Judgment

67

She listened for a few seconds, looked at Duncan, shook her head. She didn’t hear anything.

“What did you hear?” she whispered.

But he didn’t seem to be listening. He walked around to his side of the bed and knelt. He pulled something out from underneath it, something dark in his hand.

She gasped. “No!” Then she whispered: “Duncan!”

He was holding a gun in his right hand, black and squared-off, a semiautomatic pistol. She had very little experience with guns. When she’d tried skeet shooting as a teenager, she had used a shotgun to hit the clays. She’d fired a revolver once — she’d asked her father to teach her how — but was freaked out by how loud it was. She hated it, hated anticipating the explosion, and it always messed up her aim.

“Do you know how to use that thing?” she said.

He didn’t reply. He kept moving toward the hall.

“What if it’s Jake down there?”

“Shh.” He padded out into the hallway.

Her heart was racing. She got up and followed him out. She caught up to him. She put an arm on his shoulder and whispered in his ear, “Duncan, call the cops.”

“No time,” he said, heading to the stairs. “We can’t wait twenty minutes.”

“Honey, don’t,” she whispered again, but he wasn’t listening. She descended the carpeted stairs right behind him. At the landing he froze.

“Oh, Jesus,” he breathed.

The door to her study — the old pantry that they’d converted into her home office, long and narrow — was open, as it always was. And she saw a pale spill of light.

In her study.

Far off, maybe thirty or forty feet away.

The light was jittery, moving. Like someone was holding a penlight.

Someone was in the house. Someone was there.

They’d nearly killed Philip Hersh, and now they were coming for her. Or for her family. They were professionals, they were assassins, and they’d already killed several people. These were people who wanted something, and she was standing in their way, and they wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.

Or Duncan.

He put a hand in the air, signaling stop.

He cocked his head. She listened.

And she heard what he heard. She heard a drawer being opened slowly.

Duncan moved swiftly, barefoot, toward her office, his right hand up, the gun pointed. There is a safety on most pistols, she thought. Was the safety on? What if he aimed the gun, and it was grabbed from him, turned back on him?

Now he was standing at the threshold to her office, his right hand extended, the gun pointed, and he said, in a quiet but firm voice, “Don’t — fucking — move.”

And then came the explosion, deafeningly loud, so loud that her ears shrilled a high-pitched squeal. She saw a flash of fire at the end of the muzzle, and then the gun jerked back, nearly coming out of his hand.

And she heard a shout, more like a roar, like the bellow of a wounded animal. She raced to the study, frantic. There was a crash. A gust of cold air hit her. One of the French doors was open, a few small panes of glass shattered, the pebbles of glass on the carpet twinkling in the moonlight.

Duncan came in from outside, panting. “He took off. Bat out of hell.”

“You shot him.”

He nodded. “He pulled out a gun. I had to.”

She heard thundering footsteps coming from the stairs: Jake.

“That was loud. Someone’s going to report it. One of our neighbors.”

“What happened?” Jake shouted, racing across the room toward them. “Was that a gunshot?”