Flashbulbs exploded in a hail of light as voices rained down on him from every angle. Faces moved in and out of his sightlines as he tried to maintain his already shattered dignity. Shouted questions and angry expressions assaulted his senses. Heavy hands clung to his arms as if he were a common criminal. It was as though he’d been thrown into a pool of sharks, and his blood was in the water.

The normally talkative lawyer was silent as they walked him through the throng of reporters and out the door to a waiting van. Petrov, a veteran of many high-profile criminal trials, smiled at the irony.

He’d often been involved in perp walks that had been set up as media events. While his client remained silent, he would walk alongside in tailored suits, loudly proclaiming the innocence of the accused. In most cases, his protestations were quoted at length in the media. His handsome face was repeatedly shown throughout the course of the trial. His humorous quips and acid-tongued rebuttals were grist for the media mill.

Today, he was the man who was handcuffed and being led through the media gauntlet. In all his years as a lawyer, he never imagined that his career would come to this.

Chapter 17

Steven had spent the night and half the day in the trash-strewn passageway behind the houses on eighteen hundred Oxford Street, watching as the rats frolicked in the trash, listening as the sirens split the morning air, and hoping that he could finish what he’d begun.

Now it was noon, and even though the rest of the city was bathed in bright sunlight, the alley was still dark. That was fine with Steven. Darkness was what he needed. It was the one thing that could shield him from the horror of looking at himself, and knowing that he’d killed his friend.

Having grown up just a stone’s throw from his friend in North Dakota, Steven didn’t know just how perfect the dirty passageway was. Once used by sanitation workers to collect trash, Philadelphia’s alleys were now places where trash languished. Thieves and rapists used them to hide their evil deeds, robbers ran through them to try to elude police, and every now and then, a body would appear, rotting until the stench exposed its presence.

The alley was the ideal place to fight a war against evil, because the alley was the best place to find it. Steven didn’t know that, however. He only knew that he had done the bidding of his master, and in doing so, he wondered if he’d become the evil he was supposed to fight.

He pushed that thought from his mind as he looked around and tried to get his bearings. Despite the fact that trash and overgrown weeds gave the alley a junglelike appearance, it was still in the open, and remaining there meant risking capture.