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“Dexter!” Astor said excitedly.
I waved frantically for her to be quiet, and she bit her lip and nodded. I shook Cody, only twice, and he sat right up and looked at me, fully awake. “Knew you’d come,” Cody said, and it was a mark of his excitement that he actually said it loud enough to hear.
“Quick as you can,” I told them, soft but urgent. “And be quiet! Up the stairs and out—my boat is tied to the back. Go!” They blinked at me, then at each other, so I said it again. “Go! Now!” and Astor jumped up, grabbed Cody’s hand, and the two of them hurried out.
Deborah was standing impatiently in the middle of the room, her pistol in one hand and Nicholas in the other. I moved around her and back to the other bed, where Lily Anne slumbered on. She lay quietly beside the sleeping nanny, sucking fiercely on a pacifier. I bent over with all the quiet care I could muster and slid a hand under the baby’s head, then the other one under her bottom. I lifted her slowly, carefully, and I had her nearly halfway up before she grumbled and spit out the pacifier. I held my breath, but Lily Anne settled right back into sleep. I looked down onto the bed to retrieve the fallen pacifier, and saw right away that it would not be possible.
The pacifier had fallen right onto the nanny.
And the nanny was now awake, staring up at me with very wide-open brown eyes.
And then her eyes went wider and she opened her mouth just as wide. I juggled Lily Anne quickly to my left arm and clamped my right hand tightly on the nanny’s throat. “Silencio,” I whispered, sounding as deadly as I could. “No un sonido.”
Her mouth slapped shut and she nodded vigorously. I stepped back, keeping my eyes on the nanny, and handed Lily Anne to Deborah. “Take them to the boat,” I said.
Deborah tucked Lily Anne into her other arm, but only took a step backward. I glanced at her and saw that she was preparing to argue about running to the boat. Before either of us could say a word, Brian stuck his head in the door. “What is keeping you?” he whispered savagely. And then, “Oh, for shit’s sake,” as he saw the nanny staring at us with gigantic eyes. “She’ll scream any second,” Brian said, and he stepped toward her, pulling out his knife.
But he was wrong. The nanny didn’t scream. She didn’t say a word. She looked at my brother approaching with knife at the ready, and calmly reached under her pillow, drew out a revolver, and fired point-blank at Brian.
I could not see where, but I was sure he was hit. Even so, he leaped forward with incredible quickness. Before the woman could fire again, Brian’s left hand was pinning her gun to the bed, and his knife was in her throat. She thrashed briefly; I couldn’t see what Brian did, but his shoulders bunched with effort and the thrashing stopped abruptly. Brian stood, much slower than he’d jumped onto her, and there was blood all over his hands, the front of his shirt, his pants. Throat wounds can spray horribly, and most of the mess had to be from the nanny. Most of it, but not all.
As Brian straightened he swayed slightly and put a hand to his abdomen, just above and to the right of his navel.
It’s funny how the mind works, isn’t it? It might have been because I was stunned by the incredibly loud bang of the gunshot in this small room, but whatever the reason, my head was spinning. And for half a second it flashed through my mind that Raul would need a new nanny, and I pictured what the ad would say. Nanny wanted. Must be comfortable with Spanish, English, and small arms. But Brian wobbled again and I shoved the thought away.
“Brian,” I said.
That’s all I got out. From somewhere outside the room I heard a shout, and then another. A gunshot in close quarters is a remarkably effective alarm clock, and the nanny’s shot had been enough to wake the other guards. “Debs, go!” I said, and this time she didn’t argue. She spun on her heel, a baby under each arm, and sprinted for my boat.
“Brian,” I said, moving to his side. “Are you all right?” It was a stupid question, since I knew he’d been shot, which is not “all right” no matter how you care to define it.
But Brian just gave me a pained look. “I believe we may have lost the element of surprise,” he said. He grinned feebly, and I was worried enough not to notice what a terrible job he did.
“Can you make a run for it?” I asked him.
“I don’t see very many choices,” he said. He dropped his knife to the floor and pulled out his pistol. “I think we’re going to want that,” he said, nodding at Deborah’s shotgun. I grabbed it, racked a shot into the chamber, and we hurried out of the room.
The moment we stepped into the hall I was very glad the shotgun was ready to go, because the door opposite, where we’d heard the snores, was inching cautiously open. Without bothering to aim, I pointed the gun at the door and fired.
The noise was deafening, far beyond the sound the nanny’s pistol had made. But the result was truly gratifying. A hole the size of a basketball appeared in the door as it slammed partway open and then bounced shut again. I turned and hurried up the stairs.
Brian was already there, kneeling beside the top of the steps, rummaging in the canvas bag of Ee-bahng’s toys. He was moving stiffly, obviously in pain, but other than that he looked like he was enjoying himself. “I knew these would come in handy,” he said. He pulled out a chunk of something grayish-brown, about the size and shape of a brick, and held it up happily. “Ivan did very good work,” he said. He pointed to what looked like a calculator taped to the side. “Simple to use, and very effective.” He poked at the calculator with a finger. “Just set the timer, and—”
I heard more noises below, voices raised and clearly urging each other to get up and get ’er done. “Brian,” I said, but he ignored me. I crouched down, half-behind my brother, shotgun ready.
“One, two,” Brian said. He threw the brick, hard, down into the hall. He turned his head toward me, almost certainly to say, “Three.” And he might have said it. But if so, it was drowned out by the enormous roar of an explosion, a huge bright ball of noise and smoke and flame and debris that lifted Brian up and flung him right at me, and I went over backward and into a dark red-tinted place where there was no light and no sound except a terrible painful too-loud ringing noise that wouldn’t stop.
And I lay there. At first I couldn’t move, and then I just didn’t. I couldn’t think at all, not even the simplest thought, and apparently
you need to think in order to move.
So I just lay quietly. I don’t know how long. It could not have been as long as it seemed. Eventually I became aware of something heavy on top of me. Then I had my first thought, which was: It shouldn’t be on top of me. I let that ring for a while, and then slowly, syllable by syllable, I added: I should move it off.
I did. I shoved at the heavy thing. It slid to one side and I sat up. That made my head hurt a lot. For a few more moments I just sat there and clutched my head. I still couldn’t hear anything, but if I opened an eye I could see things now. When my head didn’t hurt as much I opened my eyes.
I looked at the heavy thing. It looked a lot like it used to be Brian. It wasn’t Brian anymore. It didn’t move and it didn’t breathe. It just lay where I had pushed it and watched the ceiling with calm, wide-open eyes. His face was frozen into a half smile, that same awful awkward terrible fake grin plastered forever now onto that face that looked so much like mine.
I just stared until the word came into my head. Dead. Brian was dead. My brother was gone and I would never have another one. Dead.
