The truth of the matter

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Caught There were three of them. They had machine guns with flashlights mounted on the barrels. The effect of the lights was awful, like something out of a horror movie. All I could see in the darkness of the house were the crisscrossing white beams, and the black death-dealing bores of the gun barrels, and the gunmen’s twisted grimaces and hate-filled eyes half illuminated in the outglow of the light.

The deafening crash of the door bursting in stunned me. The moving light beams dazzled me. But in the instant before they spotted my location, I managed to make my move.

I leapt away from the window and dove for the living room floor.

“There he is!” someone shouted.

There was a coughing burst of gunfire. A stuttering flash of flame. I heard glass breaking as bullets flew through the room. I heard Sport barking wildly somewhere far away. I hit the floor and rolled beneath the crisscrossing beams of light.

I rolled to my feet and ran in the direction of the dining room archway. The light beams scanned the darkness. I saw the archway-the dark shape of it in the half-lit shadows. Then the lights found me. I dove again as the gunfire exploded behind me. I felt a terrifying breath of air as a bullet whistled past my ear.

I hit the floor and somersaulted, rolling through the arch. I dodged to the side as the lights went back and forth through the darkness above me like the spotlights at some nightmare movie premiere. The beams flashed in a mirror on the dining room wall. The guns stuttered death and the mirror shattered, the light flying everywhere in a weirdly beautiful and sparkling chaos.

I got behind the wall and crouched low. I heard a Homelander bark a gruff command.

“Find the lights. I’ll find him.”

One flashlight beam broke off from the others and moved toward the dining room, where I was. The other two must’ve gone off looking for a light switch.

I crouched behind the wall, waiting. As long as the house lights were off, I had a small advantage: I could track them by their flashlights, but they couldn’t track me.

Now, though, as I crouched, waiting, my heart hammering in my chest, a wave of weakness went over me. In the first moments of the Homelanders’ invasion, a rush of adrenaline had given me new energy. But underneath that energy, I was still totally weak and exhausted from my illness and from the memory attacks. I didn’t know if I had the strength to fight now. I knew I couldn’t fight for long. Whatever I did, it was going to have to be quick.

The flashlight beam came toward the room, sweeping back and forth, trying to pick me out of the darkness. I crouched low behind the wall waiting.

The flashlight’s advance halted.

“Turn the lights on, would you!” the gunman shouted with a curse. He didn’t want to come through the archway until he could see. And yet, he started up again, kept coming forward cautiously toward the archway as I crouched there, waiting.

A voice shouted back, “I’m looking for the switch!”

The gunman stepped through the arch. Instantly, he swept the light toward me, searching me out, ready to gun me down. Because I was crouched so low, the light passed over my head. Still, the gunman spotted me in the outglow.

But by then, it was too late.

I hurled myself at him, coming in under the barrel of the gun. With all the strength I had left, I shouldered the gun barrel upward. At the same time, I struck at him low and hard. The gunman let out a gasp of pain and doubled over. His body went slack and started toppling down.

With my other hand, I grabbed the barrel of the gun. As he fell, already unconscious, I wrestled the weapon away from him, holding him up only long enough to pull the strap over his head.

Now I had the gun.

Just then, the lights went on.

There was only one Homelander in the living room. It was the fat guy with the stupid face who had been guarding the entrance to the compound. He was holding his machine gun leveled right at me, right at my head- and he was ready to fire and gun me down.

He had one problem. I was holding a machine gun too. And it was leveled at him. And my finger was also on the trigger.

“Drop it,” the fat guy growled.

“You first,” I growled back.

I moved into the living room, circling away from him, trying to get in a position where I could keep an eye on both him and the guard who had fallen unconscious in the dining room. The fat Homelander circled away from me too. We both kept our guns trained on each other.

Somewhere upstairs, I heard Sport barking and barking. He hadn’t stopped since the Homelanders broke in.

“You think you can outshoot me?” the fat Homelander said to me. “I can kill you before you pull the trigger.”

“Maybe,” I answered him. “Or maybe you miss and die. Wanna take your chance?”

“You’re finished, West!”

It was another voice, thick and guttural. Waylon’s voice. I recognized it right away.

My eyes flicked to the sound of it, and what I saw made my blood turn to ice.

Waylon was just coming down the stairs. He had Margaret with him. He was holding her in front of him, with his arm around her throat. He had a 9mm pistol pressed to the side of her head.

“We’ve been watching the house, you know,” Waylon said. “We saw her go upstairs with the boy. That idiot dog’s barking led us right to her.”

I could still hear Sport barking wildly, locked in a room upstairs, I guessed. And I thought: The boy. Larry. What about Larry? Where was he?

My eyes went to Margaret’s eyes. I saw the terror in them as Waylon pressed the gun to her. But I saw something else too. She was trying to tell me something. She made an almost imperceptible gesture-a little shake of the head: the boy was gone. She’d gotten him out of the house. Down the drainpipe, into the woods. Just like I’d told her.

I kept my gun trained on the fat guard, but I spoke to Waylon through gritted teeth.

“Let her go,” I said. “She has nothing to do with this.”

“I’ll let her go,” Waylon answered. “Just as soon as you put the gun down. On the other hand, if you refuse, I’m going to blow her head off.”

I hesitated, trying to think of something to do.

“Do you doubt that I’ll do it?” Waylon said.

I didn’t doubt it. I laid the machine gun on the floor.

“Now put your hands up.”

The breath came out of me in a sigh of surrender. I put my hands up.

It was over. I was caught.