Eve whirled to her right, gun held out, her back to the south culvert wall, eyes scanning the northern slope, dotted with trees. Nothing moved. If Mumford was up there, he would have been able to see right into the trench, except where his view was blocked by trees. But when he saw an opportunity for a shot, he’d taken it.
Where was he now?
He’d probably changed position, she thought, perhaps moving closer.
She ducked, and scrambled forward, but she was running out of trench. Up ahead was a road that crossed over the culvert. A pipe carried the water under the road, like a tunnel, to the continuation of the culvert on the other side. That presented a problem. If she climbed out and went over the road to drop into the other side of the culvert, she’d be exposed for a long moment and become an even more vulnerable target than she was now. That left her only one other option.
Can I crawl through the pipe?
Just as she was considering that, and beginning to bend down farther to examine the pipe opening, Mumford popped up in front of her like a jack-in-the-box from the culvert on the other side of the road, using the crossing as his cover.
Eve threw herself to her left, slamming into the concrete wall as he fired. She felt the hot bite of the bullet grazing her right shoulder and then she dove forward as he fired again, the shot passing over her head.
The instant she hit the creek bed, she flattened herself and fired three times through the pipe that ran under the street, shooting into darkness.
But it wasn’t darkness. It was Mumford’s midsection, blocking the pipe opening on the other side of the culvert. She knew that she’d just blasted three bullets into him.
He collapsed, disappearing from view.
Eve rose to her feet, aiming her gun over the roadway, and saw Mumford on his back in the culvert. He was gurgling, his gun out of reach of his grasping fingers. She looked over her shoulder and saw Duncan, Ross, and Clayton coming down the hillside against the backdrop of a dark sky roiling with smoke and flame.
They’re alive.
She holstered her gun, lifted herself out of the culvert, crawled across the roadway, climbed back down into the trench, and made her way over to him.
Mumford was hit in the thigh, stomach, and chest. She guessed that he must have caught the last bullet as he fell. Blood seeped out of his leg, bubbled out of his mouth, and trickled out of his nostrils. He was bleeding out externally and drowning in his own blood internally at the same time. He was conscious, but couldn’t speak, his eyes wide with terror.
Eve got on her knees beside him in the muck and blood, took his trembling hand in hers, and looked into his eyes. He weakly gripped her hand, afraid of what was coming next. She held his hand tight, making sure he knew that he wasn’t alone, that she’d stay with him until the end.
It came an instant later. His hand went limp, his pupils became wide and black, and his body seemed to deflate, like a punctured air mattress.
She’d killed him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
In the wake of Michael Green’s murder, Grayson Mumford’s killing, and the explosion that shattered windows throughout Craftsman’s Corner and burned down two buildings, a hillside, and two estates in Hidden Hills, Captain Roje Shaw accepted responsibility for the debacle and wisely took an early retirement.
No civilians were injured or killed in the blast. But Duncan broke his left arm and opened the wound on his face again. A piece of metal punctured Ross’ left side, narrowly missing his heart, and had to be surgically removed from one of his ribs. And Eddie Clayton broke his sunglasses.
Eve was immediately placed on leave, very much against her will. The Officer-Involved Shooting investigation unit determined the shooting of Grayson Mumford was justified, but the department psychologist, who Eve was ordered to see, declared that she needed to take some time off to cope with the psychological toll of the killing.
But a vacation was the last thing Eve wanted. She’d had enough of that already over the last few months while recovering from the injuries she’d sustained on her first two major cases.
She’d only suffered some lacerations, some nasty bruises, and a ruptured eardrum, so she felt that she wasn’t really wounded this time. Not physically anyway and, as long as she kept busy, she wouldn’t be emotionally, either.
That’s why at the start of her second week of involuntary leave, she took an early-morning flight to Raleigh, North Carolina, rented a car, and drove straight to Durham for a very late lunch at Edna’s Chicken and Waffles.
The place was downtown, on the ground floor of an old art deco–style building that was once a Kress department store, the name still etched into the stone. The dining room was packed with Duke University students in logo clothes, retirees, and a couple of uniformed Durham police officers.