First attempt, he hotfooted it about fifty feet before taking shelter behind a pallet.

Second try, he slithered out another hundred feet, then crouched behind a forklift to reevaluate.

Third time, he found a niche in back of a six-foot-high pallet.

His face was hot and wet, and large drops of sweat fell off his nose. His armpits were soaked; his clothes smelled rancid. His breathing was fast and shallow. His rib cage hurt from tension and his oxygen-starved inhalations.

A piece of concrete whizzed by his ear, landing on the ground and breaking into little tippy-tappy noises. Decker whipped around but saw nothing.

Donatti.

But where had it come from?

Decker sucked up oxygen from the frigid air and tried to get a fix on the direction of the projectile. He zigzagged in and out of merchandise, until another stone whizzed by his head.

He veered to the left, then scoped out the new area.

He still didn’t see any platform or staircase.

Darting from aisle to aisle, from box to box and carton to carton. He paused a moment, leaning against a pallet marked COMPUTER DESK AND HUTCH. FRAGILE. Sweat was cleaning out his system. The adrenaline rush was subsiding, fatigue taking its place.

Catching his breath…

Closing his eyes…

Just a moment…

His hand dropping to his side…

The barrel of the gun pointing to the ground…

Just a few more moments.

His eyes snapped open when he heard the voice.

“Freeze, motherfucker!”

Freeze, Decker thought.

Hit men don’t give warning.

But cops say “freeze.”

And good cops usually don’t say “freeze, motherfucker” without provocation. So this was probably a cop and not a nice one.

All this clicked inside Decker’s brain within a split second of decision-making. He dropped and rolled, while shooting in the direction of the voice, the semiautomatic spitting out muzzled fire because of the silencer—pfft, pfft, pfft, pfft. He scrambled to his feet, but remained stooped behind a crate, his lungs stinging as he panted, his gasping so loud it almost drowned out the moans. Slowly, he rose, but his shakiness forced him to lean against a wooden beam. Unsteady with pinpricks of starlight dancing in his brain, he tried to equalize his balance.

The moaning had stopped.

Decker peeked out.

Of sizable girth, the man had fallen with his head back, one thick arm across a padded chest, the other arm extended open and lying over the concrete. The torso had twisted so it was resting on the hip, the stomach spilling onto the floor. The legs were crossed over one another. The face was hard to make out, but the build certainly could have been Merrin’s.

Decker inched out from his hiding space.

Donatti was standing over the contorted body, eyes cast downward, arms crossed with a pistol in the left hand. His voice was a whisper. “See what happens when you give warning. He should have just taken you out.”

“Did you…” Decker’s heart was beating so fast it threatened to break his sternum. He was still trying to suck up air. “Did you do it or did I?”