LITMIR.BIZ

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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 from his midriff. He tried to pack the open wound by clamping his arm over it, but knew he’d been wrong, and it wasn’t a minor scrape but a fatal split, and his guts were coming out. He was becoming a corpse even as he sat breathing the comforting warm automobile air and listening to Leith’s intermittent drone.

      This was what he wanted, to die in the line of duty, but he was desperately afraid. He was ice-cold and either very still or shaking hard, he couldn’t say, even as he tried to look at his own hand. How would it all turn out without him? He should have written to Kate. Should have said sorry to Looch’s widow. He should have been nicer, should have tried harder. Worst of all, maybe he’d been wrong about everything, and he’d been fighting his own shadow. Now that he was here at the end of the line, it was unbearably sad. He hoped he wasn’t crying. The timing was wrong, that’s all. Say something smart to Leith, he told himself. Something nice. He tried to speak, but nothing came out. He tried to raise an arm to wipe across his eyes, but lost the strength. The disco lights flared and went out.

      * * *

      Once they were on their way down the mountain, Leith launched into his lecture, not sure why he bothered. “She says she told you to wait for backup. You know what backup means? You want me to spell it out for you?”

      Silence.

      “Anyway, you’re going to have to get it together. Rourke’s gun’s been fired, and I have to know who fired it and where the bullet went. How are you doing?”

      Dion looked at him briefly, blankly, and didn’t respond.

      Feels stupid, Leith thought. And so he should. Ballsy, going after Rourke on his own, and more than a little bewildering. But ultimately just stupid.

      Leaving the mountain behind him, upping the speed on straight flat rubble now, Leith glanced sideways and noted by the console lights that his passenger was leaning heavily back now, staring a bit too serenely at the windshield, that he was breathing shallow, that his arm was pressed across his torso in a peculiar manner. On a second glance he saw that the pale grey lining of Dion’s patrol jacket, partially flipped back and visible, was black with a migrating wetness, and with a start he realized where that bullet had gone, and why he wasn’t getting any answers.

      “You’ve been shot,” he said, hitting the strobes and siren toggles. “Hang on. I’ll get you to emerg.”

      Ten minutes later, he pulled into the ambulance-only bay at the Wrinch Memorial, and a pre-notified team rushed out with a gurney, portable oxygen, and an arsenal of blood-staunching supplies. Dion was out cold now, unresponsive. He was wrangled from the car by two large medics, laid on a gurney and wheeled into the hospital with measured speed.

      “Why didn’t he say something?” Leith asked the nurse as he followed. “Why didn’t he just bloody mention, oh, by the way, Dave, I’ve been shot?”

      The nurse didn’t know why, so he asked, more to the point, “Is he going to live?”

      She couldn’t answer that either. But things were crazy enough tonight, and Leith was needed elsewhere. He left a card at the nursing station with a request that

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