Four months, that’s how long he’d been with Patterson in Bangkok, four months of being on and off a gurney while they’d injected him and transfused him and genetically cut away at little parts of him and added other parts for their experiments and their controls.
And then Lancaster had come and gone, all in less than a single afternoon. Monk hadn’t had a chance to prove himself—until now.
Farrel had the woman, and if Farrel was anything like Monk, there’d be damn little of her left by morning, nothing left for him.
He felt a howl rising in his throat, raging to be released, but he held it in, tamped it down, and swallowed his pain, subsuming it with another need. More cops had arrived. They were cruising the streets and heading into the alleyway and parking lots, looking for him.
They wouldn’t find him.
With the sleeve tight around his arm, he worked his way to the edge of the grocery store’s loading dock and levered himself up onto the platform. From there, he climbed to the roof. A giant cottonwood tree overhung the gable behind the neon sign proclaiming Bagger’s Market to the world, and, grabbing hold of the biggest limb, he swung himself out and upward into the branches. It was easy from there to make it to the next tree, and, high up in the heart of that cottonwood, he settled in to wait. The ground was crawling with cops and cars now. They were killing him with their lights and sirens.
They’d come in from both ends, east and west, and were everywhere, like the bits and pieces of trash littering the area. If she hadn’t shot him, he might have made it out of the cordon. He’d lost precious seconds taking the hit and tying up his wound—the bitch.
He dug in his pocket for more silver gelcaps. Dr. Patterson had given them to him along with the glasses to help mitigate his searing sensitivity, and they worked—to a point. Huddled in the treetops, he breathed into the pain, his eyes squeezed shut, his hands over the glasses. Patterson had promised him new eyes, and if Monk had let him live, he might have gotten them. Except by then the die had been cast. Patterson would have as soon destroyed him as helped him.
No. There had been no other choice. He’d had to kill Patterson, and he had to suffer now, but soon he would slay the bastard Farrel and take his remains to Lancaster—lay them at his master’s feet, and thus he would be welcomed home. Lancaster had the resources and the men to fix Patterson’s mistakes. Monk would be the whole, pure soldier he was meant to be.
It wouldn’t be long now.
Geezus. Con jerked Jane to a halt at the edge of the alleyway and pulled her back into the shadows with him. His heart was pounding, his pulse racing, and it pissed him off. If he was going down, he couldn’t afford to go down tonight, not in this damn alley.
He reached in his pocket and pulled out a handful of pills. La vida loca, crazy, crazy frickin’ life, living on gelcaps and justice, or at least his version of it.
He popped another blue gelcap in his mouth, hoped it damn well worked this time, and shoved the rest of the pills back in his pocket.
Out on the street, a cop car roared up and came to a screeching halt. Then another did the same, with both sets of policemen quickly getting out of their vehicles—and he had to wonder what in the hell was going on. These guys were on the hunt, with more police coming in from every direction. Why?
Two thugs on the losing end of a fight in an alley did not warrant this kind of law enforcement reaction. Even with gunfire involved, it seemed excessive. Or maybe he’d just been living in the Third World for too long.
He and Jane were in a narrow walkway between an Italian restaurant and a club bar, and people were starting to come out of both buildings, wanting to see what all the excitement was about.
He turned toward her and refrained from a weary curse. He wasn’t doing a very good job of taking care of her—or of getting rid of her. It had stopped raining, but the air was still damp, and she was shaking like a leaf.
“Put your pistol back in your purse,” he said. “Are you cold?”