Mission Road Page 0,77

tent, his rifle aimed at my chest. "Why don't you two come with me, and we'll start the morning over again."

I DISLIKE EXECUTIONS. ESPECIALLY MY OWN.

Guy White sat in his portable wheelchair in the gazebo, before the giant Christmas tree. He listened in deadly silence as I told him about my phone conversation with Lieutenant Hernandez.

Alex stood at his boss's side, assault rifle ready. Two other guards, plus Madeleine. Our odds of survival were somewhere south of hopeless.

I noticed small details with perfect clarity. White had an oxygen tube strapped around his nose, but it wasn't plugged into anything. There was a toothpaste stain on his burgundy Turkish bathrobe. His white flannel pajamas were missing the middle button. In the morning light, his skin was translucent, every vein in his hands and face inked in perfect detail.

The air smelled of smoke. The column billowing up from the house could probably be seen for miles. Sirens wailed in the distance.

I'd lost the bear slippers somewhere between the kitchen and the gazebo. Under my feet, the frozen grass felt like ice shards.

"You expect me to believe this," Mr. White said at last. "You expect me to believe a police lieutenant - "

"He has my girlfriend." It took every ounce of my will not to run, to make a mad dash across the lawn. "He's going to kill her. We have to leave now."

"How foolish do you think I am?" White's voice trembled with rage. He looked at Ralph. "Why did you kill my son?"

Alex Cole cleared his throat. "Sir, the police'll be here any minute. If we're gonna take care of these - "

"I want to hear," White said. "I want to hear his reasons."

"Sir," Alex insisted, "the house - "

"Let it burn."

The house obeyed that order. Flames flickered in the second-story windows.

White stared at Ralph, waiting.

If Ralph was scared for his life, he didn't show it. His feet were flecked with grass, his sweatpants sooty, his T-shirt peppered with shrapnel holes and red punch stains. Bits of broken glass glinted in his hair. But he stood up straight, looked Mr. White in the eyes.

"I didn't kill Frankie, patron," he said. "You did that."

The old man's tiny supply of blood collected in his cheeks. "How dare you."

"Maybe you didn't hold the murder weapon," Ralph said, "but that doesn't matter. Frankie died because he hated you. He told me what was going to happen. I just didn't understand."

"I trusted you - "

"To save him. I know. Couldn't be done. Couple of nights before he was murdered, Frankie came into the pawnshop. He'd been drinking. He said he'd had an argument with you. Said you were trying to arrange a marriage for him."

White closed his eyes, his face like paper. "It was for his own good."

"Frankie confessed to me about killing those women. He said he couldn't control the anger. He wished you'd sent him away, like you did Madeleine. He said Madeleine was the lucky one to get away from you."

Madeleine stared at Ralph. White's guards all wore the same expression - as if they'd just stepped into a nest of rattlesnakes.

"Frankie wanted out," Ralph said. "He was going to keep killing until somebody killed him or you were forced to send him away. And you know what the worst is? I thought about doing it. About killing him. After he told me about the women . . . I was thinking to myself: I might have to do it. I even thought Mission Road would be the best place."

Ralph looked at Madeleine, his eyes full of sympathy, as if she were the one with the terminal disease. "I'm sorry, chica. Some people can't be saved. I've kept that in mind ever since Frankie died. Every time I had to hurt somebody, kill somebody - I pictured Frankie. And I pictured your father. I imagine you felt the same way."

The specks of paint on Madeleine's face, the streak in her hair, made me think of the portrait in Frankie's closet - a twelve-year-old girl, composed entirely from shades of blue.

The sirens got closer. We were losing too much time. Even if I left right now, I wasn't sure I could make it to Maia.

"I should kill you," Mr. White said. With his translucent skin and the air tube around his nose, he looked like some sort of ancient, disoriented catfish, brought to the surface for the first time in its long life.

"Not going to solve anything, patron," Ralph said. "Let us go. Let