drive, and that was good news. He dropped into the passenger seat but found it wasn’t the blessed relief he’d been hoping for. Folding himself into a seated position, the pain went from throbbing disco to mangling knife blades, and he felt the blood drain from his face.
He tried to keep his eyes open. The car woke, lurched, and was on its way. Leith spoke, but in a drone of foreign words. The car began its downhill journey, and with every jolt Dion felt warm liquid spurting
