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The probes don't have the velocity of bullets and he fell backward just in time; the barbs missed. She snatched Jorgensen's metal bar and charged toward him. Gordon rose to one knee. But when she was just ten feet away he managed to bring the gun up and fire a round directly at her, just as she flung the bar at him. The bullet slammed into the American Body Armor vest. The pain was stunning but the round had struck her well below the solar plexus, where a hit would have knocked the breath from her lungs and paralyzed her.
The crowbar spun into his face, colliding with a nearly silent thonk, and he cried out in pain. He didn't go down, though, and still held the gun firmly. Sachs turned in the only direction she could flee--to her left--and sprinted through a canyon of artifacts filling the creepy place.
"Maze" was the only way to describe it. A narrow path through his collections: combs, toys (a lot of dolls--one of which had probably sloughed off the hair recovered at an early crime scene), old toothpaste tubes, carefully rolled up; cosmetics, mugs, paper bags, clothing, shoes, empty food cans, keys, pens, tools, magazines, books . . . She'd never seen so much junk in her life.
Most of the lamps were off here, though a few faint bulbs cast a yellow pall on the place, and pale illumination from streetlights filtered in through stained shades and newspapers taped over the glass. The windows were all barred. Sachs stumbled several times and caught herself just before sprawling into a stack of china or a massive bin of clothespins.
Careful, careful . . .
A fall would be fatal.
Close to vomiting from the blow to her belly, she turned between two towering stacks of National Geographics and gasped, ducking just in time as Gordon turned the corner forty feet away, spotted her and, wincing in pain from his shattered arm and the blow to the face, fired two shots, left-handed. Both went wide. He started forward. Sachs wedged her elbow behind a tower of the glossy magazines and sent them cascading into the aisle, blocking it completely. She scrabbled away, hearing two more shots.
Seven fired--she always counted--but it was a Glock, still fat with eight rounds. She looked for any exit, even an unbarred window she could fling herself through, but this side of the town house had none. The walls contained shelves filled with china statuettes and knickknacks. Sachs could hear him furiously kicking aside the magazines, muttering to himself.
His face emerged over the piles as he tried to climb over the stack but the coated covers were slick as ice and he slipped twice, crying out as he used his broken arm to steady himself. Finally he scrabbled to the top. But before he could raise the gun he froze in horror, gasping. He shouted, "No! Please, no!"
Sachs had both hands on a bookcase filled with antique vases and china figurines.
"No, don't touch it. Please!"
She had recalled what Terry Dobyns had said about losing anything in his collection. "Throw the gun out here. Do it now, Peter!"
She didn't believe he would but, faced with the horror that he was about to lose what was on the shelf, Gordon was actually debating.
Knowledge is power.
"No, no, please . . ." A pathetic whisper.
Then his eyes changed. In an instant, they turned to dark dots and she knew he was going to go for the shot.
She shoved the shelf into another and two hundred pounds of ceramics turned to shards on the floor, a painful cacophony--which Peter Gordon's eerie, primal howl drowned out.
Two more shelves of ugly figurines and cups and saucers joined the destruction.
"Throw the gun down or I'll break every goddamn thing in here!"
But he'd lost control completely. "I'll kill you I'll kill you I'll kill you I'll--" He fired twice more but by then Sachs had dived for cover. She knew he'd be coming after her as soon as he surmounted the pile of National Geographics and she assessed their positions. She'd circled back toward the closet door at the front, while he was still at the back of the town house.
But to make it to the door and safety would mean a run past the doorway of the room where he was now--to judge from the sound--scrabbling over the shelves and shattered ceramics. Did he realize her predicament? Was he waiting, gun aimed at the shooting gallery she'd have to traverse in order to make it to the closet door and safety?
Or had he bypassed the roadblock and snuck around her via a route she didn't know about?
Creaks sounded throughout the murky place. Were they his footsteps? The wood settling?
Panic tickled and she spun around. She couldn't see him. She knew she had to move, fast. Go! Now! She took a deep, silent breath, willed away the pain in her knees and, keeping low, charged forward, directly past the blockade of magazines.
No shots.
He wasn't there. She stopped fast, pressing her back against the wall and forcing herself to calm her breathing.
Quiet, quiet . . .
Hell. Where, where, where? Down this aisle of shoe boxes, down this one of canned tomatoes, down this one of neatly folded clothing?
More creaks. She couldn't tell where they were coming from.
A faint sound like the wind, like a breath.
