arms swung around, and the rifle with them, the narrow barrel less than an inch from Hobson’s forehead. I tried to point it away, but my limbs wouldn’t respond.
David then said, “When you’ve got the shot lined up, I need you to—”
A blast roared through the house as Stella raised her shotgun and pulled the trigger right next to my ear. The entire world went silent, David’s voice, Stella and Hobson breathing near me, all of it replaced in a millisecond by a high-pitched ringing. I dropped the rifle, and it fell to my side on the sling. I covered both ears with my hands, but the ringing only grew louder.
Stella slapped my back, then began firing toward David, toward Oliver and the other people in white. She shouted something at me, right in my face, but I couldn’t hear her. Her eyes jumped to the rifle dangling from my neck before going back to the window. I remembered the plan, scooped up the rifle, and fired—each shot nothing but a distant thud buried beneath the ringing.
Stella got to her feet and grabbed Hobson. She was out the door in an instant, pulling the man behind her. She released him just long enough to get a firm hold on the shotgun and squeeze off a series of shots, peppering the SUVs, then tugged at him again, pulling him across the yard. One shot struck the woman with the nickel-plated pistol and she fell back against the driver’s seat, then to the ground. I fired, too. Four shots rained against the side of the vehicle. A fifth blew the front tire of the first SUV. I fired at a man huddled low in the passenger seat of Oliver’s SUV while Stella took aim at a man who had rounded the vehicle and was now kneeling beside it, using the fender as cover. I shoved Hobson toward our Mercedes, fired another round, then yanked open the back door and pushed him inside. I threw our bags in behind him.
Oliver stood in the middle of the road, oblivious to all the gunfire, her eyes locked on Stella. She started toward her, a slow shuffle. David had taken cover somewhere. I didn’t see him.
Stella froze at the sight of Oliver, the old woman creeping toward her, raising her one good arm, the other trapped in the sling. I shouted her name but heard nothing over the ringing. I tugged at her arm, pulled her toward the car, got her into he passenger seat. Then I slid over the hood and got in too.
Oliver was still walking toward us.
“Go,” Stella’s lips mouthed silently. “Please… Go. Go! Go!”
I did.
The Mercedes roared to life and I shifted into reverse, flooring the gas and spinning us around. The wheels screamed against the blacktop, grabbing the pavement as I shifted into drive and rocketed down Windmore Road, the back end sliding around the bend. A quarter mile away, three white Ford Expeditions flew past us in the opposite direction, heading back toward the house.
The ringing still shouted in my head, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the sound of the approaching sirens.
26
Stack heard something.
Well, Stack thought he heard something.
Fucking hearing.
He edged closer to the stairs, considered taking the man’s shotgun, then decided the magnum would do him just fine.
He stepped around the body at the base of the stairs, doing his best to keep the magnum trained forward, while pulling himself up the steps with his other hand on the railing. He’d made it up four of those steps before his screaming muscles and joints reminded him that he hadn’t taken an Aleve since sometime the night before. The rattling bottle in his right pocket (not to mention the ammunition in his left) did little to help conceal his current location, but truth be told, it would take a special bad guy to miss an eighty-two-year-old man clawing his way up the stairs in some kind of geriatric chase. He half hoped someone would shoot him before he got to the top so he wouldn’t have to climb the rest.
This time when he heard something, he was sure he heard something—a cough.
Stack took another step. “I’m a retired police detective who’s been jonesing to fire a gun at a trespassing piece-of-shit for the better part of two decades. That last one felt real nice. I don’t know who you are, but you better get the fuck out of my house before I make the last of these