AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She could hardly speak. She stood and walked quickly into theback of the house, to her room, where she dug out the pistol that she and Alex had kept in their library. A .357 revolver, the simplest, they’d been told, to operate. She stopped one moment to think:There’s nothing to think about: point and shoot.
She walked into the kitchen and snapped, “Get the baby into your bedroom. Get down on the floor...”
Melton said, “Nope, nope, nope, I’m in on this. Don’t do anything for a minute, let me... stay away from the fuckin’ window...”
“No! Get back in the fuckin’ bedroom...” Cooper gestured with the gun, at one point, the barrel wobbling across the line of Melton’s forehead.
Melton said, “Hey! Hey!” She put up a hand as though to deflect a bullet, and Cooper jerked the gun barrel away. Melton hurried toward the back of the house with the baby, put her down in a bassinette, crawled across the kitchen floor to a storage drawer, took out a foot-long black Maglite and said, “I’ll light the fucker up. You watch from the window in the hallway next to the back door. If you see him start to move away or point a gun...”
“ThenI’lllight the fucker up,” Cooper said, using a phrase they’d heard on a cop show. She’d been standing well away from the window, and now, as Melton had done, she got on her hands and knees and crawled across the kitchen to the back door, and the window beside it.
Melton was braced by the kitchen window. She asked, “You ready?”
Cooper said, “Wait! Let me unlock the door.” She did it. “Okay. Light him up.”
Melton peeked around the side of the kitchen window, put the flashlight against the glass, and turned it on. The Maglite lit up the backyard like a movie set and Cooper hit the back door, gun first.
—
Hess hadn’t gonestraight into Cooper’s backyard. He’d chickened out again, and had circled the entire block, jogging, feeling the weight in his pocket bouncing up and down. He’d almost run back into the driveway that held his car, when he passed it, but he slogged on another hundred yards, and then, holding his breath, swerved to his left, crossed a white board fence into the yard next to Cooper’s house, where he froze.
No reaction from anyone. No shouts, no questions. He slinked across the yard, keeping as many trees and bushes between himself and the house as he could. The house next door showed only a couple of lights, plus the pulsing colors of a big television played against a curtain.
When he’d gotten a grip again, he continued across the yard and slipped over the board fence into Cooper’s yard, stopped again to listen, then crept forward to a stone circle that contained a flower garden with a tall, slender cypress tree at its center. There was little light, except what came from the line of windows up and down the block.
He knelt there, eyes fixed on the kitchen window. He could see Cooper’s head and shoulders; she was apparently sitting at a kitchen table and now seemed to be talking to someone. The chatter continued, then Cooper got up and moved away from the window.
He was worried about shooting through the glass of the window. He decided several fast shots followed by a quick flight up the block, that should work. For a moment, he considered slipping back out of the yard, going home, and seeing what YouTube said about shooting through window glass. Had to be something. And he thoughtabout crawling from the flower circle across the lawn, to pop up right next to the window, no more than five or six feet from Cooper, when she came back...
Not a good idea. Too exposed. He waited for her. A curtain moved at the kitchen window. What? And then, without warning, he was pinned like a bug in a brilliant light and he lurched to his feet and turned to run...
—
Cooper hit thedoor and saw the man in black crouched next to the cypress; she could only see the bottom half of his face beneath a monkish black hood, but he turned and she screamed something, not a word, but a sound, high and shrill, like a baby screaming in an airplane seat. The gun was already up and she began squeezing the trigger, but nothing happened, until she squeezed extra hard, and the gun went off, jumping in her hand.
She regripped with both hands and fired again, flinching and closing her eyes as she did, then again and again and again, trailing the running figure across the backyard.
He went over the neighbor’s fence and then turned, still moving, sideways, from her point of view, missed by all those shots, and his arm came up and he fired a gun and she caught the muzzle flash and pointed her own gun at the flash and pulled the trigger and it wentclick.
She’d used all the ammo and didn’t even know where she’d put the rest. The man’s gun flashed again and she was aware of whacking noises, and realized that she was hearing bullets hit the house.
Too close, too close, too close.
She lurched back inside and fell backwards on her butt, letting go of the gun as she did, and it clattered across the kitchen floor.
Melton, still with the flashlight in her hand, screeched, “Get the gun, get the gun...”
Realizing that Melton didn’t know the gun was empty, Cooper let it go and crawled to the door and slammed it and shouted, “Gun’s empty, we can’t let him get in, no bullets, push the table, I’ll get the front door.”
Melton shouted, “Okay,” and she began pushing the small kitchen table toward the door and Cooper scrambled to the living room and began tugging and then pushing a sofa into the entryway.
With the door blocked, Cooper ran back to the kitchen and Melton grabbed her and pulled her down.
“What, what?” Cooper was gasping, trying to get up, but Melton pinned her and screamed, “He’s shooting at us, you idiot.”
Not anymore. The shooting had stopped and the man was gone and Cooper pushed Melton off and crawled low across the kitchen floor and Melton shouted, “Check the baby?” and Cooper shouted back, “Go in the bedroom, we can barricade the door with the bed.”
Melton followed her into the bedroom where they rolled the guest bed across the doorway. The baby was crying and Melton shouted at Cooper, “Check the baby, check the baby, I’ve got my phone, I’m calling 9-1-1.”
