of breath as his nervous system convulsed under the blow, but his thick arms and chunky hands kept their maniacal grip. Tyrell jerked himself backward onto his heels.
Suddenly, he felt his balance waver, stars and points of light flashing in front of his eyes. Shit, not now. He dropped down onto one knee again as his balance failed him.
The blow came from nowhere. Casey’s grip relented for an instant before the shape of a fist flashed in front of Tyrell’s eyes and smashed into his face, crunching through the cartilage of his nose. The world tilted wildly as he reeled sideways, tripping over a thick rug and slamming hard onto the carpet.
The Texan crawled onto his knees, wiping his eyes with his sleeve as his chest surged with chronic wheezes. To Tyrell’s dismay, despite the liberal dosage he’d unleashed into Casey’s face, he appeared to be recovering swiftly. In contrast, Tyrell could barely breathe, sucking air down in desperate, rattling gasps past his ruined septum.
Casey lunged toward him and Tyrell emptied the can into his face from point-blank range. Casey managed to shield his eyes, but the stinging haze forced him away.
Tyrell turned and crawled on his hands and knees, stars flashing before his eyes in a nauseating whorl of colors. Behind him he heard Casey scramble in pursuit, and looked over his shoulder to see the once wide blue eyes now puffy and contracted into slits. Tyrell lurched on rubbery legs the final couple of steps to the front door, reached out, and grasped for the handle as he sank to his knees.
The door swung open, the handle yanked from Tyrell’s grasp as a tall figure loomed in the doorway before him. Tyrell looked up through his bleary eyes and a flush of relief flooded through his body as Captain Louis Powell stared down at him.
He watched as Powell took in the scene and dropped onto one knee, his gloved hands grasping the dull metal of a service pistol that glinted in the light. Casey Jeffs stared through puffy eyes into the gaping maw of the weapon, and then two deafening gunshots crashed out. Casey quivered as two bloody red splatters smeared his chest, and then he toppled over and slumped against the wall as thick blood oozed from his fractured heart to drench his shirt.
Tyrell, slumped on his knees against the wall in the corridor, looked up at Powell.
“Jesus, am I glad to see you,” he managed to rasp.
In one fluid motion that seemed to take an age, Tyrell watched as Powell stood and swung one heavy boot deep into his belly like a freight train through a balloon. Tyrell felt the remainder of the air in his lungs expelled in a great rush that surged through him, his vision melting into a milieu of swirling colors.
Tyrell collapsed onto his side with his back against the wall, his mouth wide open in a silent scream, eyes bulging and skin sheened with a cold, clammy sweat. He tried to speak but no sound came forth. The pulsing agony in his chest reached a new and excruciating plateau that forced a strangled cry of anguish from somewhere deep in his throat.
Captain Powell squatted down alongside him, his face taut with regret.
“You should’ve left this one alone, Lucas. I gave you every chance that I could,” he said softly. “Another twenty-four hours and this would all have disappeared, but you just couldn’t leave it alone.”
Tyrell tried to speak, but no sound issued forth from his tortured lungs.
Powell shook his head slowly.
“You and Lopez have turned yourselves into liabilities and there’s nothing more I can do for you. Believe me, if there was any other way I would take it, but I’m sure as hell not giving up my share of Patterson’s fortune or going to jail for either of you.”
Powell reached down and shoved his gloved hand across Tyrell’s bloodied face, leaning his weight behind it.
Tyrell gagged for air and struggled ineffectually against Powell’s grip until the last remaining strength seemed to vanish from his body. His lungs burned and tears filled his eyes, a melancholy as vast as the universe weighing him down as he felt Powell force the still-smoking pistol into his helpless hand. In dismay Tyrell recognized the weapon as his own, taken from him barely an hour before by the captain himself.
Tyrell, entrapped in a throbbing crucible of agony, felt a sudden release from the pain.
And then the blackness finally enveloped him as Powell stood and vanished