“I’ll take the front, you two go to the back.”
Zack said, “Not to put too sharp a point on this, but you don’t have a gun.”
Zack had brown hair and eager blue eyes, and looked young to be a special agent with the FBI, maybe twenty-six.
I held out my hand. “Gimme your backup.”
He hesitated, his eyes not leaving mine as he thought it over.
Barbara said, “Do it. Give it to him.”
He reached down to his ankle and pulled a Smith & Wesson five-shot snub nose. He didn’t hand it over right away. “You can have this, but I go through the door first.”
“No deal, it’s my wife in there.” I made a grab for the gun.
He pulled it away. “I’m wearing body armor.” He opened his blue windbreaker to display a new Second Chance vest, a threat level four, the best there was with the added trauma plate inserted over his chest.
“Take that off, let me have it,” I said.
“That’s a no-go.”
“Your boss said to do exactly as I say.”
“I’m with Zack on this one,” said Barbara. “When’s the last time you went through a door?”
I tried to think back. It’d been many years. But it was like riding a bike. You held your breath, kicked the door. You buttonhooked right or left, as long as you got out of the kill zone, the instant you went through the doorway—the window of death.
“I’ll say it one more time. I have operational command of this situation. Give me the vest.” He wasn’t going through any door and getting shot when I was the one that should be doing it.
He held my eyes for a long moment, handed me the gun, reached up, and pulled on the Velcro straps to the vest. “Okay, but I’m not taking the back. I’ll go in right behind you. I’ll be covering you.”
I took the vest and put it on over my head and strapped on the Kevlar to my chest. The vest was still warm. “Fine by me. That gives you the back, Barbara.”
“No one’s going to run out the back. I’m going in right behind you two macho assholes. We’re wasting time.” She opened her phone and hit speed dial. “This is Chief Wicks. We’re hitting 12736 Pipeline. Have one patrol unit come down the alley to the west, the rest go to the front. I have two detectives with me in plainclothes. Advise patrol to watch their friendly fire.” She closed the phone. We took off running.
An untended hedge surrounded the front yard. Without water the bushes had died in spots and looked like the brown rotted-out teeth of a meth freak. I took the lead up the flagstone walk to the front door. The porch had been sturdy long ago, but time and lack of care let dry rot take over.
The question snuck in unbidden: Had this been the position the detective took forty years ago when he shot Jack Dobbs dead as he held the ten-year-old Bella?
I forced out the distracting thought and pointed to one side of the door. Zack took it. Barbara took the other. I held up three fingers, dropped one. Dropped two. I rose up and kicked the door with everything I had.
The door flew open, banged hard against the wall, and bounced back only a little. Before I could rebound, before a fraction of a second passed, my eyes caught the image of an emaciated, semi-bald woman sitting in a wheelchair in the entryway right in front of me. Too late. The shotgun blast took me in the chest. The force of the nine, .32 caliber pellets striking me in unison lifted me off my feet and threw me backward. I flew in slow motion.
Marie screamed, “Bruno!”
Zack rushed into the door opening, following his 9mm, firing, firing, firing. The shell casings flipped over his shoulder, slowly making their way to the ground, flying the same as me. The empty brass clinked on the flagstone.
Sirens.
Zack, move. Get out of the doorway. Get out of the window of death.
His 9mm rounds continued to pelt Bella. Her body jerked. She dropped the shotgun. With each impact and thud, a fine bloody mist rose in the air.
I landed on my back.
From down beyond my feet, off to the side of Zack, on the other side of the doorway, a shirtless Jonas fired a pistol.
Time sped up again.
Zack spun and went down. I caught a flash of his expression—shock, confusion, and something else. His youthful eagerness had disappeared, stolen from him.
Jonas followed, still shooting, advancing. Coming out to finish us off. Barbara, her eyes alive with anger, stepped around from the side of the door, her gun pointed. She fired as she moved in. Not stopping, not afraid of this deadly threat. Her rounds struck Jonas, the first one in the throat, the next three in the chest over the heart.
Maybe three seconds had passed.
Shock shielded me at first. The injury caught up, sucked breath from my lungs. I should’ve been thinking survival, but instead, I saw only the tattoo over Jonas’ heart, the heart tattoo brutally penetrated by Barbara’s bullets. Bullets doing the job Bella’s bullet should have done all those years ago.
Inside the house, down the entry hall, a side door crashed open with Marie holding a desk chair she’d used to ram the door down, loose rope hung from her wrists.
Then Marie, my Marie, was all over me, crying, trying to hold me down. “Bruno. Bruno, are you okay? Say something. Breathe.” Her hand moved all over my chest until she found the Velcro strips to the Second Chance and pulled them. She took the panels off just as air entered my lungs in one large gasp. I grabbed her and pulled down, buried my face in her neck, and took her in, her scent, her feel. For one long moment.
I pulled away. “Help Zack, help him.”
Cop cars out front skidded up, their red and blue lights a kaleidoscope on the houses and trees.
Barbara ran out and yelled at the patrolman exiting his patrol car. “Roll paramedics, we have an officer down. Get an airship for immediate evac.”
Barbara went down on her knees by Special Agent Zack Price and put both hands over his bloody wound on his abdomen, applying pressure.
Marie wouldn’t leave me. “How are the children?” I asked.
“They’re all fine. Jonas and his mom never intended to hurt us. They just wanted to die together at the hands of the man who’d robbed them of the chance before. That’s what this whole messed-up thing was about. Psychotics, the both of them.”
“I’m okay, Marie. Help Barbara. Help Zack.”
“You sure?”
“I’m good. Go.”
Marie moved over to Zack to help out. I rolled over and fought to get on hands and knees. My body didn’t want to comply.
Marie said to Barbara, “The abdomen wound is serious, but if we don’t stop the bleeder on this leg it’s not going to matter. Give me your belt.”
With bloody hands, Barbara pulled off her belt. Marie wrapped it around Zack’s leg and tightened it.
I made it to all fours and struggled to my feet, fighting dizziness and a light head. Cops flooded in from the street.
Barbara stood. “Hold it. Hold it. The scene’s secure. Tape it off. You and you find a spot for the helicopter and keep it clear. You, check on the ETA of the paramedics. You, tape off the street two houses each way. No one comes in, no one, you got it?”
I staggered past them. Zack lay on his back with blood soaking his white t-shirt, a small black hole in his lower right abdomen. His eyes were closed, relaxed. If he had been wearing his own body armor—no time to think about it.
I looked down my knuckles, blanched white from gripping the revolver. I let the gun drop to the ground with a clatter. No one noticed. I grabbed the doorframe for support and stepped across the threshold. Bella couldn’t have weighed more than eighty pounds, her hair wispy and thin, her body ravaged with bullet wounds put there by Zack. Her head lay cocked to one side, her eyes and mouth open in death. On the floor, not two feet away, lay Jonas Mabry, the child I had scooped up twenty-five years ago and raced to the hospital. His open eyes stared at the ceiling. His mouth a dark vacant hole. I had somehow intervened in fate, and now fate had returned to make the correction.
The sound of whimpering brought me out of my funk. I followed it down the hall.