Sampson and I ran through a small garden that had a pool and cabana area on one side and an expanse of lawn and the sea on the other.

We could see Jones’s people beginning to fan out across the grounds. Shafer came into the hotel with guns blazing, I thought. He doesn’t seem to care whether or not he survives. But I do. I need to question him. I have to know what he knows. I need all the answers.

“What about this prick Whitehead?” Sampson asked as we hurried toward the house.

It was dark near the water, a good place for Shafer to attack from. Dark shadows stretched out from every tree and bush.

“I don’t know, John. He was at the hotel briefly. He’s a player, so he’s after Shafer, too. This is it: Endgame. One of them wins the game now.

“He’s here,” I whispered. “I know it.”

I could definitely sense Geoffrey Shafer’s presence; I was sure of it. And the fact that I knew scared me almost as much as he himself did.

Shots sounded from the darkened house.

My heart sank, and I had the most disturbing and contradictory thought: Please don’t let Geoffrey Shafer be dead.

Chapter 117

ONE MORE TARGET, one last opponent, and then it would be over. Eight glorious years of play, eight years of revenge, eight years of hatred. He couldn’t bear to lose the game. He’d shown Bayer and Highsmith a thing or two; now he’d demonstrate to James Whitehead which of them was truly “superior.”

Shafer had noisily crashed through thick foliage, then waded waist deep into a foul-smelling swamp. The water was distressingly tepid, and the oily green scum on the surface was an inch or two thick.

He tried not to think about the swamp, or the insects and snakes that might infest it. He’d waded into far worse waters during his days and nights in Asia. He kept his eyes set on James Whitehead’s expensive beach house. One more to go, just one more Horseman.

He’d been to the villa before, knew it well. Beyond the swamp was another patch of thick foliage, and then a chain-link fence and Whitehead’s manicured yard. He figured that Whitehead wouldn’t expect him to come through the swamp. War was cleverer than the others, though. He’d been committing murders in the Caribbean for years, and not even a blip had shown up to suggest a pattern to the police. War had also helped him in the matter of Christine Johnson, and that had gone perfectly. It was a mystery, inside a mystery, all inside a complex game.

Shafer lost track of everything real for a moment or two — where he was, who he was, what he had to do.