Mitch stood on his front step, staring down at the footprint, his mind racing. He didn’t know what it meant, but his gut instinct told him to get out of there. Something about the dark silence of his house spooked him, made him feel like he was being watched. He stepped back, looking around, patting the pockets of his bathrobe as if he’d forgotten something. The goggles were still in there.
What was it that girl had said? The Archangel Project.
She’d had some funky high-tech goggles. And a laser gun.
What if she wasn’t a wacko after all? What if there really was something going on?
All the windows in the house were dark, even Bryce’s room, where Mitch knew he kept a lamp on twenty-four hours a day.
Someone had turned it off.
It gave him a weird feeling, knowing someone had been in the house, might still be there. In the dark, waiting for him. He wondered if it was the girl, come back with some friends.
He didn’t want to stick around and find out.
If anyone was in there, they were watching him. So he touched his head like he just remembered something, turned around and strolled back to the car, whistling.
He got in and started it up, pulled away from the curb and gunned it. If someone was waiting in the house, he didn’t want to hang around and make himself a target. He took the corner hard, tires slipping on the damp pavement.
He calmed down as he drove the neighborhood streets, passing a Safeway and a liquor store. He tried to figure out what to do next.
He didn’t want to call the cops and give them an excuse to go through his house. The twelve-gauge was in the hall closet. The .45 was in his bedroom. They’d be easy enough for the cops to find. And considering that he’d bought them with cash out of the back of a van, they just might’ve been stolen. He couldn’t afford to get mixed up in that.
Mitch stopped at a red light, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and realizing he was being paranoid. All he’d seen was one footprint. Didn’t mean anything.
Maybe it was a neighbor, worried because they’d seen him drag his brother out of the house in the rain and go four-wheeling across the lawn.
Hell, maybe it was a solicitor, come to drop off a coupon for vinyl siding. Yeah, probably that. Or maybe triple-paned windows. Or a church brochure.
In the rearview mirror, he saw big rectangular headlights coming up behind him fast, a truck or maybe a van. A moment later they disappeared beneath the edge of his trunk and he got rammed from behind.
His head snapped back against the headrest. The sound of the crash was loud in his ears, a bang and a crunch mixed together.
Idiot. He swore and put the car into Park, hit the hazard blinkers.
The driver got out of the van behind him and Mitch swore again. Forget about insurance, Mitch didn’t even have a license anymore.
Then, in the mirror, he saw someone with a beard get out of the passenger side of the van and come walking up, too. Holding something down against his leg, trying to hide it as he came up on Mitch’s blind side.
Not good.
Mitch shifted back into gear and floored it. The Toyota’s little engine wound up, needle swinging into the red. Another car came through the intersection, running a yellow, and Mitch swerved around it. In the rearview mirror, he saw one of the guys in the road bring up a submachine gun in both hands.
Bullets hammered through the Toyota, shattering the rear glass and knocking chunks out of his windshield. Mitch hunched low in the seat.
Bullets passed so close he could hear them snapping through the air around his head. He didn’t have time to think. He jerked the wheel and the Toyota jumped the curb. The whole body of the car jolted. The rear window crashed in. He took the next left onto a bigger street and headed toward the nearest safe place he could think of.
Lanny’s.
He blew past a stop sign, saw a bus out of the corner of his eye, and braked hard, skidded around the back of it. The van charged down the street behind him, its front grille mashed in, one headlight out.
Mitch took another left, then a right, hoping to lose them. They showed up in the rearview mirror a second later, the van swaying as it took the corner too fast. Mitch came up behind a slow-moving black pickup and found himself trapped. With the oncoming traffic, there was no way to get around it. The van closed in behind him.
He tromped on the brakes and pulled hard on the wheel, squealing the tires, feeling all four wheels lose traction on the wet road. He straightened the wheel and gunned it, felt the front wheels bite, and swerved out of the skid into an alley.
He prayed there was no one blocking the other end. He rattled over a steam grate. Flew out from behind the building into a parking lot. The van followed close behind, whacking off a mirror on a telephone pole.
Mitch got to the other end of the alley and back on the street again, swerving between cars coming at him from both directions. Horns blared all around. He went half a block and turned hard, skidding to a stop in the back lot behind Lanny’s restaurant.
He jumped out of the car and ran to the restaurant’s back door. Grabbed the door handle, but it was locked. He hammered on the door with his fist, pulling hard on the handle, rattling the door in the frame. The van came around the corner, brakes squealing.
Just then the door opened and Mitch dove through, yelling, “Get down!” He landed on a sticky tile floor in a T-shaped hallway that smelled like cigarette smoke and spilled beer.
Lanny leaned over him. He hadn’t changed much in the last five years, a little softer now and more dressed up. But he was still a funny-looking black guy with a gap between his teeth.
“Mitch? Man, what the—”
An automatic weapon cut loose outside, chopping the back door to shreds. Mitch grabbed Lanny’s legs out from beneath him, knocking him to the floor. Chunks of wood flew and tumbled around them.
Lanny flipped over onto his stomach and elbow-crawled around the corner to a pair of back office doors, letting loose a stream of obscenities. Mitch followed him on hands and knees.
A muscled-up white guy with a shaved head and a gold earring came barreling out of the back office, stepping over Lanny, pulling a giant chrome pistol out of his jacket. He pointed a thick finger at Mitch and said to Lanny, “He cool?”
“I don’t know.” Lanny scowled at Mitch. “Why you bringin’ this drama to my spot, man?”
Mitch shrugged. “You hit?”
“Not yet.”
“Then what are you complaining about?”
The gunfire stopped.
The bald guy charged around the corner. “Sons of bitches!” He yelled it like a challenge.
Mitch poked his head around to watch. The guy kicked the door open. What was left of it, anyway. Outside, a taillight went past as the van took off. The bald guy ran out into the parking lot and aimed the giant gun with both hands. It went off like a cannon, kicking up hard in his big hands. He fired twice more. The noise was jaw-rattling even from a distance.
Apparently, it didn’t do any good. The guy lowered the gun, flipped the finger, and came back inside.
Mitch let out a long breath. “So how’s business, Lanny? Good?”
Still peeking around the corner, Lanny said, “What?”
“You told me, come see you when I got out.”
Lanny stared at him.
Mitch smiled. “Guess what? I’m out.”