I could not say no. She was my partner. She was a kid but more, my partner, just as much as Eddie. She’d had my back when I needed help. She’d believed me and I owed her forever. You don’t send away people whom you owe forever, if they show up at your house.
“I insist you stay with me tonight. There’s a guest room upstairs.”
Aya beamed, and turned to her mom. “See?” she said. “See?”
I sensed conversations within conversations. This kid was really something. But on the social end, she was about as good at playing matchmaker as Harlan Maas had been at being God. I put my arm around her. I hugged her. I wanted to put my arm around her mother, too, but that wasn’t going to happen.
“Wow! It’s so isolated out here,” Aya said as we picked our way home on the road. In the dark, my flashlight beam playing over woods, boulders, rain gulleys, a shadow, a box-shaped form, two feet high, moving fast across the road. Lynx maybe. We get them sometimes.
“What was that?” Chris said.
Midnight. We were still talking. We were in the living room, and in a safe area of conversation, one which Chris and I could discuss with equal enthusiasm. Her daughter. The women had their patter down. Chris did the bragging, Aya the blushing. Chris gave the headlines, Aya the text.
The White House? And the President said anytime I wanted to come over, just call his secretary!
Her high school? Mr. St. John said winning the science fair was nothing compared to what we figured out, Joe.
Her friends. They can’t believe it!
“Sleepy, Aya?”
“Not a bit!”
“Want some more coffee, Dr. Vekey?”
“I won’t sleep if I do, Dr. Rush.”
At two they went upstairs. I got the shotgun out, and my Beretta handgun, a Brigadier. I’d done guard duty many times over the years; at Quantico, in Canberra, at an embassy; in war camps, in Iraq.
I sat in the chair at 3 A.M. I emptied my mind of thought and willed myself to stay awake. Understand that I had no sense that anyone was coming. I was simply doing what you do to protect people you must shield. The moon came up full and hard and so bright that night was day, silver day, the tips of leaves trembling and glinting. The moonlight glowed on my gravel/grass driveway, the top of Chris’s packed-up Ford Focus, on my woodpile, on the grudgy porcupine who, tiny hands like a monkey’s, climbed a maple tree each night, slow as a sloth, inch at a time.
Three twenty.
At three fifty-five, the dot of red light — the alarm system — at the junction of wall and ceiling went out.
I sat up.
There was no light on the digital clock either.
Which meant no electricity.
No electricity, and no storm outside.
My heartbeat picked up. Slowly, I moved out of the chair, and slid sideways across the floor, to take up position in a corner that provided a view out the sliding glass door to the deck.
Upstairs, no sound. They slept.
Nothing.
Then a creak outside. Or maybe it had been the house settling. Or the bad-tempered moose, who, every couple of years, actually brushed up against the house at night. Don’t ask me why. Maybe he’s scratching his flank.
An owl out there somewhere went, Oooooooooooh!
It’s possible that a power line went out in town. An old tree fell. It hit a wire. It hit a junction box. It’s possible that too many air conditioners are on in Pittsfield and Hartford and Boston, and there’s a power surge somewhere, and lots of rural towns have gone dark.
I saw the shadow before I saw the man. It seemed to puncture the coned moonlight on the plank decking. A bump became a head, which elongated into shoulders. The shoulders grew a shadow chest, a square darkness. The man was trying to peer in through the double glass.
A hand touched the pane. He was shielding his eyes. I saw the rapid breath condense on the outside of the glass.
He did not see me yet.
It wasn’t his body that I recognized. Last time he had worn a parka. It wasn’t his face, which was so heavily bearded that the shadow resembled a Charles Manson or a San Francisco Giants pitcher now. It wasn’t the features; because with the bright moon behind him, his front was indistinct.
But the shadow cradling a shotgun was distinct enough. The intent was clear and genuine. I recognized intent.
I stepped out into his view and fired.
BOOM… BOOM…
He was moving already. The moonlight must have glinted off my weapon, or — flooding in — illuminated my movement. The picture window blew apart but he was gone. Glass shards fell. I saw his foot scrabbling left, out of view, and now I was the one getting out of the way as the remaining fringe of window shattered and more blasts raked the walls. A fixture shattered behind me, and so did the TV. The table seemed to move back by itself.
Shielded by the wall, I stuck the shotgun out and fired again and heard dragging footsteps. I heard a muffled stumping that usually marked someone going down the deck steps behind my house. From the bottom he could flee fifty feet across a grass clearing into the forest, or duck beneath the deck, and shoot up if I stepped outside. He could sink into the massed three-foot-high ferns at the base of the steps… weeds which I’d been putting off whacking, and which could now conceal him.
It’s always the job you put off that screws you up.
Inside, Chris stood on the balcony by the second-story guest bedroom, looking down at me in the cathedral-roofed living/dining room. The bedroom door was closed, as if she’d ordered Aya to stay inside, and could protect her daughter by being there. If I shouted up instructions, Orrin Sykes would hear them. I cursed but jammed the Brigadier into my belt and slipped up the stairs to Chris.
I should be outside, not here.
“Do you know how to use a shotgun?”
“A shotgun?” Her voice was weak.
“Put it firmly against your shoulder. The spread pattern is wide so if he steps into the house, just fire. And keep the goddamn thing snug against your shoulder or the recoil could dislocate your arms.”
“Don’t go out,” she said. “We’ll call 911.”
“Stay in this spot. Only this spot. You can see the front door and sliding door both. I’ll call out if it’s me coming in, get it? Say you heard me. Say it. I want to hear you say it.”
“Joe, I—”
“Just say it!”
I moved rapidly back down the stairs, keeping my eye on the shattered sliding door. It would have been better for me to keep the shotgun with me, for close combat, but Chris needed a weapon that had the bigger spread pattern. Downstairs I used up four seconds pulling a quilted winter jacket from a closet and slipping it on. I’d need the heavy fabric on if I jumped out onto shattered glass. I grabbed a bulky cushion off the couch and slipped back to the wall, by the blasted sliding glass door. If he was out there, he’d fire when I came through.
If he’d run, he had a four-minute head start.
I don’t think he’ll run. He came all the way here to finish me. He’ll know that even if we call 911, the state police need a half hour to reach here. He’ll try to end it now, while he has a chance.
The picture window was so shattered that I could step through it. The house smelled of forest, mulch, and fired weaponry. I saw no blood on the deck. Then again, it was night and dark. I tossed the cushion out and jump/rolled through the opening in the opposite direction.
Fire at the cushion if you are there, I hoped.
Nothing happened except that my bad shoulder hit the deck. The pain made my breath go shallow and it radiated down into my chest.