“I don’t like riddles. You have three seconds to answer my question.”

“One.” He raised his pistol slowly toward Gurney’s face.

“Two.” The barrel glinted in the shaft of moonlight.

“Three.” He pulled the trigger.

Chapter 50

Apocalypse

Gurney’s reflexive jerk away from the flash and the deafening blast would have sent his chair toppling over backward if it weren’t for the edge of the table. For a minute he couldn’t see anything, and all he could hear was the harsh, ringing echo of the gunshot.

He felt some wetness on the left side of his neck, a slight trickle. He put his hand to the side of his face, felt more wetness on his earlobe. As he moved his fingers higher, he discovered a searing, stinging spot at the very top of the ear—the source of the blood.

“Put your hands back on top of your head. Now.” The whispery voice seemed far away, lost in the reverberation in his ears.

But he did his best to comply.

“You hear me, yes?” said the distant, muffled voice.

“Yes,” said Gurney.

“Good. Listen carefully. I will ask you my question again. You must answer it. I am a good judge of what is true and what is not. If I hear truth, we go on, harmlessly. Just a nice conversation, you know? But if I hear a lie, I pull the trigger again. Clear?”

“Yes.”

“Each time I hear a lie, you lose something. Next time not just a little nick from your ear. You lose more important things. You understand?”

“I understand.” Gurney’s eyesight was starting to recover from the muzzle flash, and he could again make out a dim swath of moonlight across the middle of the room.

“Good. I want to know everything about this so-called mistake at Lakeside Collision. No riddles. Pure truth.” In the moonlight the silver-plated pistol barrel gradually descended until it was aligned with Gurney’s right ankle.

He gritted his teeth to keep from trembling at the thought of what a Desert Eagle slug would do to that joint. The immediate loss of his foot would be bad enough. But the arterial bleeding would be the real problem. And telling the truth or not, in response to this or any subsequent question, was not the lever that would control the outcome. The lever was the Good Shepherd’s sense of personal security. And that lever could now move in only one direction. Because there was no possible scenario in which Gurney alive could pose a lesser risk to the Good Shepherd than Gurney dead.

The only variable yet to be determined was how many body parts would be severed before he bled to death. Before he bled to death, alone, on the floor of Max Clinter’s cabin, in the middle of a swamp, in the middle of nowhere.

He closed his eyes and saw Madeleine on the hillside.