Page 77 of One of Us Is Guilty

That’s when he saw the flashlight. At first, it pointed straight at the floor. He could just make out the man who had stepped into view. Dressed in black, with a black ski mask covering his face. The flashlight was attached beneath the barrel of a pistol and part of it shone on the silencer that elongated the barrel.

Everything happened in slow motion. The light swept up toward him.

Paul couldn’t move.

Couldn’t extend his arm. Couldn’t even point his weapon at the light.

He wasn’t that kind of cop. He had never even had to draw his gun before, not in all his years of service, and now it showed.

‘No,’ he said quietly.

Just as the flashlight beam swept up and over his body, he collapsed on the stairs, dropping his gun.

And a huge sonicBOOMrent the air.

Paul closed his eyes. But even before then he was conscious that the light from the flashlight had disappeared.

He didn’t feel any pain. And he wondered if he was dead. If this is what death feels like.

Then he opened his eyes and saw the flashlight on the floor, pointed toward the window.

He blinked as another figure appeared from the darkness, and grabbed his hand.

‘You’re alright,’ said Bloch.

His vision cleared as he stood, and felt Bloch’s grip on his wrist. She helped him down the last steps.

He glanced down and saw that the man in black lay still, some distance away from the stairs. His balaclava was now oddly shaped, as if half his head had collapsed. The stain on the wall behind the man and the glint of Bloch’s magnum in her other hand told him everything he needed to know.

‘You saved me,’ he said.

‘We came in through the fields at the back. But don’t thank us yet. This isn’t over,’ said another voice.

He squinted, saw Gabriel Lake, who was on his knees, peering out of the front window of the living room.

His senses began to return, the shock lessening.

It was then he heard the engine, and followed Lake’s gaze throughthe window to see a large black SUV, with no headlights, pull up outside his house.

Three men, all in black, got out of the vehicle. They wore black ski hoods, and they held stocky assault rifles in their hands.

‘Everybody down,’ cried Lake.

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Bloch

Winchester let out a cry of pain as Bloch pushed his face into his hardwood floor and kept it there.

At first, he had resisted.

Then, within a second, the shooting started.

They lay pressed to floor.

The weapons were silenced, but the sound of firing was still audible. Not as loud as the sound of bullets ripping through windowpanes, wood-paneled walls, and then tearing up the TV in the living room and the crockery in the kitchen beyond. It was a shotgun house, so-called because you could stand on the front porch, with the front and back door open and fire a shotgun through the house without hitting anything but air.

These rounds were not going out the back door. One bullet must have gone clear through some of the old plumbing as a jet of water burst through a hole in the back wall and sprayed the kitchen floor.