No sound at all. Nothing but the slow ticking of the two cars, barely audible through the ringing in my ears. The son of a bitch is probably moving up to kill me, and if I don’t move, I’m going to die. But if I break for the door, I’m framing myself for a shot. Shivering against Ike’s body, I realize that I no longer hear his breathing. His eyes are still open, but they are fixed and dilated.

Ike the Spike is dead.

“Ray. . . ? Talk to me, Ray!”

Nothing.

The loading door beckons. But as I gather my legs beneath me, Ruby Flowers’s voice sounds in my head, an echo from childhood. “Broad is the gate that leads to destruction, but narrow the way that leads to salvation. . . .”

To my left—in what must be a corner of the old shelling plant—is a pool of darkness so black it could be the bottom of the Marianas Trench. My legs are tensed beneath me like steel springs. Gripping Ike’s gun in my right hand, I launch myself low and hard toward that black hole. As the darkness envelops me, a stroke of lightning flashes in my brain, and I know no more.

Consciousness returns like blood to a sleeping limb.

Pain is the first sensation.

Then light.

The pain radiates from my forehead. The light is faint but real, thirty yards away, illuminating a parked police car. Not a police car. A sheriff’s cruiser.

Ike’s cruiser.

I roll over slowly and feel along the cold cement for Ike’s gun. My right wrist bangs into something cold and immovable. I touch it with my hand and feel along it. A steel rail. It’s one loading arm of a forklift. That’s what I slammed into when I ran into the pool of darkness. A goddamn forklift.

The gun is underneath the fork.

Closing my hand around its butt, I get to my feet and walk toward Ike’s car. Strangely, I am unafraid. Unafraid because I know I’m alone. If I wasn’t, I would be dead. Ray finally believed what I was telling him, and once he did, his priorities changed.

At the edge of the darkness I look at my watch. Eight forty-five. I met Ike around eight. Ray started shooting about ten minutes after we started talking. I don’t know how long the shooting lasted, but he’s had at least twenty minutes to reach the target I offered up to him to save myself.

Ike’s body lies behind his cruiser, where I dragged it in that last furious rush. His eyes are open but unseeing. I feel his carotid artery to be sure, then hold my hand over his mouth.

Nothing.