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The motion was so smooth that it almost seemed rehearsed.
Gavin ducked as the bullet nicked the right corner of the metal door. The sound pierced the silence and made Stacy’s ears ring.
When Gavin bounced up, Stacy charged Kendall. But he was ready. He held the gun on Gavin and pulled as tight as he could on Melinda. She wailed as Kendall leaned back and pulled Melinda off the floor. Her face turned a dark red, and she clawed and slapped his arm with her hands.
“I’ll choke her. I’ll do it,” Kendall snarled. “I’ll fuckin’ kill her.”
Gavin didn’t move.
“Hold it, Stacy,” Kendall said, pointing the gun back at her.
“Good to see more people came to the party,” Kendall said, the words pouring out of his mouth. He held an intense stare on Stacy. “Get back into the doorway, Gavin.”
Gavin appealed to Stacy with a pleading look, but she looked over at him and nodded. Gavin took a step back and filled the space.
“Hands where I can see them,” he said, boring a look through Stacy. She slowly raised her hands above her head.
“That means you too,” he snapped at Gavin. Gavin reluctantly raised his hands. The rancid smell of cordite stung Stacy’s nose as a blue haze of gun smoke filled the room.
Melinda sniffed in between sobs. “Let us go. Please... we don’t have... the pictures.” She struggled to speak as her larynx was crushed.
Kendall looked down at Melinda. “Shut up. I’m going to ask one more time. And one of you bitches better tell me the truth, or I’ll put a bullet into Gavin. Where are the pictures?”
Stacy’s skin felt cool and moist. “Mother is right,” Stacy blurted out. “We don’t have them. Chance does, and neither of us has seen him.”
Gavin’s eyes darted around the room. Kendall kept switching the gun back and forth between Gavin and Stacy. Stacy watched Gavin’s eyes and wanted to make a move. But Kendall was too strong to take down by herself. All it would take was one false move by her, and he could break her mother’s neck.
“Don’t bullshit me. You all are family. Where’s that motherfucker? I know the police have been looking for him when they’ve had time. And if he’s taken all of these pictures like Mom here says, then he’s got to be in town somewhere. Cleveland ain’t that big.”
“Come on,” Stacy said. “Be smart here. I would never tell you where Chance is.”
Kendall looked confused again.
“Why would I? So he can be hunted down and killed? Please. I’m not doing that. But I can get the pictures.”
Kendall looked both appalled and aroused. “Yeah. Now we’re talking. How? Where?”
“Mother went down the street to Neo Pro Imagining. She got the pictures developed there. The card disk came from Chance’s camera. We found it in the closet, didn’t we, Mother?”
Melinda wiggled her head repeatedly. “Um-hum. Um-hum. Yes,” she hissed, her cheeks still flushed red.
Stacy had to keep talking to keep Kendall talking. The only way he would lose control of the situation was to think and respond to a conversation. As a cop, he was trained to focus and listen intently for word clues in a story. Stacy would use that to her advantage.
Kendall seemed to forget about Gavin in the doorway. While Stacy was talking to Kendall, he had managed to slip back inside the living room. Cutting him a glance, Stacy could see Gavin eyeing her gun where Kendall had kicked it away earlier.
Stacy refocused. “Let me go down to Neo Pro. The hard drives on those photo printing machines will save several recent jobs. I can go down there and get them and bring them back. Then you’ll have the evidence of your involvement, and there will be no way the police can see it.”
Kendall stopped eyeballing Stacy, looked down at Melinda, and over to Gavin, who had managed to get a few steps closer to the gun without drawing Kendall's ire. He was thinking about the offer.
She removed the handcuffs from her holster as well as the cell phone from her muddy and musty-smelling jacket. “Here are my handcuffs and phone. Handcuff Mother and Gavin. Take my phone. That way, I can’t contact anybody.”
Kendall didn’t twitch or otherwise make any involuntary shifts in his movements or expression. Stacy changed tact.
“Come on,” she shouted. “Time is wasting. Let’s do this! Quit being an indecisive prick, and let me do this! I’ve told you what to do. I’ll even handcuff Gavin if you want me to.”
Melinda began squirming under Kendall’s grip, and her sobs became a full-on cry.
Stacy unconnected her handcuffs. She and Gavin exchanged a glance. Stacy made a twitch with her mouth that she hoped he saw.
“Come over here, Gavin.”
Kendall opened his mouth and aimed his gun. At that moment, Gavin bent down to the floor and grabbed Stacy’s. The motion made Kendall loosen his hold on Melinda, and she collapsed to the floor.
“Kendall!” Stacy screamed. She leaped at him, getting both hands around the arm holding the gun as he was getting ready to fire a shot at Gavin. Stacy sank her fingers and nails into his arm and pulled it back toward her.
Kendall made an inaudible groan and then grabbed Stacy by the throat, tossing her to the floor. As Kendall stood over Melinda to grab her again, Gavin came in from the side and slammed the butt of the Glock into the side of Kendall’s head.
Kendall screamed and then slammed a fist into Gavin’s face. Stacy heard a loud crack as she scrambled to collect Melinda.
Her mother shrieked and coughed as Stacy dragged her across the floor by her arm.
Blood ran from Gavin’s nose. He drove the handle of the gun into Kendall’s gut, knocking the wind from his body. Gavin reared back and slapped Kendall across the head with the gun again.
Gavin pushed an off-balance and weakened Kendall into the wall with all his strength. Kendall flashed his clenched teeth at Gavin and snarled, but then his face went soft, and his eyes expanded. Gavin pushed until Kendall’s head slammed against the wall, weakening his grip.
Gavin wiped the blood running down his nose with the back of his hand. As Kendall lay motionless on the ground, Gavin took the gun’s barrel and struck it across his face.
He tossed the gun to the side and grabbed Kendall by the uniform collar. His head lolled back and forth like it had been pulled apart from the rest of his body. Gavin began punching him.
“Son of a bitch,” Gavin sneered. “Dirty cop. Worthless.” As he went to punch Kendall again, Stacy grabbed his arm.
“Gavin, that’s enough.”
Gavin lunged forward, trying to break away. Stacy held on and dragged him back by his waist.
“He’s done!” she shouted. “It’s over. He can’t hurt us anymore.”
Gavin whipped his body around and yelled. He stalked across the living room again, cocked his head to the ceiling, and yelled again. The booming sound echoed. Stacy could hear Melinda’s sobs in the background.
Stacy grabbed her handcuffs and checked for a pulse. Kendall was alive, but his pulse was weak. She cocked her head to the side and leaned around one of his broad shoulders. A large head wound near the back of his skull was open and bleeding. Stacy could see some pink tissue sticking out of the hole.
She took her handcuffs and snapped them around his wrists. If he did manage to wake up, he wouldn’t be able to grab anything.
Stacy felt the entire weight of her body leave her at that moment. She collapsed against the wall beside Kendall and let out several heavy breaths. Her hand covered her forehead, and she tried to process what had just happened. Her head felt like it was filled with static from the tension.
When she looked to her right, she saw that Gavin stood in the living room with clenched fists, staring icily at Kendall.
“It’s okay, Gavin,” Stacy said in a soothing voice. “It’s done.”
Gavin kept looking ahead like he didn’t hear anything.
Stacy got off the floor and raced over to her mother, whose face was contorted in a panic, and her eyes had the fear-smeared look of someone that had been through trauma and entered shock, possibly dissociation.
Stacy grabbed her mother and pulled her into a close hug. Melinda began to sob harder and faster.
“I’m sorry,” Melinda mumbled. Stacy could feel the trembling of her chin. Her cries were raw and visceral.
“I didn’t know, I swear. I didn’t know that he was going to do this. I shouldn’t have said anything about those pictures. I thought he was a friend.”
Stacy rocked her mother slowly. “He was. But it’s okay now. It’s over, and we’re all safe.”
The cries punched through the words, but Stacy let her have her moment. Gavin picked up the gun and set it down on the table, looking at it like it might explode.
Stacy looked back. “Gavin, is everything okay?”
His eyes flickered over to her for an instant before retreating to the gun on the table. He nodded.
As Stacy held her mother, a scraping noise came from the back of the loft. It was a sharp sound. It started in small bursts, followed by a long sound. To Stacy, it sounded like someone was trying to find a soft spot in a windowpane to break it.
Stacy let go of Melinda and rose slowly. “Everyone stays here. Nobody moves!” Stacy went over and took her gun from the table.
“Block that door,” she said to a shocked Gavin. “In case someone tries to go in or out.”
Stacy held out her gun with both hands and moved across the living room slowly. Stacy felt hollow. She could feel the pulse of her heartbeat in her fingertips. Stacy didn’t know if she had any more of anything to give, but she pressed onward.
The streetlights cast elongated shadows on the floor at the back of her loft. As she approached the window, a shadow framed the glass. The scraping sound on the glass had reached such a high pitch point that it made Stacy shiver with each scratch.
Stacy came within feet of the window. Suddenly, the scraping stopped. The shadow froze. Then, its odd formations and shapes wiped across the window and disappeared.
"Hey," Stacy called out. She lowered her gun and went to the window. The sealant keeping the glass attached to the frame had been picked away, and Stacy easily pushed the window outward toward the street. The swinging frame holding the glass moaned with displeasure as Stacy pushed.
She looked down onto the alley to see a figure running up the street and turning right, heading for Superior Avenue.