Reflexively Tess aimed. She squeezed the trigger. Again! Then again! The first bullet struck the mansion's wall. The second hit a tree behind the gunman.
But the third knocked the gunman backward.
Tess again screamed inwardly with triumph.
Directly, the silent cheer stuck in her throat.
No!
The gunman had managed to stay on his feet. He continued to raise his weapon. Her own gun roaring, Tess fired again and slammed the man onto the lawn.
She sprinted past a flower garden, hearing bullets zing from the back of the mansion. They slashed the evergreens she ran toward and made her dive again.
Frantic, she rolled against the bottom of the shrubs, twisted, aimed at a gunman racing in her direction from the back of the house, shot three times, missed, but at least made the gunman scramble behind the cover of a gazebo.
The mansion was completely in flames now. The sirens wailed louder. Closer. As the gunman leaned from the side of the gazebo, aiming, Tess angrily shot yet again.
He spun out of sight.
But not smoothly. Tess tried to assure herself that it was possible she'd hit him, although maybe she'd merely splintered wood near his face.
She couldn't tell. It didn't matter. No time!
She crawled through a narrow gap at the bottom of the shrubs, felt branches scrape her skull, her back, her hips, and charged to her feet the moment she was through the hedge. She ran through the fire-illuminated shadows in the spacious back yard of the neighboring mansion.
Lights were on in the house. She imagined the frightened residents scrambling toward the street in case the fire spread and their own house caught fire.
Despite the roar of the blaze, she heard branches scrape behind her. Whirling, she shot three times toward where the hedge moved, heard a man groan, and urged herself onward through the deepening darkness of the extensive yard.
She veered past trees, lunged through flower gardens, tripped against the low rim of a lily pond, nearly tumbled into the water, but caught her balance, and skirted the pond, running faster.
Count how many rounds you've shot, her father had always insisted.
But in her frenzy to escape, Tess had forgotten her father's rule. How many times did I shoot?
She couldn't remember. More than ten, she was sure of that. Perhaps thirteen or… The pistol would be almost empty.
Fear chilled her despite the sweat that soaked her clothes and dripped from her face. She had to conserve her ammunition.
Chest heaving, she came to another line of evergreens. In the darkness, she couldn't help spinning to face the blazing mansion a hundred yards away. Flames licked from her bedroom. The violation made her furious. Her past, her youth, were being destroyed. Trembling, she detected no sign of anyone chasing her and sank to the ground, scurrying beneath the farther shrubs.
In the next mansion's yard, she realized, tense, that she couldn't keep running in this direction. It was too predictable. All her Pursuers had to do was hurry along the street in front of the house, get ahead of her, hide, and wait to kill her when she tried to leave the area. Her only hope was that the sirens, now very close, would force her hunters to flee.
But she couldn't count on that. She had to guarantee her protection. How?
Breathing rapidly, shaking, confused, afraid, she made an urgent choice and instead of continuing to sprint across this yard, she darted toward its rear. After passing through the darkness between a swimming pool and a tennis court, she found her way blocked by a high stone wall. She glanced around, desperate, in search of a ladder or a tree near the wall, anything that would allow her to get over the top.
Nothing.
Jesus.
She retreated toward the swimming pool. Next to a maintenance shed, she found a long metal pole. The pole had a net at one end, obviously used for skimming leaves and other debris from the surface of the water.
Hurry! She pressed the pole against the bottom of the shed, squeezing it, flexing it, twisting. The pole was strong yet pliant. Maybe.
Her temples throbbed from the force of her rapid heartbeat. No choice.
Tess crammed the pistol into her purse, which still hung securely from her wrist. With equal speed, she gripped one end of the pole, shifted the other end toward the back of the yard, lifted the pole, and raced toward the wall.
When the far end of the pole was five feet from the wall, she rammed it into the lawn and hurtled upward.
It had been years since she'd practised this event. In track-and-field, pole vaulting had never been her favorite activity. But now she had to pretend she was in the Olympics. As her body arched higher, she felt the pole begin to bend. Its metal creaked. If it snaps…!
With a stunning jolt, she slammed against the top of the wall, clawed with one hand, snagged the rim, let go of the pole, fumbled with her other hand, and dangled from the wall, squirming upward.
At the top, hands scraped and bleeding, ignoring the pain, Tess lay flat, then hung from the other side, and dropped toward blackness. She feared she'd hit a bench that might break her ankle.
Or a stake that supported a sapling and might impale her.
Instead her feet struck the soft earth of a garden, and with practised agility, she bent her knees, tucked her elbows against her sides, then rolled across pliant dirt and cushioning flowers.
In a frenzy, she sprang to her feet, studied the gloom ahead, the vague shadows of trees, the bulky dark outline of another mansion, drew the pistol from her purse, and ran.
When she'd been ten, her best friend had lived here. They'd often played in this yard, and one of their favorite games had been hide-and-seek.
Tess remembered an afternoon when she'd found so good a hiding place that her friend had finally given up looking.
Now Tess hurried toward that hiding place, hoping that the yard had not been relandscaped. When she heard the trickle of water, she increased speed.
In a corner at the back, she came to boulders that had been piled and cemented together to form a miniature, shoulder-high, imitation of a mountain from the top of which water bubbled and streamed down a series of zig-zagging crests toward a goldfish pond. A pump in an alcove behind the boulders kept the water circulating.
The alcove had a metal hatch to protect the pump from bad weather. Bushes flanked the boulders. Tess crept through the sharp-edged bushes, knelt at the back, and groped in the darkness, finding the hatch.
She squirmed into the alcove, closing the hatch behind her. In total blackness, with the pump whirring next to her, she sat with her knees bent toward her chest, her arms around her knees, her head stooped. The cramped position made her muscles ache, but at least she could rest and gain time to decide what to do.
Years ago, the reason her friend hadn't been able to find her was that they'd once investigated this alcove, and Tess's friend had been disgusted by the spider webs inside. Her friend hadn't thought to look here because her friend would never have chosen to hide here. But Tess had been a tomboy, and spider webs had meant nothing compared to winning the game.
Now, feeling spider webs against her hair as well as something tiny with many legs skittering across her right hand, making her skin tingle, Tess again ignored what would have nauseated her friend, although she needed all her discipline to repress a shudder. The main thing was that she'd reached safety. In this grownup, deadly version of hide-and-seek, no stranger could find where she'd hidden, because no stranger could possibly know about this alcove behind the boulders.
Tess winced. Her hands hurt from scratches and burns. Her back stung from when she'd crawled through the shrubs. Her legs, arms, and chin throbbed from the numerous times she'd struck objects or fallen.
But the pain in her body was nothing compared to the pain in her soul! Her mother was dead!
No! Tess couldn't believe it. She couldn't adjust to it.