The devil moved quickly, hissed even faster, waving his gun in the direction of Annalise. She was shielded behind Michael, but not completely, and when Charlie darted to his right to aim for her head, Michael's only thought was to protect her. In both slow motion and terrible fast-forward, he shoved her farther behind him with his free hand as he pulled the trigger.

The bullet barreled through the air, on a hunt for Charlie's brain. But, Michael's move to keep Annalise out of harm's way had the twin effect of shifting the target by inches, putting him in grave danger.

The last thing Michael saw was the bullet ripping through the devil's arm.

Then a feral yell tore from the man's throat.

Michael's world turned warped as his own gun clattered to the ground. Like thunder after a bolt of lightning, the pain came a few seconds later, cutting through every cell in his body.

With a bone-shattering thunk, Michael crashed to the concrete, his skull whacking the floor of the parking garage. Blood poured from him, leaking all over his shirt, turning it crimson.

Everywhere.

His chest bled absolutely everywhere. Terror dug roots into the corners of her body. Her throat burned with tears, and her lungs tried to escape from her as she cried.

Her head roared in protest, her mind shouting no, trying to deny the horror. She dropped to the ground next to Michael, grasping, desperately trying to do something, anything, as she fumbled for her phone.

Panic welled up inside her, spilling over, suffocating her as she grabbed it in her pocket.

Not again. This couldn't happen twice. She couldn't lose someone she loved again. But the blood...it was on her hands, her face, all over him. Her hand pressed against his chest. Oh thank G.o.d, his heart was beating still. But there was so much red. She couldn't see a thing through her tears, wasn't even sure she could hear past her own cries. Somehow she stabbed the numbers nine-one-one with blood-covered fingers on the keypad before she screamed out a sob, the phone clattering to the ground.

Then a long, low moan fell on her ears.

It didn't come from Michael.

The hair on the back of her neck stood up, and she jerked her head toward the sound.

Ten, perhaps fifteen feet away, the man who'd shot Michael dragged himself upright. He clutched his left arm as it bled on his jacket sleeve. With his right hand, he groped around for his gun on the ground.

In the distance, shouts burst through the late-morning air-maybe from inside the building, maybe from somewhere else in parking garage.

She didn't know where they were coming from, or who was on the way.

She knew one thing and one thing only.

He'd found his weapon, and he was reaching for it.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE.

Eighteen years ago Dora Prince had decided. She was backing out. She told Luke at the fabric shop where they'd agree to meet that morning. There in the last row, amidst b.u.t.tons and ribbons, she wrapped her arms around his neck and said, "I can't do it. I can't go through with it. But I can't be without you either. I'll leave him, and we can be together. I don't need money. I have you."

He smiled warmly, that smile she loved. "Of course, Dora. You just need to talk to Jerry Stefano and call it off."

She drew a sharp breath. The man she'd hired to kill her husband terrified her, with his cold eyes and his even colder heart. He wouldn't be happy. His eyes had glittered when she'd told him the price for the hit, and she was sure he wanted the money. "Can't you tell him?"

Luke shot her a sad smile and shook his head. "Oh honey, I want to. But you know how this works. I need to keep my distance. The only way I can run the street operations for Charlie is by keeping myself clean. The less people suspect me, the more I can do his bidding, and the better I can pay my men on the street. The more I earn in the next year, the better the chance we can get away. I promise, baby. Call it off. Give me one more year to close out my deals, and then we'll find a way to get out of town with all the kids." He pressed his hands to her belly. "Including ours. I wish I could feel the baby kicking," he whispered.

She smiled. "Soon. Another month or so."

But Stefano didn't take the news well when she tried to cancel the hit, nor did Charlie. The man in charge of a burgeoning drug operation in the city summoned her, picking her up for a drive one day when her kids were in school.

She got into Charlie's car, and he talked as he drove out of her neighborhood. "Good to see you again," he said. They'd met once before.

"Yes, you too," she said, even as nerves p.r.i.c.kled down her backbone.

"I hear you want to back out."

She nodded. "I do. I can't go through with it."

He flipped on the blinker to turn right. "Ah, but therein lies the issue, Dora. You can, and you will."

She shook her head, holding her ground. "I thought I could, but I need to move on from all this."

He glanced at her, knitting his brow. "From what? You're my top dealer. You run a magnificent route. I have plans, Dora. Big plans. You can work with me."

She swallowed, sucking in all her fears. "I can't do it."

He slammed on the brakes and pulled over on the side of the road, then stared at her. "It's too late for you to make that choice," he said in a snake-like whisper.

"Why?" she asked, her voice quaking.

"You're in too deep. Your husband has gone too far. His questions threaten my business, and when my business is threatened, my family is, too. I don't like having my family threatened. You understand that, right?"

She nodded, bile rising up in her throat. She reached for the door handle. Maybe she could escape. Run. Call the police. But what would she tell them? That she was a drug-dealing, cheating woman who'd ordered a hit gone wrong?

He laughed and pressed the lock b.u.t.ton. "You're not leaving my car. And you're not backing out. Your husband is figuring things out. I can't have him knowing what I do."

What he did was launder money through West Limos from guns and drugs sold on the streets by the Royal Sinners, who managed their business in the back of a piano shop. Luke, Charlie's right-hand man in the Sinners, had set up that end of the operation to run so smoothly that no one could link Luke, Charlie, the Sinners, the piano shop, and the limo company. But Dora's husband had started to catch on, only Thomas didn't yet know that Charlie was involved.

Charlie clearly wanted to keep it that way. Oh the sheer bitter irony that she'd met the man of her dreams at a simple work party and had tumbled into this dark underworld of money, drugs, and power. A world her husband barely understood. A world she wanted to escape.

Her heart raced. "What if I leave? What if I leave town with my family?" Dora asked, casting out desperate ideas.

He scoffed. "What if? What if? What if?" He mimicked her like a parrot, then grabbed her chin in his hand. "I'll give you the only what if that matters," he said sharply. "What if you do as you planned? Then I won't hurt your children." His eyes roamed to her belly, and a fresh wave of fear rolled through her. "Are we clear? You don't cancel the hit, and you come out on the other side with a neat, clean robbery-gone-wrong, executed by one of the finest hit men in the Royal Sinners, and then you are free. That is your last debt to me from the drugs you sold."

"Why do you need me to order the hit? If you want him dead, you can call Stefano yourself," she said, clutching at straws.

He narrowed his icy eyes at her and spoke, low and menacing. "I don't order hits. I don't have to. I don't need a hit connected to me, because I haven't made the mistakes you have." He shrugged and fixed on a smile, his tone shifting to an easy one. "But if you pull this off, I will let you go. You can leave town and be free."

Later that night, as she lay awake in bed next to her husband, Dora imagined calling the police. Asking for help. Turning in Charlie. But how was she to say anything and be believed? She was a drug dealer. A former drug user. A woman who was conspiring to commit murder for hire. An adulteress. They wouldn't believe her-they'd lock her up, and her children would be in real danger then.

Thomas was better off dead than with Charlie hunting all of them.

She tiptoed out of bed, grabbed the cordless phone from the kitchen, opened the screen door, and closed it behind her. In her nightgown, she walked deep into her yard and called Stefano. "It's back on."

She hung up, closing her eyes, the ground swaying as she made her choice. This was the only way she could protect Michael, Colin, Ryan, Shannon, and the baby in her belly.

And she did protect them. Even when it all unraveled. Even when the police locked her up. Even when Stefano went to prison. Even when the jury convicted her to life, too. She never gave up the names of the others.

She wasn't innocent. Not by a long stretch. But her silence made sure no one else ever knew who was involved.

It was her last chance to do the right thing when she'd done so much wrong.

For the next eighteen years from her six-by-eight-foot prison cell, she'd pulled it off, her silence driving her mad. But at least her children were safe from men who killed without mercy.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR.

Four months ago Sanders glanced around the cluttered office of Special Agent Laura K. Reiss. Her desk towered with papers, mugs, and picture frames. The bulletin board behind her was stuffed with notices.

She handed him a mug of coffee and sighed sympathetically as she took a seat across from him.

"I need your help, Mr. Foxton," she said, and her voice was deceptively sweet. She was pet.i.te and had blond hair that bounced in a ponytail. A Reese Witherspoon lookalike.

"How so?" he asked, forcing his voice to stay steady even as his gut twisted with worry.

"Here's the thing," she said, in that soprano voice. "Some of those guns you were transporting were illegally obtained. Which makes you a gunrunner for illegally obtained guns." She spelled it out like he was five, then lowered her voice to a stage whisper. "That's kind of a no-no."

"I didn't know what I was transporting," he protested. "I swear to G.o.d. I've never known. They give me the packages, and I take them from point A to point B." That was the truth, the full truth, and nothing but the truth. He'd never asked questions.

Laura nodded sympathetically and took a pull of her coffee. "Oddly enough, that's not really a good answer," she said with a frown. Then she turned it upside-down, her cheery demeanor returning. "But I believe you. I believe you're telling the truth."

He sighed with relief. "Good. Can I get out of here?"

She laughed, then shook her head. "Not so fast."

"What do you need?"

"We have a few options. I can work up some charges against you for your role in transporting firearms as part of the illegal gun trade in Las Vegas, and you can face time behind bars. Or you can use what's in here," she said, tapping her head, "to help me catch some bigger fish."

"What sort of fish?" he asked skeptically.

"Let's just say I'm looking into organized crime in Las Vegas. And I would really like to find out if your guns are tied to something a h.e.l.luva lot bigger."

"I don't know, Ms. Reiss. I guess I should think about it."

She pointed at him playfully and shot him a knowing grin. "Well, you think about it Mr. Foxton. And keep in mind, you'd be doing the city a huge service. Because the more we talk, and the more you share, the better chance I have of putting away the men who are really making Vegas a nasty place. So how about a deal? I keep you out of prison, and you become my informant?"

The only thing he'd ever done was skirt the law. He'd never hurt anyone. Never killed anyone. All he'd wanted was to make a few extra bucks to provide for his family.

He loved his wife, loved his kids, loved his freedom more than anything.

There was really one choice.

Present day G.o.dd.a.m.n cell phone towers.

As John peeled out of the garage of the federal building, he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, stealing glances at his phone as he waited impatiently for the signal to return.

"C'mon, c'mon," he muttered as the wheels met the road, heading toward Michael Sloan's home.

Soon the bars returned, and the second they did he dialed Michael's number again. He had to warn the guy. Michael's White Box client had set him up. John was sure of it now. He'd had an inkling this morning that something didn't add up, but there was no way to know the specifics before Reiss called.

John's investigation into the murder of Thomas Paige and the fed's investigation into organized crime had moved on two separate tracks for the last few months. Over the summer, the murder case had been reopened, thanks to the tip-off John received from Jerry Stefano's ex-girlfriend about other men being involved. Meanwhile, as he'd just learned, Sanders Foxton had been arrested for speeding four months ago, and in return for not going to jail, he'd started sharing all he knew about the operations at what had turned out to be a very shady company.

The same company where Thomas Paige had worked years ago.

A company that had been washed so clean, it raised no flags in the murder, and showed no ties to White Box in the present day, either. There was no paper trail at all to link the drugs and guns to the limo service-or the murder, of course-but it turned out Sanders had overheard a few conversations in his runs, and those clues had been enough for Reiss to tie Charlie, Curtis, and White Box back to West Limo.

Charlie knew how to operate like smoke, hiding his tracks, never leaving a trail. But at least there was evidence now to bring them in.

As he turned a corner, John tried Michael once more. The phone rang and rang and rang.

He kept dialing, but with each non-answer, John's senses told him something was dead wrong.

His suspicions were confirmed when a crackle came over the radio. Paramedics were hauling a.s.s to the same building that he was. Words like multiple gunshot wounds and critical pierced his ears.

Oh G.o.d. He was too late.

When he arrived, an ambulance was racing away, sirens blaring, speeding faster than he swore he'd ever seen one go.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE.