Everything went dark all at once. The chandelier overhead in the foyer, the sconces along the walls, every single bulb around us inside the house and out. The power had been cut.
I reached for my Glock. I had Foxx to thank for that. I wouldn’t have been carrying were it not for him. That was a deal breaker, he’d said. If I insisted on bringing in von Oehson on my own, then I absolutely had to be armed.
Of course, guns aren’t of much use if you can’t see what you’re shooting at.
Von Oehson had his phone out before I could grab mine. He hit the flashlight.
I repeat, guns aren’t of much use if you can’t see what you’re shooting at.
My head whipped left and right, my eyes desperately trying to adjust enough to make out any window in my line of sight. It was like Michael Corleone in his bedroom, when Kay asked about the draperies. Only she wanted to know why they were open. I was confirming that they were all closed. That’s why the gunman wanted darkness. So he could see his target light up.
“GET DOWN!”
I dove at von Oehson, decking him once again. This time to save his life. I was in the air, two bursts slicing past my ears overhead. Long-range ammo makes the most sinister sound. It’s like the devil blowing out your candles.
We both hit the ground. I spun, lunging for von Oehson’s phone, which I’d knocked out of his hand. I killed the flash, caught my breath, and proceeded to give him the most obvious set of instructions I’d ever given anyone. “Stay here. Don’t move!”
“The generator,” he said. “It’s going to kick in in a few seconds.”
“No. It’s not,” I told him. This wasn’t amateur hour.
I pushed myself up, slinging my back against the wall alongside the front door. The shots were so clean, the product of steady hands, that there was no sound of broken glass to follow. I had a living room to my left, another living room to my right. The rich are so damn redundant.
I guessed left, edging my way to take a look outside. Kneeling at the first window I came to, I pushed the curtain an inch to see what I expected to see. Nothing. Pitch blackness, no movement. But someone was sure as hell out there. Maybe even a couple of someones.
The sucker’s gambit, otherwise known as trying to elicit fire to locate a shooter, is like randomly checking the coin return on a vending machine. It rarely, if ever, pays off, but you still do it anyway.
I held out my phone just below the window, snapping a curtain selfie with the flash on. Maybe the guy had a twitchy trigger finger.
But not this guy. I listened to the silence. There was no shot, no sound of anything. It was my move again.
Whoever was outside, we needed to keep him there until we had a plan. I aimed, shooting out one of the windows on the far side of the room, then turned and fired across the foyer at a window in the other living room. Two blasts, one message. We’re armed. Enter at your peril.
Maybe a neighbor would dial the police, but it wasn’t going to be us making the call. Not yet. Only if we had to. Scaring this guy away wouldn’t make the problem disappear. Whether it was today, tomorrow, next week, or next year, it was either him or von Oehson. As for me, I didn’t have a choice. I was along for the ride.
I turned back, edging along the wall. I had the plan now, what we had to do. We needed a vantage point. A balcony, if there was one. Otherwise, the attic. As close as we could get to a three-hundred-sixty-degree view of the property, with only one way to reach us from inside the house.
I reached the entrance to the foyer, whispering to von Oehson. “We need to get upstairs,” I said. “The higher up, the better.”
Only he didn’t respond.
He was gone.