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Macklin demanded, careful to keep his voice low. He knew what Shaw wanted. Every morning Macklin awoke and wondered, is this the day they come for me again? The fear that his wondering might actually be longing kept him up nights.
    "Mayor Stocker wants to see you," Shaw said.
    Stocker wants you to pick up your gun again, a voice teased Macklin. He wants you to dig it out from under the floorboards, slip the six bullets into the chamber, and squeeze the trigger. You'd like that, wouldn't you, Macky boy? You'd like that a lot.
    "No," Macklin said.
    Shaw swallowed. "Look, Mack, you don't have any choice."
    Macklin looked over his shoulder toward the kitchen. Cheshire was out of sight, probably putting food into the refrigerator. He faced Shaw again. "My life is becoming whole again. Do you want to shatter that?" He was asking the voice inside him. Not Shaw.
    "No, I don't," Shaw replied, anger seeping defensively into his voice. "You know how I feel about it. But it's not in my hands." Shaw immediately regretted the tone of his voice. None of the sympathy he actually felt came across.
    To Shaw, Macklin's ocean blue eyes suddenly dimmed, his face tightening into the savage look of determination that made Shaw doubt this was the same Brett Macklin he had grown up with. The look that symbolized the man Macklin had become since his father, a beat cop, was set aflame by a street gang. The look of a killer who made sure each of those gang members ended up in a burial plot.
    It was that look, and the lawlessness it represented to Shaw, that made it impossible for Shaw to ever enjoy the deep friendship they'd once had.
    "When does he want to see me?" Macklin's words seemed to have a serrated edge.
    "Tomorrow morning. Nine o'clock."
    "All right, I'll be there." Their eyes met for a second that felt like days to Shaw. He thought he saw a spark of vulnerability in Macklin's eyes and was about to say something, to reflexively grasp for their old closeness, when Macklin slowly closed the door in his face.

CHAPTER TWO
    The punker with the tangerine orange Mohawk held a sawed-off shotgun, Macklin was sure of that. Macklin had seen him out of the corner of his eye as he drove past the Quick Stop market on his way to Stocker's office.
    Macklin pressed the gas pedal to the floor. The black Cadillac shot forward. At the next intersection, Macklin twisted the wheel, whipping the car into a screeching U-turn and gliding it to a stop at the street corner a quarter block up from the market. He wasn't even thinking now. His anger was doing the thinking for him.
    He didn't have his gun, but he wasn't going to let that stop him. The wooden skeleton of a building under construction adjoined the garage-size Quick Stop market. Macklin assumed he could find a weapon at the construction site.
    Macklin bolted out of the car and splashed through puddles on the sidewalk into the roofless structure beside the market. Crouching, Macklin searched the muddy concrete floor for a suitable weapon. He was about to settle for a damp two-by-four when he spotted a steel level lying amidst wood shavings and scattered nails. Picking it up, he swung it. The level was heavy in his hand. Yes. He smiled. This will do.
    He slipped out the back of the structure into an alley and approached the market's back door. Cautiously, Macklin turned the doorknob with his left hand and slowly pushed the door open with his shoulder.
    The door opened into a closet-size storeroom lined with cardboard boxes. Macklin closed the door carefully behind him and could hear voices from just outside the door across from him.
    "L-look, I-I don't have the combination to the safe, r-really," Macklin heard a young man plead in a voice made shrill with fear.
    "Bullshit!" the punker rasped. "Open the fucking safe, or I'll blow your head off!" The punker sounded angry and impatient. Macklin thought it was only a matter of seconds before the punker lost his cool and the cashier would be splattered all over the