Two hundred and eighty pounds of Stan Miller loomed in the entryway.
“What’s for dinner, bitch?” Stan boomed across the darkened apartment.
He sounded cavalier, almost like he was in a good mood.
So I shot him.
I PULLED LEFT. Don’t ask me how, don’t ask me why. But I fucking pulled my shot left. Doorjamb exploded, Stan dropped like a rock and rolled toward the kitchen, screaming. I cursed a blue streak and, through my shock and rage, realized now I was in for it, not to mention that if my firearms instructor J.T. ever heard about this, he’d kill me anyway and spare me the miserable pain of the twenty-first.
“What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck!” Stan was yelling. “Where’s Tomika? What’d you do with Tomika?”
“Killed her!” I called back at him. “That’ll teach you not to pay your debts.”
(I was making this up. Precaution built into a precaution, right? Always gotta have plan B, and if I couldn’t kill Stan, plan B was to lead him to think that his family was dead. A man like Stan had to owe somebody something somewhere. It just figured.)
“You’re a girl,” Stan said. And just like that, he stood up in his kitchen. Apparently, being attacked by a girl didn’t scare him nearly so much.
So I shot him again.
This time, I hit his shoulder. He howled, dropped again.
I felt better about things.
Until good ol’ Stan popped back up and fired off four rounds in my general direction. This time, I dove for cover, cursing myself all over again. First two seconds. Battles are won or lost in the first two seconds. He’d been standing right there, lit up beautifully, 280 pounds of target. How the hell had I missed 280 pounds of target?
Dammit!
“Gonna hurt you,” Stan bellowed now. “Gonna find you, gonna hurt you. With a knife. Bad.”
I crawled behind the overstuffed recliner, leading with my gun, and peered out, trying to penetrate the gloom of the kitchen. Couldn’t see a thing.
Shit.
I took a second to get my bearings. Stan seemed to be doing the same, the apartment falling eerily silent. I strained my ears for sounds from the rest of the building. Neighbors yelling about gunshots, or banging the ceiling to say quiet the noise. Police sirens already screeching down the street.
Nothing.
Maybe 9 P.M. was too early for most residents of this building to be home yet. Or maybe, in a building where men routinely spent their evenings shooting beer cans off the fire escape, nobody noticed gunfire anymore.
I did. My ears were ringing, my heart pounding, my hands a shaking mess of adrenaline and fear. Even my stomach felt funny. Hollowed out, queasy, and butterfly-y. Shock, probably. Terror. Rage.
I tried homing in on the rage. Fear would get me killed. Anger was the only hope I had left.
“Who are you?” Stan boomed again. “I don’t owe nobody nothin’, so who the fuck are you?”
I didn’t answer, but traced the sound of his voice toward the hall to the left of the kitchen. I could just make him out, his gray sweatshirt a faint glow on the dimly lit floor. He’d shimmied out into open space. Probably to sneak around on me, but also to keep himself from getting cornered. The tiny kitchenette was no good to either of us; too small and cramped. Family room was better. Rear bedroom, with its open window leading to the fifth-story fire escape, best yet.
But for me to get to the bedroom, Stan had to get out of the hallway. Fine.
I shot him again.
For a big guy, Stan moved pretty fast. Sprang out of his crouch and leapt through the doorway into the kids’ room. Couldn’t tell if I’d got him or not, and didn’t wait to see. I bolted down the short hallway into the back bedroom, as he opened fire behind me. Carpet exploded at my feet. Sheetrock rained down from overhead.
He was an even worse shot than I was. Course, spending the past few hours in a bar probably didn’t help his aim, thank goodness for me.
I took four zigzagging steps and staggered into the rear bedroom. Another ringing shot, and I was hurling myself over the windowsill, wincing as I flopped awkwardly onto the metal fire escape. I could feel the rickety deck sway upon impact. Couldn’t stop. I’d be trapped on the tiny fenced-in balcony, and he’d come for me, like shooting fish in a barrel.
I didn’t think anymore, I moved. Crabbing around, trying desperately to find the top rung of the descending metal ladder in the dark. I banged my head against another set of metal rungs, the ones heading up, staggered back, and a meaty fist clamped onto my shoulder.
Stan thrust his massive head and shoulders through the window and held tight.
“Gotcha! Gonna make you hurt, girl. Gonna get my ax, gonna get my hammer, gonna get my knife. Gonna make you pay.”
Which was a funny thing for him to say, given that I was the one holding a gun. One small twist, and I had the barrel of my. 22 pressed against his temple.
Stan stilled. His eyes rounded. His mouth formed the proverbial O and he sucked in a breath, as I dug the barrel of my gun harder against his fat head. Big ol’ Stan had made a mistake. He’d grabbed me with his left hand, and given the width of his massive shoulders wedged through the narrow window frame, his right hand, the one holding his own gun, was trapped uselessly in the bedroom. He’d need to release me and bring his left shoulder back inside the apartment, in order to get his right arm through again.
Battles are won in the first two seconds, or in the final two minutes.
The fire escape swayed unsteadily, making me feel as if I were surfing on air. I smiled at Stan. I exhaled and watched my frosty breath mist in the cold night.
The scene felt exactly right.
Shoot. Pull the trigger. For Tomika and Michael and Mica.
For Stan’s hammer and his family’s fingers and their long, terrified nights.
I wanted to. I needed to.
For that little boy in Colorado, whom I still couldn’t forget. For all the crying kids, all the terrified women who called 911, except they had problems too big for any dispatch operator or patrol officer to help.
Pull the trigger.
Baby. Crying down the hall. I could hear her again, so close, so clear. Baby, in my mother’s house, crying down the hall.
Sugar and spice and everything nice, that’s what little girls are made of.
Sugar and spice and broken glass, I should’ve told the nurse. If only I’d told the nurse. Why hadn’t I told that nice nurse?
PULL THE TRIGGER!
Pull the fucking trigger!
But I couldn’t do it. I stared at Stan Miller, peered into the whites of his eyes, pressed my nickel-plated semiauto deeper and deeper into his temple…and I couldn’t do it. My hand shook too badly.
I pulled back my arm and pistol-whipped him instead.
Stan howled. Let go. Stumbled back through the window.
I bolted. Down the ancient fire escape, rusty metal rungs shaking, whole structure swaying from my rat-a-tat impact, as I half slid, half jumped from metal decking down to metal decking, desperate to hit the street five stories below.
Stan was gonna get his right arm out now. Stan was gonna hunt me down. And Stan would shoot a woman in cold blood.
I felt the fire escape groan again. Heard, more than saw, Stan squirm and heave and twist his considerable homicidal bulk onto the narrow fifth-story decking.
Faster, faster. Not much time now. Gotta move, move, move.
As the fire escape heaved, sighed, gave an ominous creak.
“Gonna get you, girl,” Stan bellowed from above. “Big Stan gonna run you down. What’d ya do to my family? Where’s my Tomika? Tell me now, girl. Talk, or I’ll shoot out your damn bitch brains.”
The first metal bolt attaching the fifth-story decking to the crumbling brick building went ping. Then the second, third, fourth.
Go, go, go I urged myself. No time to lose. Jack, racing the giant down the beanstalk. Run!