LETTY HAD FINISHED the last of the social studies problems and was packing her bag when she heard the knock on the front door. She couldn't see the front yard from her room, so she paused, listening. Was it her mother? Then she heard the knock again, and stepped toward the door, heard her mother's footsteps leaving the downstairs bedroom.
She listened, heard her mother's voice and a male rumbling-maybe it was Lucas and Del, with something important?-and then the voices went up, and her mother began screaming RUN LETTY and Letty turned and stepped across the room and picked up her rifle, which was unloaded because her mother made her swear to keep it unloaded except when she was using it, and she fumbled in the pocket of her trapping parka for a box of shells and then heard a crash of breaking glass and a RUN LETTY and she broke the gun open and there was a sudden tremendous boom and the sounds of fighting stopped…
Too late.
She looked wildly around the room, flipped the old turn-lock on the door, grabbed the steel-legged kitchen chair at the foot of her bed, and without thinking about it, hurled it through the east window. There were two layers of glass, the regular window and the storm, but the chair was heavy and went through. Running footsteps on the stairs, like some kind of Halloween movie-and Letty threw her parka over the windowsill to protect herself from the broken glass, and still hanging onto the rifle, went out the window.
She hung on to the coat with her left hand and she dropped, pulling it after her; the coat snagged on glass and maybe a nail, held her up for just a second, then everything fell. She landed awkwardly, in a clump of prairie grass, felt her ankle twist, and hobbled two steps sideways, her ankle on fire, clutching the parka in the cold, and saw a silhouette at the window and she ran, and there was a crack of light and noise like a close-in lightning strike, and something plucked at her hair and she kept hobbling away and there was another boom and her side was on fire, and then she was around the corner of the house and into the dark.
Hurt,she thought. She touched her side and realized that she was bleeding under the arm, and her ankle screamed in pain and something was wrong with her left hand. She kept going, half-hopping, half-hobbling. Cold, she thought. She pinned the rifle between her legs and pulled the parka on. She had no hat or mittens, but she pulled the hood up and began to run as best she could, and her left hand wasn't working right…
She was only a hundred feet from the house when she realized that she wasn't alone in the yard. There was a squirt of light and then she heard movement, a crunching on the snow. He was coming after her, whoever he was.
Shells. As she hobbled along, she dug in her coat pocket, and found a.22 shell, but her hand wasn't working and she dropped it. Lost in the dark. Dug out another one with the other hand, broke the rifle, got the shell in, snapped it shut. A squirt of light, then the man called, "Letty. You might as well stop. I can see you."
Bullshit,she thought. She could barely tell where he was, and he had the partly lit house behind him. And she was moving as fast as he was, because he was having trouble following her footprints through the grass that stuck through the shallow snow, and there was nothing behind her but darkness. If he kept coming, though… She had to do something-she didn't know how badly she was hurt. Had to find someplace to go.
His silhouette lurched in and out of focus in front of the house, and she remembered something that Bud, her trapper friend, had told her about bow-hunting for deer. If a deer was moving a little too quickly for a good shot, you could whistle, or grunt, and the deer would stop to listen. That's when you let the arrow go.
She turned, got a sense of where the man's silhouette was, leveled the rifle and called, "Who are you?"
He stopped like a deer, and she shot him.
SINGLETON RAN UP the stairs, and at the top looked around, heard the crash of breaking glass, looked back, thinking somehow that it might be Martha West, who was sprawled in the wreckage of the glass table, and realized in the next instant that it had to be Letty, because Martha was definitely dead.
He spotted the door with light leaking beneath it, stepped over to it, and said, "Letty?" and tried the knob. Locked. He kicked it once and it bent, without breaking. He kicked it a second time, a cop-kick, and it flew open. Letty was gone. Window broken, with movement-the jacket going out. He stepped on a notebook and almost fell, got right, hurried to the window and saw a dark figure on the ground, hobbling down the side of the house. He fired once, missed, and, blinded by his own muzzle flash, let go another shot, and then he couldn't see her anymore.
Think.
She was out there alone, maybe hurt. There was nobody else out there-the countryside was empty, he could shoot a machine-gun at her and nobody would hear. He ran down the stairs, realized his arm was burning. He looked at it, quickly, as he hurried through the living room and out on the porch: blood. Then he was around the house, and he got out the flash and got under the window and flicked the penlight on, and started tracking her. At the back of the house, he found blood, so he'd hit her, maybe, unless she'd cut herself going out of the house…
He tracked her for a minute, then called out, "Letty. You might as well stop, I can see you."
She called, "Who are you?" and he stopped, trying to focus on the direction. It was dark as a coal sack.
Then a star burst in front of him, a muzzle flash, and he felt a sharp slap on his chest and he involuntarily sat down. He could hear her running again but he paid no attention: he thought, I'm shot. I'm shot. He couldn't believe it-he was shot. Shit at and missed, shot at and hit. He almost giggled. Had to do something about this.
He crawled back toward the house, then got on his feet, staggering, got inside, and looked at his chest. Nothing: but it hurt bad. After a second, he spotted a tiny dimple in the parka fabric. A hole, he thought, wonderingly. He unzipped the parka, found a small circle of blood on his uniform shirt. Pulled his shirt open, found a bigger circle on his undershirt. Pulled that up, and found a hole in his chest, just right of his left nipple. The skin was already beginning to bruise, and when he touched it, pain rippled across his chest.
Shit. He was shot.
Didn't hurt as bad as his arm, though. He took a few experimental breaths. He was breathing okay. And he thought, She yelled, "Who are you?"
Did she really not know? When would she have seen his face?
He began to see some possibilities-maybe he could pull this off yet. And then he thought, DNA. Goddamn DNA. Martha West had cut him up, they might find his blood anywhere…
LETTY FIRED THE shot, then stumbled away from her muzzle flash, aware that it would have given her away. The man was crunching through the snow again, and she found another shell with her good hand -what was wrong with her left? It just didn't work-and tried to get it in the gun. She fumbled it, found another, got this one in, stopped to listen.
Nothing. Where was he? She began to get the creepy feeling that he was right next to her, breathing quietly, and she slowly dropped to her knees, huddling into the dried Russian thistles along the West Ditch. Waited. Where was he…
Two minutes passed, though it took an eternity. Another minute? Where was he? What happened to Mom? She almost gagged, because she thought she knew what happened to Mom. Though Mom had fought the guy long enough for her to go out the window…
More light. What was that? More light, lots more light…
The house was burning. She was drawn to it-was there something she could do, or was the gunman simply pulling her in? Frightened, she shrank farther back into the dark, and farther back, as the flames grew.
When the first of the volunteer trucks arrived, twenty minutes later, the fire was five stories high and climbing into the night like a volcano.
15
LUCAS HAD STOLEN an old copy of Fortune magazine from the motel lobby and lay in bed, reading an article about how he could still retire rich, when the phone rang. Del?