“Don’t do it.” Havermaye studied his partner’s stance and wondered if there was an ember's chance in Winnipeg he could take on Joe.

Ten milliseconds was all it took for Joe to disarm him. Joe was smarter, faster, stronger, meaner. His Oxfords would glide across the tiles, like knights parrying a poorly constructed attack. His left arm would casually seize Haver by the collar. And through the glacial, monolithic calm, his eyes would flash briefly with a dose of pure, unadulterated hatred as the fingers of his right hand dug into Haver’s neck and ripped out his larynx.

Jesus. What the hell did he get himself into? This was Joe... who taught him how to clean a gun and gut a deer. Joe, who saved his life when he was two months out of the Academy. What was he thinking?

“He’s just a goddamn kid, Joe,” Haver gasped, throat choked with adrenaline.

The gun was steady. “Yeah?” Haver saw Joe's finger slide across the trigger guard, caressing it. “Just a kid?” The finger slipped in with a grace born of repetition. “Well...so was I.”

Havermaye lunged.

Joe was indeed quick. He whirled and fired a round before Havermaye's feet had even left the ground. It sliced through his coat, the burn an afterthought as he bear-hugged Joe and shoved him to the ground. They slid across the tile, Haver’s head buried into Joe’s chest, his forearms forming a triangle with vertices at Joe’s head and shoulder blades.

The thump as their heads slammed into the wall of the jacuzzi came as a surprise. Joe's grip on the gun loosened. Straining against the pain of throbbing brain matter, Haver pushed up and away from Joe, and came back down with all his weight concentrated into his elbow, directed at Joe's left wrist. Haver felt the wet crunch and saw the gun clatter to the floor. A millisecond later, he saw the flash in the corner of his eye as Joe's right fist connected, lifting Haver up and across the room.

He flew back, landed squarely on his ass, and saw the gun between his splayed legs. In an instant, he was standing, with the .45 shaking at Joe's crumpled frame, still bewildered at his good fortune.

“It's like that, huh?” Joe's voice was low and hoarse, almost an invalid's whisper. He grinned, coughed and spat a chunk of phlegm at Haver's feet.

Haver fired. And fired again and again, not caring if the dense floor would rebut with an unfortunate ricochet. When the clip was empty, he wiped the butt of the gun with his shirt and threw it at Joe.

From the corner of the room, the boy stared at him.

“Come.” The child nodded slowly, eyes still focused on Havermaye's. He stepped forward from the shadows, bare feet creasing the pools of blood, a mix of Joe's and that of his ill-fated antagonists. Haver pulled a wad of bills from his pocket and shoved them into the kid's palm.

“You get the hell out of here.” The child continued to stare.

“Get!”

The child, more stunned than terrified, limped away. Haver waited until he heard the front door slam before he went to work. He remembered everything Joe taught him. The saw was in the basement. The gasoline was in the shed. Always take your time. Always think it through.

The sun had already set by the time Haver finished. Haver looked back at the house, still burning bright. An appropriate requiem for Joe, he thought. The desert wind rippled his shirt and Haver buttoned up Joe's salvaged coat for extra warmth.

There would be plenty of time before the police got curious... days perhaps. He would rest for a while and then head east, toward where the sun rises. Haver instinctively reached into Joe's coat pocket to grab those powder blue sunglasses, but his hand instead found something round and metallic. He fished it out and held it so that he could see it in the flicker of the pyre. It was Joe's compass, still dotted with blood. Haver wiped it off and carefully returned it to his pocket. He stretched and sat down to watch the crimson flames fade and wither and die.