“Stay here,” I whispered.
She didn’t argue.
The master bedroom and a sewing room, on the other side of the stairwell, were the only rooms up here on this half a floor. From the landing, I could see nothing of the world below. I paused just long enough to listen for movement, didn’t hear any, then started down the stairs cautiously.
The stairs hugged the wall on one side, and were open onto the big living room on the other. Only two lights were on downstairs, a lamp by the sofa and a ceiling fixture over the kitchen table.
As I descended, I could see the fallen Tacos, sprawled on his braided rug, the side of his head matted with blood. He’d been struck a hard blow and he was unconscious but his bony ribcage was rising and falling. Otherwise the living room and the kitchen beyond it appeared empty.
My den was on the other side of the wall the stairs hugged, under the master bedroom. Beneath the staircase was a bathroom, and a hallway between it and the kitchen led to two guest bedrooms and the laundry room. If intruders were looking for us, they might assume the master bedroom would be downstairs. If they had, I could come up behind them and end this quickly.
That was seeming like a reasonable assumption when a guy in a black stocking-mask and matching wardrobe popped up from where he’d been crouching behind the end table on the far side of the sofa, his form slightly blurred by the light of the lamp, and a silenced shot from a Glock snicked past my ear.
My shot was no snick but an explosion in the open room and then the intruder’s head exploded, too, but silently, except for the splat of bone and brain matter that traveled to a window to land and drip.
I spent maybe half a second wondering if the guy was alone but knowing that two ice cream trucks meant multiple salesmen of death, and another one leaned out from behind where the stove and countertop in the kitchen provided him a good position to crouch and shoot.
But before he could, I blasted twice, and one bullet caught his weapon — another silenced Glock — and the other took off some fingers and their little stumps were geysering and he was screaming and when pain and reflex brought him to his feet, my head shot put him out of his misery and brightened up the kitchen cabinets behind him with splashes of red.
When the third black stocking-masked house guest leapt from the doorway of my den, I ducked and two slugs from another noise-suppressed Glock dug holes in the wood, and I lost my balance and came bump-bump-bumping on my rump down the stairs, firing as did, taking out railing posts but not the intruder, who ducked back in my den, while I hit hard on the little landing, where the stairs took their small four-step jog into the living room.
I’d barely hit up against the railings, including several ... .45 had already splintered, when he popped back out and was below me a little and yet right on me, pointing that Glock up at me, but I kicked through the remaining railings and caught him on the chin and sent him back hard against the wall, his Glock popping out of his hand and flying somewhere.
He was helpless against the wall, trying to catch his breath, which was the perfect time to shoot the son of a bitch, but t... .45 jammed and then he had his damn breath and reached out and dragged me through the gaping teeth of the landing rails and onto the floor. I landed hard, onto splintered wood, on my back, and he dropped down onto me, landing with his knee in my stomach and all of the air went out of me.
He spoke, but not to me: “Find her. Find the discs.”
Somebody said, “Right,” and I saw a fourth black-masked figure — where the hell had he come from? — go blurring past and on up the stairs. I tried to call out a warning to Bettie, but with my air gone, I had nothing....
The intruder moved the knee to my chest, pinning me there as I gasped for breath, trying to get the hell back in this game. We were in the narrow space at the entry of my den, between the stairway landing and the wall, near the front door.
“Bettie,” I said.
But it was barely a whisper.
The man on top of me yanked off his stocking mask. Maybe he was hot. Maybe he wanted to gloat.
For sure he was Romero Suede, a dark pockmarked grinning kid I’d busted more than once and who seemed more at home in this role than selling ice cream to kids and codgers.
“Not such hot shit now,” he laughed, “are you, Shooter?”
That was when the lights went out.
Every light in the house, and it startled the man with his knee on my chest, and gave me an edge. I knew this house in the dark, and Suede didn’t.
And while my chest was pinned, my arms weren’t, and my breath had returned, and I jabbed a short right into his groin, which got his attention. He reared back, letting up on me without meaning to, and I tossed him the hell off of me, and scooted out from under him, then headed up the stairs, toward Bettie and her intruder.
But I took something with me: a chunk of wooden railing with a jagged end. I held the thing in my fist, an eight-inch spear, and when Suede managed to get his bearings enough to come up the stairs after me, and grab onto the back of my shirt, I swung around and jabbed the spear hard, into his heart, like he was a vampire and I was Van Helsing.
He didn’t turn into a skeleton and smoke, but he did go away, falling backward and making lots of noise doing it, but not screaming, too dead for that.
And there was noise coming from the master bedroom, terrible noise, including breaking glass. I remembered those bottles and ghastly scenarios were playing out in my mind. I had no weapon now, not even a chunk of stair rail, and the last intruder no doubt had his own damn Glock, but somehow I had to stop him, if only to put myself between him and Bettie, and then I was in the room, ready for anything, except for one thing...
Bettie saying, “Jack! I’m fine. Let me get the light.”
My mouth was open but nothing was coming out. I could see only darkness in the bedroom and my world was a confused blot until the overhead light went on. Then Bettie was to my right, reaching with one hand into the closet where the fuse box was.
And on the floor was another man in black, masked face down but with a broken bottle of Canadian Club stuck in his back like a handle should anyone want to pick him up. He was shuddering a little, but that didn’t last long.
“I figured it was you who turned off the lights,” I told her. “But how the hell did you get to those bottles? I put them on the floor, and—”
“And I heard you do it. Heard where you put them. Jack, I feel... numb. I should feel excited or terrible or... glad to be alive, or ashamed to have... killed that man — I did kill him, didn’t I?”
I was leaning over him now, checking. “Thoroughly. And you may feel bad about it, when you’re through being in shock, but you shouldn’t. There are three others downstairs just as dead. They were here for you, and me, and those floppy discs.”
I went over and slipped my arm around her. “Listen, baby, we’re going to hole up here — more may be on the way. In the meantime, I’ll get Kinder on the phone, and—”
She squeezed my arm. Whispered, “Jack — someone’s in the hall.”
Damn! I should have commandeered the dead intruder’s Glock, or gone over to the concealed gun closet. And I would have got around to that, but we had company again before I could.
Only the man in the doorway was one of the good guys — Joe Pender. He was in a tan uniform like the one Kinder and the guard at the front gate wore. No cap, though — his red hair, white at the temples, was standing up, like the wind had turned it from hair into flames.
“My God, are you two all right?” He had a Glock in hand too, sans silencer, nose down.