John-Michael spoke quietly. “Now what?”
None of them could reply. A paralytic dread had seized them. They stared helplessly at the would-be assassin. Even Maya, who’d been so cool up until that moment, so together. Over the next few minutes, however, John-Michael saw all that resolve evaporating.
The man was alive. He would talk.
Maya groaned, “The gun . . .”
Then they all saw it. The fingers of his right hand were tightening around the handle of the revolver. Collectively, they recoiled as slowly the man began to sit up. He led with his gun arm, which he lifted high enough to be a threat. The rest of him followed in a disjointed, strenuous pattern of movement, like a puppet being slowly dragged upward by invisible strings. When finally he was sitting upright, one shoulder leaning against the red sofa, the man seemed to notice his own blood and cursed roundly, adding, “Which one of you bastards did this to me?”
No one moved.
He raised the gun, this time pointing unsteadily at John-Michael. “I said which one?”
No one spoke.
The hit man swore again, and stared each one of them in the eye. The gun stayed where it was, aiming right at John-Michael’s chest. Finally, his eyes settled on Paolo. John-Michael saw Paolo’s Adam’s apple bob up and down, but otherwise his friend gave no indication of fear.
“You with the tattoo. You’re gonna tie up your friends. You make one false move and your boy here takes a bullet to the heart.”
The man reached into his leather jacket with his free hand and after a few seconds of fidgeting removed a roll of silver-gray duct tape. He rolled it across to Paolo. “Now.”
Paolo picked up the duct tape like it was radioactive waste. With one final, hesitant look at Maya, he began to tape her wrists together.
“Do everyone’s hands first,” the man said. His voice sounded faint, exhausted. “But the other boy, you do his legs first. Then he does . . . does your hands,” he managed to say with effort. “And then . . . then you do his . . .”
The voice trailed off, but still the gun aimed at John-Michael. A sweat broke out all over John-Michael’s upper body.
Moving slowly, practically robotic, Paolo moved to Lucy and began to tape her wrists.
The man wiped his free hand across the back of his head. When it came away smeared thickly in his own blood, he gasped. He sounded less angry than resigned. “You stupid children. You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“It was self-defense,” Lucy said. And then repeated it over and over, like a mantra.
“Yeah?” the man snarled back. “Maybe you should’ve killed me when you had the chance.”
“Let us call nine-one-one,” John-Michael said urgently. “You’re bleeding a lot. You . . . your head looks pretty bad. I think you need an ambulance.”
The man sniffed. “Not yet. We got unfinished business.”
“Look, we know you didn’t intend to kill anyone,” John-Michael continued. “You fired a blank.”
“I can assure you, son, there’ll be no more blanks fired today.”
But John-Michael didn’t stop. “So why start with a blank?” There had to be a reason that he’d begun by trying to scare Lucy. If he could get the guy back into that mind-set, maybe they’d get out of this intact. “Let me call nine-one-one?”
“You touch a phone and I’ll kill you,” the man said, almost casually. He waved the gun, urging Paolo on. “Hurry or my focus might slip. I might let a bullet go, by mistake.”
Maya and Lucy were tied up now, wrists and ankles taped together. They were still upright, and looked utterly lost. Finally, everyone was tied up except John-Michael, whose hands were still free. He could barely stand to look any of his friends in the eye.
Why did the guy want them tied up? Obviously it made sense not to let them outnumber him. If he started firing now, he might get a round or two off before they overwhelmed him. But that wasn’t likely to happen, John-Michael guessed. Not one of them had the guts to tackle an armed man.
Tying them up would put them entirely at his mercy. Would he kill them, then? Pick them off carefully, clinically, with the five remaining bullets? The more John-Michael thought about it, the harder he felt his heart pounding, until he was certain that the man would hear it, too.
The man’s free hand was once again jostling inside his jacket. After three attempts, he managed to extract a small, black, plastic-cased cell phone.
His motor skills are deteriorating, John-Michael noted. “You gonna call nine-one-one?” he asked.
“Everyone, siddown,” the man said, ignoring John-Michael’s suggestion. This time, his speech was noticeably slurred. He peered at John-Michael, as though staring at him through dark glass. “You. Get over here and kneel down beside me.”
John-Michael hesitated. Mercy was their only hope now. “Excuse me, sir, but I think you need a doctor real bad.”
This time, the hit man exploded. “Shut your mouth and get down on your knees, punk!”
But as John-Michael began, slowly, to fall to his knees, a sharp cry came from the hit man, followed by a faint groan. Then he clutched both fists to his eyes. Over the next few seconds he began to jerk violently, until his entire body was in spasms.
The housemates looked on, aghast.
“He’s having some kind of seizure!” John-Michael gasped.
The air cracked. It took a second before John-Michael realized that the gun had been fired. It was still in the hit man’s right hand.
“I’m okay!” Maya called out breathlessly.
“Yeah, me too,” said Paolo. “And me,” Lucy said.
John-Michael watched in appalled fascination as the man continued to flip and twist like a freshly landed fish.
“What should we do . . . ?” Maya breathed.
An idea was crystallizing in John-Michael’s mind, taking form within a cage of icy, implacable logic. The idea became bright and terrible in his mind; irresistible. The answer to so many problems had been within reach—the hit man himself had said it. Who knew where the next bullet would go?
John-Michael moved smoothly. In one swift motion he’d rotated his taped ankles behind him, picked up a large cushion from the back of the red couch, and was on his knees next to the injured man.
He looked at Paolo, who sat helplessly taped up on the floor next to the green futon. Their eyes met with an intensity that made John-Michael shiver. Paolo’s lips moved in response to John-Michael’s unspoken question. His reply was barely audible.
“Yes.”
John-Michael closed a part of himself away as he leaned over the man on the floor, reaching for the flailing hand in which the gun was clenched. He held the cushion firmly over the man’s face, jaw clenched tight as he struggled to hold the man down, aware of the man’s chin beneath his own shoulder. It wasn’t easy; the man’s movements were powerful, violent. He shut off his feelings as the man continued fiercely to jerk beneath him. He ignored the objections from Lucy. Maya and Paolo, he noted, made no sound at all. They simply watched as John-Michael held the man beneath him, slowly extinguishing his life force.
It took less time than John-Michael remembered. A sure sign that the hit man had already been on his way out. John-Michael had merely nudged him along.
The silence that followed was lengthy. Heavy and profound. John-Michael released his grip and rocked back on his heels. He glanced first at Paolo, then Maya. They both sat motionless, their eyes full of him. He couldn’t look at the dead man; those lifeless eyes would have chilled him to the bones. But he made himself look at Lucy. She was gasping for air, trying to speak words that wouldn’t leave her throat. Finally, a strangled cry escaped her and they all realized that Lucy was hyperventilating.
With great difficulty, she choked out, “What . . . what . . . have you done?”