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Kyler yells a last inarticulate denial His voice blends with e-and-white flas , the shocks tear into ainst the bar; nodding with each bullet&039;s impact on his body

His cold eyes suddenly blaze to life, but it&039;s an illusion They turn inward to fix on a place where I cannot look-where I don&039;t want to look He slides to the floor

I stagger away froe into nothingness, turning, tuht, free of the first awful crash of agony I twist and soar high in blind flight

Chaven circles below He and the other uish Drawn by the shots, ue interest in their little problems, I hover above the confusion

Their voices fade I seep through a wall, seeking another, more tranquil place, away fro aardly into a pinkjolt Gravity reasserted its claih, the floor I fought it, needing to feelthe instinctive assurance that I still lived

My hands clawed at the cool h it were a life preserver I stayed and was nue

I&039;d wound up in a fancy lounge A huge old walls where brass la cicadas As usual, itwhat I looked like Turning fros under me I&039;d been shot before, but not so , sickening weakness

The bloods tointo the right side offrouts still churning sharply fro-too bad he couldn&039;t have known they&039;d go right through me and on to kill Kyler

He&039;s dead

I bracedmy knee joints to offset their tremors The initial shock threatened to turn into a nauseous disaster, but I gulped it back and sucked stuffy air into hter that did not want to stop Some distant part of ht, but the restraints were broken down It hurt tooas the air lasted, ugly, hts croith uncohts, I needed the release badly It washed overbal me weary and drained, but at peace

I was finally free of the bastard

A last little surge of laughter floay from me, soft and secret

He&039;s dead

He was soh to be glad about it

Next door, the clearly audible after

But he was quick to adjust to the new situation, especially since his own skin was at risk Within a very few ed to invent a plausible story of how I&039;d burst in with a gun to fulfill my own contract on Kyler and escaped The room quickly cleared as he sent his cronies out to search for me and to explain away the coht have heard so upstairs

Then I had to disappear for a tied in to check the stalls for my presence

"You believe that bs he fed us?" one of theet our cut of the profits, who cares? We do what he says and uy he was talking about?"

"Then we give hi C&039;mon, what&039;s the holdup?"

"Just lookin&039; I never been in one of these places before I thought the pots&039;d be shaped different or so"

"The only difference is that some of ours are on the wall and all of theirs are on the floor"

That explained the pink e

"Live &039;n&039; learn"

"C&039;ed shut

When I came back I felt much more tired than before, but better able to think

If those tere a typical example of the kind of loyalty Kyler had inspired in his troops, Chaven had little to worry about in the reprisals departs But he was still one to watch out for as far as I was concerned, since ood reason to keep it a personal fight between us

On the other hand, there was every possibility that he wasn&039;t the saht bewith hi wall to see if he was alone yet, but no such luck, and no wonder With an invisible God-knoandering around the house he&039;d want to have an army around him for protection As it was, he&039;d settled for one man-one too many for the moment The kind of hypnosis that I had in ree of privacy I&039;d have to wait

To better hear as going on I went back through the wall, giving the spot where Kyler had dropped a wide berth It wasn&039;t out of respect for the dead; nervous superstition was a better description for ht encounter in this ethereal form and I had no desire to find out I found a quiet corner and listened to the hollow voices of the living that remained

"Nohat?" asked one unfamiliar to me

"What d&039;yanear Kyler, perhaps looking down at the corpse

"I mean about him You ain&039;t callin&039; the cops on this"

"Hell, no"

"Then wake up and start thinking"

Chaven&039;s voice was ragged "Can it, Deiter, I a, I&039;d had only the barest gli behind Chaven He had to have been Deiter, the specialist Kyler had ordered up to take care of the hit on Gordy, and now the only other witness to the strange circumstance of Kyler&039;s death One more naet all about me

"We take hiet a box and weights and sink him just like any other job We take hiht"

"What about your gun?"

"What about it?"

"The bulls got ways of tracing bullets If they should ever-"

"Yeah, okay, it goes in the drink with hiet another" Pause

"Like maybe this one"

"What the hell is it?" Deiter had to be talking about Escott&039;s Webley It was a unique-looking hunk of hand artillery

"So that shoots I don&039;t think the boss&039;ll ood it did hiuy and hit the boss? What happened to the guy? I had both eyes right on hi there"

Chaven ure it out"

Deiter followed "Invisible? You pullinginto it He said the guy in the book made hiuy Fle, only he could turn it on and off like-like a light bulb, clothes and all"

"That&039;s crazy"

"If it ain&039;t this, then what else?"

"You can shoot through ghosts, can&039;t you?" Deiter hazarded

"I don&039;t believe in ghosts You sahat happened Well, didn&039;t you?"

"Yeah, I already said so I just wanna knohat I saw"

"A guy disappearing"

"But it don&039;t make sense"

"It don&039;t have to-but that&039;s how it is And the worst part is that bastard could be in here right now"

That oot very quiet for a while "What are you going to do about hi at a time First we clean up this ot a story ready for Kyler&039;s bosses?"

"Just what I told the boys here; he put a hit out on Fleot him first We stick to that and we keep our skins"

"What about his family?"

"He didn&039;t have any that he wanted He told me he left them behind and wanted to keep it that way"

"Maybe the wife skipped to Reno," Deiter sniggered

"Who knows? I think any skirt would have been crazy to get cozy with hi he had to a friend and I didn&039;t like him all that onna sink hi at his funeral"

"Can it, Deiter In fact, you can everything you heard and saw in here If you want to stay out of the loony bin you don&039;t say a word about invisiblethe sho?"

"Until and unless the other bosses say otherwise The boys&039;ll follow et their money as usual oh, shit"

"What?"

"We gotta get Opal back She&039;s the only one who can make head or tail of the books Without them, I&039;m crippled"

"But you don&039;t knohere-"

"I&039; her, and this town ain&039;t so big that they can hide forever I&039;ll have Calloway look into things froot the cops to do our work for us?"

"If you can trust him"

"He&039;s in too deep and likes the money too much to turn on us now"

"You hope What about the problem down the hall? We can&039;t keep that spook in private stir forever"

Chaven&039;s new responsibilities were starting to irritate hiet to hiht, boss"

The use of his new title s in motion I went solid almost as the door shut

Kyler had fallen on his face, but they&039;d rolled hins of life, and left hi was thick with his blood, and the cold, dizzy scent of it teased nore it as I borrowed the phone on the desk

It was a relief to know thatdistance and therefore traceable I&039;d been worried that Calloway had driven over the state line to Indiana or had at least left Cook County The other end of the wire began ringing for attention

And kept on ringing Where the hell was he?

I dialed the nu the first tiain, to rown very dry Then I had to hang up and disappear when a couple of Chaven&039;s men ca conversation, they would be taking their time on this job I hurled out past them to find another phone One of the

Random searches are neither fast nor efficient and that muchThere ht have been any number of phones handy downstairs, but I wasn&039;t dressed for fancy socializing I&039;d be spotted in short order and either thrown out on ain Both possibilities would preventon, and worse, fro out what had happened to hih a door, and swept the rooain, I checked the place in one fast look No phone, da either people or not finding a phone Jeez, when you&039;reoff the wall for you, but when you really need one they vanish like roaches when the lights come on

Onedark table and padded chairs all around Soht to install a phone and I took ie of the fact

Or tried to Just as I was dialing the last nu open There was nothing else to do but drop the earpiece back and disappear I clearly recalled that in thelack of privacy

The i enough to check the place and maybe puzzle over its emptiness Unhappily for me he left the door ajar, the better to hear any ave out an internal and quite silent sigh andfor myself He was alone I decided that it wouldn&039;t hurt for him to enjoy a short nap while I co a direct and low-key approach, I just walked in on hiht have been more dramatic, but for this kind of work, the less ruckus, the better

My unsuspecting victi at it I was ready for him to hear me and turn, but he took no notice He was a stockyloose on his fraht His clothes didn&039;t fit this place any more than &039;s pattern with the blunt toe of his shoe This siht a rush of prickles to the back of my neck Deiter had mentioned a "spook"; ht prove to be as i to not take the chance, I began to quietly back out The radually turned I froze, held fast by wide, wasted eyes and a scraped-out expression He glanced at me without concern, his pasty face and subdued manner much too cals, so, for he continued with his infantile ganition reluctantly burst upona man to hypnotic influence, I&039;d lost control ofhatred buried deep by the shock ofbolt into another&039;s mind, with predictable effect This soft, helpless husk before me was all that was left of Frank Paco

I was frozen with apprehensive shock and fascinated

"Paco?" I ventured, not really knohy

"Yes?" he unexpectedly replied

After a ain "Do you know an to trace a different pattern in the rug, one that only he could see

He paused to giveflickered over his face, perhaps the corpse light of a dead memory "You were on the boat"

So he recalled my last hell-filled days aboard the Elvira "Anywhere else?"

He shrugged I rubbed a hand overhi intruder who had dynamited his basement and subsequently blasted away his sanity On the other hand, as it so important to me for Paco to recall that encounter? The answer caht up the question

Here was Kyler&039;s other source of inforht down the sudden tre out fro Stupid reaction, I thought, and made myself stop

Paco didn&039;t seem to notice

The boardrooone to be er to ot an answer, but not the one I expected It was Shoe Coldfield and I didn&039;t have to hear the tone of his voice to know that so Where&039;s Charles?"

"Shit if I know When he didn&039;t answer the phone I came over to check on him and he&039;s not here Where the hell are you?"

"A roadhouse so broken into?"

"Looks it; I don&039;t think the&039;sob got bored and took off leaving the door hanging open"

Damnation "No, he wouldn&039;t, not unless he was on the run, and uess is that he&039;d call you for help at the first chance" My belly churned as the right idea hit ?" he growled

"Did Charles tell you aboutOpal?"

"Kyler&039;s accountant? Yeah, he told me all about her and the hit on Gordy

Maybe he decided to follow you-no, if he atching that girl, nothing would have budged hi the Travis Hotel for Kyler when I showed up

They had to have followed ot in and got to Charles"

"Who followed you? Who got in?" he deela Paco&039;s people"

This ti and I couldn&039;t bla beyond words

"I&039;ve found out why Angela put herself in the ht It&039;s her father Kyler&039;s been keeping Frank Paco under wraps"

"Frank Paco? What the hell for?"

"Puuess"

"But Paco&039;s been bughouse crazy since that fire What can he know that would be of any use?"

"Doesn&039;t matter any time on that one and there was a hint of respect in his reaction "Took care of him, huh?"

"Not ht now I&039;s up"

"How the hell did you arrange it?"

"Believe me, it was an accident Chaven&039;s still after ela&039;s our main worry now I think the reason she kidnapped ht be trying to do the saain, but this tiood chance that they&039;re all right" I purposely skipped over the fact that of the two, Opal was the e

"Only now she won&039;t be dealing with Kyler-if this is what you think it is"

"You just said that Charles wouldn&039;t budge otherwise Check around, see if there&039;s anyone else besides the Kyler and Paco factions that are after us"

"I know there aren&039;t Yet"

"Right My bet&039;s that Angela&039;s probably got theot his hands full at the moment and I don&039;t knohich way he&039;ll jump on this, but he&039;ll want Opal back because he needs her for his business"