IT WAS LEO who finally came to the door. I didn’t even wait for his reaction. I pushed my way into the house, tracking mud and rainwater onto their rug.
“Close it! Quick!” I said, wiping the water off my face.
Leo stood there in his jeans and checkered shirt looking stunned.
I scanned the room quickly, looking for the kids, Judie, and Marie. I’d expected to see them all sitting around the fireplace, playing Scrabble and drinking hot chocolate. But there was no one here.
“Where are my kids, Leo?”
My voice trembled. My whole body did. The panic I’d stifled in that van full of murderers finally came out. I wanted to cry, to scream, but first I needed to see my kids. To hug them and know they were all right.
“Pete!” Leo yelled. “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”
Marie rushed in through the kitchen door, dressed in purple pajamas. I turned back to Leo. I spoke as fast as I could, my words running into one another.
“The kids, Leo. Where are they? There’s no time. Are they here? We have to protect them.”
“Relax, Pete. They’re with Judie, and they’re safe. What’s happened? Did you check yourself out of the hospital?”
“Yeah. Yes . . . I . . . I saw the storm, and I thought this would be the night. And I was right. And then I stumbled across them at Andy’s. . . . Leo, the people from my dream, they’re here. The woman . . . the men . . . the van. They’re here! I tried to get here first to warn you but I crashed the bike . . . and I ran into them on the way here. I managed to fool them. I told them this was my house, and they brought me here instead. I thought you’d all be together. Where are Judie and the kids? They weren’t at the hostel. They told me over there that they were here with you.”
Leo looked at Marie with an expression that could mean only one thing: Run back in the kitchen and call the hospital.
“Pete, listen,” he said, trying to look calm. “You said someone drove you here in a van? I didn’t see any headlights outside.”
“No, Leo, this isn’t a hallucination,” I said, all of a sudden unsure myself. Is it possible Leo hadn’t seen the headlights? But the girl at the gas station. She’d seen them. They were real. . . . “There are four killers outside, and when they realize I lied to them, they’re going to come back here and kill us all. Tell me, where are the kids, Leo!”
Leo walked over to the window and looked outside. I joined him. Not a single light was visible outside, which was strange given how pitch black it was. We should at least be able to see the headlights of the van moving toward my house.
“Pete, why don’t you have a seat,” Leo said. “Let’s talk a minute.”
I backed away from him.
“Goddammit, Leo, I’m telling you the truth!” I yelled. “Where are the kids?”
Leo took on a blank expression.
“They’re at your house, Pete,” Marie said from the kitchen door. “They’re with Judie. They went over to get some clothes to spend the night. They said they’d be right back.”
It felt like someone had hit me in the chest with a sledgehammer. I put my hands on my head and replayed her words in my mind. I stood there stunned.
Home. They were at home. And I had sent the killers right to them. The van must be getting there right about now. The knife. That huge goddamn knife. Just as I had seen it in my visions. Right now, they were circling the house. About to go inside. Judie would have seen the headlights. Maybe she even went out to see who it was . . .
I ran for the phone in the kitchen, but tripped on the rug and fell hard before reaching the door, banging my injured shoulder. I moaned like a wounded animal.
“The phone,” I told Marie, looking up from the floor. “We have to warn them.”
From where I lay, I could only see her comfortable pearl-gray house slippers, but I knew she and Leo were giving one another a look. Let’s calm him down first, then we’ll call the ambulance, he’d surely mouthed to her.
“Marie. You have to believe me, please. They’re here. Everything’s going to happen tonight. Call my house, for God’s sake. Please believe me!”
I leaned up on one elbow and saw her beautiful face filled with terror. And it wasn’t just the shock of seeing me lying there, soaked in rain and sand, begging for my children’s lives. It was something more. She was terrified at the possibility that I might be right.
“Please, Marie . . .”
She nodded, turned around and disappeared into the kitchen. I turned to Leo to ask him for his car keys, but he was already by the door, grabbing his brown leather bomber jacket.
“I’m going to take a look, God help me.”
That’s when it happened. The front door crashed open, the jackets and raincoats hanging by the entrance went flying. A cold wind gusted into the house like an angry dervish. For a second, we thought the hurricane force winds were to blame—that is, until Randy came through the door with a pistol.
Until that very moment, even I had doubts about my story. But there he was, crossing the threshold, gun pointed at Leo’s head, while my friend backed up with his hands in the air. This was no hallucination.
Everything was happening too fast. I thought he was going to kill him right there. That’s it. It’s over. I cringed and waited for the gun to fire. Then it’d be my turn. And then Marie. End of story. But just as Randy had Leo backed up to the couch, he pistol-whipped him across the face, and Leo fell back onto the couch in a heap.
I was close to the kitchen door and started dragging myself backward toward it, until my back came to rest on the doorframe. Randy turned and pointed the gun at me.
“Hold it, you smart-ass son of a bitch,” he said, in a gravelly whisper. His hair was wet and matted, and the superfluous sunglasses rested on the bridge of his nose.
I was frozen by the kitchen door when I heard the faintest sound, a door closing quietly in the other room. The kitchen was connected to the garage, whose side door led out toward the beach.
Of course, said a voice in my head which was surprisingly too calm. This is when Marie runs down the beach toward your house. This is when she pounds at your door in the middle of the night. But you’re not there to open it, Peter. The sequence is different now. It’s changed.
We were living a new version of the story. Would the outcome be different, too?
Tom appeared in the doorway behind Randy, his hair and clothes also soaked. From where I was, he looked like a human tank, made of flesh and bone. He strode across the room toward me and without saying a word, kicked me right in the stomach. I doubled over in the fetal position; it felt like my intestines had exploded.
“I hate the fucking rain,” he said, putting his foot on top of my head. “These are expensive goddamn shoes, and now they’re fucking ruined because of your sorry ass.”
He pressed his foot against my head like a vise. I started throwing up as his weight came down on my skull with increasing force. I thought this was the end. My head was going to explode like a watermelon. But all of a sudden, the weight was gone.
He’d lifted his foot.
“Not just yet,” he said.
I lay on the ground. Leo was passed out on the couch, blood dripping from his head. He might even be dead. Randy was talking on a cell phone.
“All clear here, Manon,” he said. “Under control.”
It wasn’t long before the van’s lights shone through the front window. It parked out front by the fence. There goes my plan, I thought. I didn’t manage to keep the van at bay for long. At least . . . Judie and the kids are safe. There was still hope.
The woman came through the door. She stood in the doorway surveying the scene. I was on the floor, rocking with my hands on my stomach, trying desperately to breathe. The fat guy had nearly killed me with a single kick. Leo moaned and started to move on the couch. He was alive, after all. Randy had taken off his raincoat and sat by the front door. He could handle us both easily. He’d even put his pistol on the couch while he sifted through his pockets.
“Goddammit. I must have left them at the gas station. You got a cigarette on you, Tom?”
But Tom couldn’t hear him. He was upstairs ransacking the house. You could hear furniture being tossed, glass breaking. He must have been looking for Marie.
Manon looked at Randy.
“Where’s the woman?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Randy said. “Tom’s looking for her. Maybe this little punk here tipped her off. Tell you one thing, though. The old guy never saw it coming.”
Manon turned and came toward me. I cowered and waited for another kick, or worse. She squatted next to me, grabbed me by the hair, and pulled it back so I was looking her right in the face. Our eyes locked.
“Nice try. Bet you thought you were pretty slick, huh, neighbor?”
She held something in front of my face. It was a GPS. I was staring at a detailed map of Tremore Beach. A red dot was pinned to Leo and Marie’s house, to the right of Bill’s Peak.
“You made all along,” I said. “What were you waiting for?”
“You knew us in less than ten seconds. How?”
I opened my mouth to respond and noticed vomit dripping down my chin. I smiled.
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
She let go of my hair and let my head thud onto the floor. She stood up and called up to Tom.
The fat guy came thundering down the stairs a few seconds later.
“I looked everywhere. Nothing. I’ll check the garage.”
“Fuck,” Manon hissed. She grabbed a device clipped to her belt and spoke into it. It wasn’t a cell phone, but some kind of walkie-talkie.
“Frank . . . The woman’s not here. Search the perimeter of the house. And watch your back.”
She crouched back down over me. This time I watched her pull out a stiletto, the blade glinting between her fingers, and bring the point within inches of my eye.
“Tell me where the woman is—or I’ll carve out your eyes, one by one.”
“I don’t know,” I managed to say, even though the blade floated over my right eye.
“I’m going to gouge out your right eye, first. How’s that sound? And then I’ll make you eat it.”
“I swear, I don’t know! Leo was alone when I got here.”
I felt the tip of the knife press beneath my right eye, and I closed them both. I felt the pressure increase. For a split second, I thought losing an eye wasn’t so bad as long as she didn’t touch my fingers. They make glass eyes. I can still play the piano blind.
“How did you know who we were?” she asked. I’d managed to stump them. I was glad. I smiled again. I felt another blow to my face, and my head rebounded off the floor.
Tom came back in from the garage saying he hadn’t found anyone though someone might have been able to slip from the kitchen to the garage and out to the beach if they’d wanted to.
“Door’s unlocked.”
Manon stood up and walked to the couch.
“Wake up grandpa, here,” she said, and then spoke into the walkie-talkie again. “Frank! The woman might be on the beach. Go take a look.”
Looked like my eye surgery had been postponed. Tom grabbed me under my arms, picked up all two hundred pounds of me like he was lifting a carton of milk, and tossed me onto the couch.
Randy smacked Leo across the cheek. He was bleeding profusely out of a gash on one side of his face, but still he managed to open his eyes. With Leo awake, Randy sat back down, pulled his pistol out, and aimed it at us.
“Okay, Mr. Blanchard,” Manon said, standing behind the couch. “Can you hear me?”
It took a moment for Leo’s eyes to focus on her.
“My name is Leonard Kogan,” he said. “You’ve got the wrong man.”
“We know who you are, Leonard Blanchard. And you know why we’re here. So let’s stop playing games and wasting time, shall we? Where’s your wife?”
“I’m telling you, you’ve got the wrong guy,” Leo insisted. “My name is Kogan not Blanchard. You’ve made a terrible mistake. I’m just an American tourist. . . .”
Manon simply put her hand on Randy’s shoulder.
“Right knee.”
Before any of us could move, Randy aimed the gun and squeezed the trigger. A deafening bang rang out, and Leo lurched forward. He grabbed his right knee and fell forward on top of the coffee table. I rushed to grab him and laid him back on the couch. Leo was clenching his teeth so hard I thought he’d crack a molar.
“Let’s see if we understand one another now, Mr. Blanchard,” Manon said. “We can end this quickly.”
A torrent of blood spurted from between Leo’s fingers and soaked his pant leg.
“Goddamn bitch,” Leo said through gritted teeth. “Marie is visiting a friend in London and won’t be back for a week. You’ve wasted a trip.”
“He’s lying,” Randy said. “Other knee?”
“Wait,” Manon said. “We don’t want him to bleed out. What do you say, Tom?”
“The woman was here. I’m sure of it. Maybe this other guy warned her. Or maybe she ran when she heard us come in.”
Manon grabbed her walkie-talkie. You could hear the roar of the wind on the other end.
“Nothing yet,” he said, the storm howling behind him. “I’ll keep heading down the beach.”
I watched Manon’s eyes scan the room and land on me.
“All right, friend. We really don’t have to kill you. But we will if you don’t tell us what we need to know. Where’s the woman?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t seen her. I swear. Leo must be telling the truth.”
Randy pointed the gun at my head. He was leisurely leaning back on the couch with his legs crossed like a gentleman and the pistol held casually, like a glass of wine. He was itching to kill me.
“Waste him?” he asked Manon.
Manon didn’t seem in such a rush to see more blood run. Instead, she spoke into the walkie-talkie again. Frank had walked around the entire house and found nothing.
Randy brought the pistol sights up and aimed at my head.
“What do you say, Manon?”
“No, not yet,” she said. “Let’s see who’s hiding in the other house. Maybe he really does have a family, and he is throwing a party.” She fixed her cold, malevolent eyes on mine. I couldn’t stop my eyes, my face, from flinching. Manon read me immediately. “Yes, I think there is some truth to this story. And maybe he won’t be quite as brave after he sees what we do to his loved ones. We’ll drag them over here and play with them awhile, until he tells us where Marie is.”
“No!” Leo yelled.
I was so terrified, so desperate, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut.
“You’re screwed. We already called the cops over the radio. They’ll be here any minute,” I said.
“Not a chance. You didn’t have time,” Randy said.
But Manon just stood quietly, mulling over that scenario. She still seemed worried about how quickly I’d figured them out. If one of us had gotten to a cell phone, the cops would be on their way as we spoke.
“Tom, find the radio.”
“It’s upstairs, but it’s off,” he said. “There’s no way they had time to . . .”
“I’ll decide that!” she yelled. “Go upstairs and search the place again. See if someone might have slipped out an open window. And trash the fucking radio while you’re at it.”
Tom ran up the stairs. Meanwhile, Manon started talking over the plan with Randy right in front of us—I figured we were dead men right then and there. They had to move fast, she said. Randy would stay behind and watch us while Frank acted as the lookout with his walkie-talkie on. She and Tom would drive over to the house to have a look. She doubted there was any party planned, but they had to be careful. Maybe Marie had made it over there by now.
In a way, I was thinking the same thing they were: Could a sixty-five-year-old woman have run two miles across the beach in this driving wind and rain in less than fifteen minutes? I doubted it. But if she had managed to (and I prayed she had), Judie and the kids still had a chance.
Tom and Manon went out, leaving Randy and Frank standing guard. We heard the van start up and watched the lights pull away. The engine soon faded into the distance. I pictured the van headed toward Bill’s Peak and racing at full throttle toward my house. The sequence hadn’t changed so much after all.
RANDY SAT across from us, the pistol in his hand resting on his lap. Leo, lying next to me, writhed in pain. The blood wasn’t gushing anymore, but now he was shaking. His teeth chattered.
“I have to tie a tourniquet or I’ll bleed to death.”
“Shut up!” Randy screamed.
“He’s right,” I said.
“Both of you, shut the fuck up,” he said pointing the gun at us.
“What the hell’s going on in there?” I heard Frank say from the other side of the door.
“The old man’s bleeding out,” Randy yelled back.
“Well do something, for Chrissake.”
Randy rolled his eyes at me and gestured with the gun.
“Go ahead, do what you have to do. But don’t fucking move from that couch.”
“But how am I supposed to . . . ?” I started to ask.
“Use your shirt, Pete,” Leo said, his voice sounding rushed. “Take it off and use one of the sleeves to tie off my leg. It should work.”
Randy got up and walked toward the door, the gun still trained on us. He said something to Frank, who was on the porch, smoking a cigarette.
“Shit, man. Can’t you wait until we’re done here?” I heard Frank tell him.
I tore off my shirt and was about start tying off Leo’s thigh. But he waved me off with his hands.
“I’ll do it,” he said. “You hold the pillows.”
It didn’t make sense to me, at first, but then I saw the look in Leo’s eyes and knew he had something else in mind. I wrapped one of the throw pillows around his leg and held it in place while he started to tie the tourniquet. Our faces were nearly next to each other’s, and Randy was out of earshot, while Frank fished for a cigarette and matches from his jacket pocket.
“I’ve got a revolver,” Leo whispered while he tied the tourniquet. “It’s strapped to my right ankle, in a holster. Grab it. He can’t see you from where he is. It’s our only chance.”
I looked at him in shock. You didn’t write me off, after all, you stubborn old goat.
Randy was still by the door. It was hard to hear anything over the wind and the crash of the ocean. Plus, he probably figured he had nothing to worry about from some sixty-something-year-old man with a gunshot wound in one leg and a skinny, pale forty-year-old.
I was leaning slightly toward Leo, holding the pillow, and Randy was standing at such an angle where he couldn’t see my hands. I reached one hand slowly down Leo’s right leg, feeling for something beneath the hem of his pants. I finally felt a lump by his ankle.
“Hurry up!” he whispered.
In one quick motion, I lifted the cuff of his pant leg and felt the revolver, felt the texture of the gun’s grip between my fingers. I grabbed it the very moment Randy walked back over to us. I looked up at Leo, and he looked back down at me without being able to say a word. What should I do? Turn and shoot right now?
But I didn’t. I could feel the barrel of Randy’s gun trained on us. He’d be a hundred times faster on the trigger than I would be. So instead, I tucked the gun under one of the couch cushions between Leo’s legs. Leo just stared at me. One slip of my finger, and I might have accidentally shot his balls off.
As Randy sat back down, Leo quickly and slyly shook his pant leg to cover the holster strapped to his ankle.
“How’s it look?” Randy asked as he blew out a puff a smoke, suddenly a picture of easygoing relaxation.
“Good,” I said. “It should hold.”
Randy jammed the cigarette into one corner of his mouth, threw his feet up onto a side table, and grabbed one of the picture frames that sat on it.
He whistled.
“So this is Mrs. Blanchard, huh? She looks pretty damn good in this picture,” he said, flicking his ashes onto the carpet. “Although she’s probably got another forty years on her by now, right? Either way, that’s a beautiful woman. Maybe I can get a little alone time with her.”
“You piece of shit,” Leo spat.
“Hey, don’t get all bent out of shape. We’ll let her decide. Maybe when I put this gun in her ear, she’ll feel better about going down and giving me a little satisfaction. What about you, neighbor friend? Got any hot little daughters?”
“You’re a dead man, Randy,” I spat. “I swear to God, you’re going to die tonight.”
I glanced at Leo and realized that with Randy sitting directly across from us, there was no way he was going to be able to get to his gun—unless we distracted him somehow. There had to be a way. . . .
“That’s a nice fairy tale ending,” he said. “Good conclusion to a novel. But the only ones who are going to die here tonight—slowly and painfully—are you two. And I guarantee you before it’s all said and done, I’m gonna have a nice time with your wives and daughters. Frank, too. Isn’t that right, Frank?” he called out, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and giving a dirty cackle.
Frank didn’t answer.
“You and your wife shouldn’t have done what you did. Now you’re going to pay, Blanchard. And so is your neighbor’s family.”
“What the hell is he talking about, Leo?” I said, giving him an icy stare. “What did you do?”
Leo glanced at me, eyebrows raised.
“Oh, you didn’t tell your neighbor, did you?” Randy said. “Your friends here probably spun you a nice little tale. Made themselves out to be a sweet little old couple. But they’re just thieves. I’m going to love putting a hole in their heads.”
“Shut up, you fucking snake. . . .” Leo hissed.
“No, I want to hear this!” I yelled. “About time I knew what the hell is going on. You put my whole family in danger. Right now, they’re probably about to . . .”
“Better you don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong,” Leo bit back. “This is none of your business, Peter.”
Leo had figured out my plan. Or maybe he didn’t; maybe he was totally serious. Either way, it was just the distraction we needed.
“None of my business, you old fuck?” I shouted. “You gave me this whole story about how you were a retired hotel security officer, and now we’re all dead because of you!” I yelled.
Randy delighted in watching us argue.
“Shut your filthy mouth, or I’ll shut it for you,” Leo said.
“Oh, yeah?” I yelled back.
I lunged at him. I knew it might hurt his injured knee, but I tried not to land on it as I grabbed him by the shirt, standing right between him and Randy. He hollered in real pain. I could hear Randy laughing behind me but soon he half-heartedly said to get off of Leo. We heard Frank yell from outside, too. I watched as Leo slipped his hand between the cushions, grabbed the gun, and aimed it where my stomach was. This was the moment. I dropped to the floor and heard a terrible explosion over my head followed by a muffled cry of pain.
For the next few seconds, I lay pinned to the floor. There were two more shots. I heard glass shatter. Only later would I learn it was the window that overlooked the front yard.
I saw Randy’s feet under the coffee table, saw them crumple underneath him as he rolled off the couch and then landed on the floor next to me, his round glasses slipping off to reveal his now-lifeless eyes, the burning cigarette falling from his lips.
“Peter . . .” I heard behind me.
It was Leo. He was lying on the floor, too.
“Did you get the other guy?”
“I think so, but I’m not sure. I saw him go down, but he got a shot off. He might be alive. Look, I can’t move. You’re going to have to check,” he whispered, handing me the revolver.
With the cold metal in my hands, I felt an immediate rush of power. If I’d had my way, I’d much rather stay cowering between those two couches. But right about now, Judie and my kids would be getting an unwelcome visit from Manon and the fat guy. It might even be too late. But if God saw fit to give us this one chance, I had to make the most of it—and fast.
I eased my head up with the gun pointed out in front of me. Frank wasn’t out there. At least, I couldn’t see him from where I was. The front door was open, and you could see only part of the porch, and beyond that, sheets of falling rain. Where was he?
He might be hiding against the outside wall. There was no way to get to him, unless these bullets could fire through the wall. I lay there for another couple seconds, thinking: There was no time to waste; my kids’ lives were in danger. Maybe in a rush of adrenaline—or a suicidal lack of self-awareness—I hopped up and ran toward the door in one motion. I blindly poked the barrel of the gun around the edge of the door and fired twice. It filled the night with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. I peeked out the door. There was no one there.
“Look out, Pete!” Leo yelled.
I turned around and saw Frank stumbling in through the kitchen door. He must have looped around to catch us by surprise. He fired at Leo, who had started to pick himself up off the floor, and hit him. Leo fell behind the couch with a thud. I fired back at the same time, pulling the trigger three times, although only two bullets fired. The gun was out of ammunition.
But I got lucky. From the fresh wound in Frank’s neck, dark blood sprayed the doorframe and across the pink living room wall. Frank managed to stand another couple of seconds before keeling over and landing heavily by the kitchen door, his gun tumbling to the ground.
I ran over and picked it up. Frank was trembling and twitching like a toy whose batteries were about to run out. Blood was pooling on the floor beneath him. He stared right at me. I thought about pulling the trigger again and putting him out of his misery, but I couldn’t do it. I turned to Leo. Frank had managed to shoot him in one arm and he winced as he held it.
“Leo!”
“You’ve got to get out of here. The keys to my car are in my jacket. Run! I’ll call the police.”
I didn’t think twice. Leo’s jacket was by the door, and the keys were inside, like he’d said. I ran outside and remembered their car in the garage. I looked down and noticed Frank’s walkie-talkie lying on the ground by the door. Had he had time to tip off Manon?
I opened the garage and hopped in Leo’s four-by-four. I started it up and shot out of there into the stormy night.