He hauled Kuhl up onto his rubbery legs, simultaneously turning him toward the terrace, forcing him backward, standing him up against the glass doors, using his own weight to prop Kuhl’s limp, weakened body against the doors as he reached out over his shoulder, slid one of them partially open by its handle, and again pushed him backward—through the opening now, into the wind and rain, back and back and back across the terrace to the guardrail.

The rain swirling around them, lashing them, washing their blood down onto the terrace floor so it mingled together in flowing, guttering cascades that went spilling over the lip of the terrace into the drop, Ricci held the Killer up and looked into his face, shaking him hard, his fists around the bunched wet fabric of his shirt, holding him, holding him there against the iron guardrail above the vertiginous, storm-swept plunge of the canyon and staring into his eyes for one last, long moment of time.

“You son of a bitch,” he said. “You son of a bitch, we did this to each other.”

And pushed him over into the abyss.

Thibodeau had heard the crashing in the room on the cabin’s second floor and wondered what in the name of everything holy was going on.

Upstairs now, working his way down the hall past Derek Glenn, Julia being hustled out of the cabin behind him, it was the room’s sudden dead silence that had gotten his mind racing everywhere at once.

Thibodeau tried to push in the door, found it blocked, and ordered the men behind him to put the ram to it.

Moving through the splintered doorframe into the room, he noticed two things that made his eyes grow wide.

The first was Ricci sitting on the floor, rain blowing over him through an open terrace door. He had propped himself back against the wall, a wide pool of blood under his right leg, a slick reddened knife on the floor beside him.

The second thing Thibodeau noticed was that he was alone.

Thibodeau put away his questions for the moment, rushed across the room, and crouched over him.

“You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, gonna need something to stop the flow,” he said. Then he saw that Ricci had gotten open the tac pouch on his belt and was struggling to fish something from inside it. “What’re you looking for in there? I can help you get it out . . .”

Ricci looked at him, hesitated a beat.

“Wound-closure gel,” he said, nodding for him to reach inside.

THIRTEEN - SAN JOSE GABON, AFRICA

THIRTEEN

SAN JOSE GABON, AFRICA