The metal ground viciously into his scalp. “If you refuse, I will pull the trigger. If you speak one word more, I will pull the trigger. And then I will leave you lying in your own blood and brains while I send a telegram to your boy friend, and he’ll come running just the same. Do you understand me, Fowler? Now write.”

***

THREE HOURS LATER, Aaron was lying on the carpet full length, face down.

It wasn’t comfortable, but he wasn’t doing it by choice. Colthorne had ordered him to the floor once he’d written the Judas letter to Joel, and they’d both been here in silence ever since.

Aaron hadn’t asked about what he was doing here, or his plans, or anything else. Colthorne had made it clear he didn’t want to talk, and Aaron wasn’t inclined to push him. The DDI presumably needed him alive, at least for the moment, but you could hurt people a lot before they died and Aaron didn’t want to offer the provocation.

He was, he knew, probably going to die tonight. It was the only available conclusion. Perhaps Colthorne was seeking vengeance, or perhaps he was having another go at pinning his crimes on others, and wanted Joel and Aaron to—what? Write out confessions of something or other, assert they’d lied or forged the documents, set up a joint suicide afterwards to avoid awkward questions?

It didn’t stand a chance of working to Aaron’s mind, but he didn’t suppose Colthorne thought in the same way he did. And after all, why not take the chance, even if it meant racking up two more bodies? They could only hang you once.

Because Colthorne was surely going to hang. A witness to Marks’s death had popped up, and another to Colthorne’s visit to Marks’s office, thanks to the barrage of publicity. There would be enough evidence to mount a prosecution for the detective’s death, if not Thaddeus Knight’s killing or Sammy Beech’s judicial murder. Public feeling would demand it.

Did Colthorne really believe he could get away with his crimes even at this late stage? Perhaps he simply wanted vengeance on Joel and Aaron first. It was hard to say.

Either way, Aaron had helped him. He’d written what Colthorne had told him, the words that would summon his lover, his absurd, brilliant Joel who had lit up the last few weeks in a way that Aaron had never experienced, for the convenience of the man who intended to murder them both. And now Aaron was lying on the floor, waiting for it to happen.