It went without saying that Soames and Castle were dead. Both men had lost a good portion of their skulls and there were twin fans of blood and brain matter spread across the gravel footpath next to them. My gun was up, but anyone studying the scene would notice immediately that the direction of my gun barrel and the spray of blood were at contradictory angles. Not that something so obvious would make a jot of difference. I wasn’t going to stand there like a statue and wait for the police investigators to arrive at the scene.

I had to move.

Not to escape justice: I could prove that it wasn’t my gun that had fired the killing shots. I had to move because whoever was out there could be adjusting their aim to put a round through my head.

As I raced off the path I was calculating the trajectory of the shots. The Marriott was a high point to my left, but the blood from the head shots had splashed toward the hotel. We had been hidden by shrubbery and trees from anyone on the road where we’d left our cars. The shots hadn’t come from a boat on Garrison Channel behind me. There was only one place left where the shooter could have been stationed.

Placing a tree bole between me and the gunman, I glanced up at the nearby ice stadium roof. St. Pete Times Forum was a huge oblong building, with glass-fronted galleries on the two sides that I could see. The roof was a shallow arch, and could be negotiated by a nimble person, but it didn’t appear to have a walkway or any visible service ducts where a shooter could be positioned. At each corner of the building, forming support bulwarks for the galleries, were squat square towers with flat roofs bordered by low walls. My gaze fell directly on the one nearest me.

From the corner of this tower came a flash and almost instantaneously a chunk of the tree I was hiding behind was blasted into splinters. The crack of a high-velocity round came to my ears in the next instant. The precise moment I’d seen the flash I’d moved, and the bullet that struck bark from the tree missed me, but I wasn’t sure that I’d avoid a second round. The shooter was armed with a sniper rifle, and from this distance it could put a bullet directly through a tree trunk as flimsy as this one.

Dodging to my left, I immediately reversed direction and went right, throwing myself through bushes toward the slope leading down to the channel. I heard two reports of the rifle, but thankfully, no rounds ripped through my body. I scrambled over the embankment, went down on my belly and placed the swell in the ground between us. He couldn’t see me now, but I couldn’t see him either.