John Miller - Smoke and Mirrors

“Gawd alive,” Styer shouted in an exaggerated drawl. “I’ve done gone and kilt my own man-child!”

Back in the dark kitchen, Styer reached into the valise to retrieve his night vision goggles, which he slipped on. He snapped on the power switch and the room came alive. He grinned and looked through the window over the sink to admire his handiwork. Barnett’s body was on its back in the grass, the rifle off to one side.

Seconds later, a deputy made the mistake of running to check on his boss. Styer aimed his Glock at the side of the cop’s head and squeezed the trigger twice. Thirty feet away, the young man collapsed into the icy grass like a cardboard cutout hit by a sudden wind. His right boot quaked as his neurons figured out they had been disconnected from their command center.

Styer dropped the mostly spent magazines one at a time, replacing one before going to the next gun in case Massey used the pause to attack. Styer went into the eerie green interior of the service hall, aiming the Glocks before him.

Massey was no longer in the doorway to the den, and Styer looked down to see his abandoned shoes and the dark pool of blood. He followed the large wet drops across the floor and onto the stairs where there was more blood smeared on the handrail. He decided Massey would be moving down the hallway upstairs, in an attempt to flank him. When he found the bound-up Keen and the children, it would slow him. Styer could go upstairs and deal with him there, but he would probably get Keen and the kids outside on the roof. Being the valiant idiot he was, Winter would stay inside and keep moving down the hall using the front stairs to flank his adversary.

He had expected more from Massey, and was disappointed in him. Wounded or not, the flanking maneuver was too obvious. Civilian life and a family had slowed his instincts. Styer almost felt sorry for him.

Styer turned and moved slowly down the main hall to wait for Massey to come sneaking along in the dark so he could kill him. Time was getting short. Backup would be coming from town. He would get away, even if an army was surrounding the house, because he had planned for that possibility.

Winter figured styer had cut off the electricity because it gave him an edge, and since Styer had to figure that Winter knew the layout of the house better than he did, he had to be prepared to operate in the darkness. Only night vision goggles would explain that.

He put himself in Styer’s head and stopped in his tracks. He knew that Styer could follow his blood trail. If he moved, he could be heading straight into Styer, who might be waiting for him at a point where he could watch both sets of stairs and the hallway.

He opened Hamp’s bedroom door, smiling when the hinges squeaked. Inside, he took out his phone and dialed Leigh’s cell phone. After a brief conversation, he left the room and started toward the front stairs, the clock in his head ticking down.

In the living room with the glocks in his hands, Paulus Styer sat in a wing chair with a view of the front stairs. He had heard a creaking as Winter opened the door to the boy’s bedroom and smiled. Three minutes or less to wait. Winter would free Alexa and the brats and stay behind to cover their escape. Styer imagined Alexa and the children straggling across the porch roof, climbing down the lattice, and he figured that Leigh Gardner was probably outside in the Jeep-a frightened sow who would not wander far from her trapped piglets. He didn’t care about her. Massey would soon come to keep Styer busy while they got away. But since Alexa knew about the bomb, he would start to look for him immediately, he would have to kill her before he escaped. Without her to tell the authorities about it, the bomb would take up his pursuers’ time and a nice slice of their budget.

Now his entire focus was on Massey-as he had intended from the start. All the rest had just been window dressing. Divine providence, in the form of Kurt Klein, had made it possible.

Styer stifled a yawn with his sleeve, then rested both guns flat against the tops of his legs, ready as a man could be for the next few minutes.

Winter was at the top of the front stairs, just out of sight from below.

“Hey, Styer!” Winter yelled down. “You ready to die?”

Styer remained silent, not about to give away his position.

“This is what you wanted, right?” Winter called. “All this death and destruction just for me. Man, you are one sick son of a bitch.”

His taunts were answered only by the ticking grandfather clock.

“Tell you what,” he called. “Turn the lights back on. We stand toe to toe, count to five, and draw. Winner takes all. What do you say? You can’t take me in a fair fight, and you know it, you cowardly sack of shit!”

Winter imagined Styer down there listening, wanting to answer. Winter needed only the first gun flash to give him Styer’s position. He was betting he could fire the.45 and nail Styer before his enemy could get off a second, better-aimed round. Assuming, as was his custom, that Styer was wearing night vision goggles, that would mean the first flash from Styer’s own gun would blind the killer momentarily.

When the grandfather clock started chiming midnight, Winter raised Hamp’s aluminum bat. Five seconds later, the lights in the house came on, and he hurled the bat down the stairs, pleased by the amount of racket it made on the oaken steps. Following the bat’s path, gun in front of him, Winter started down the stairs, leaning against the rail. His wounded leg failed him and he fell, his gun leaving his hand and flying down ahead of him, the stainless steel catching the light as it careened off the polished stairs. The sharp wooden edges of each step battered him as he fell. He was aware of Paulus Styer standing up from a chair, dropping one of the guns to the floor, and clawing at the goggles. Despite that, Styer aimed at the staircase, firing rapidly.

Alexa reached the backyard unarmed, and spotted Brad and the deputy lying still in the falling rain. She had gone to them, planning to slow only long enough to get a handgun before going inside as Winter had asked her to do. She saw that both of the men had been shot in their heads. A round had hit Brad’s head at an angle, taking out Brad’s left eye and chipping out a piece of the socket, where rose-colored blood coned down toward the ground. The deputy had two clean holes in his temple. She was lifting the deputy’s coat for his handgun when she saw Brad move his hand and blink his right eye. She could see now that the wound had entered his left eye socket and exited at his temple.

“Can you hear me?” she asked him.

He didn’t respond.

“Wait here and stay still. Can you do that?”

He nodded and closed his eye. She put his cap over his face to protect him from the freezing rain.

Taking his rifle, Alexa ran to the back door and turned the knob. It was locked. No surprise. Using the key Leigh had given her, Alexa unlocked the door and opened it slowly. Stealthily, she slid into the mudroom, feeling the heat as she eased the door shut. Using her hands to feel, she located the door to the utility room, where the breaker box was, and leaned the rifle against the wall. She heard Winter calling out to Styer at the other end of the house. As she opened the door she stopped when her foot struck something large. Reaching farther, she felt the warm figure of Estelle. Alexa found her neck, felt a weak pulse, stood, and stepped over the woman. Using only her hands, she found the open metal door to the breaker box. She followed the row of breakers with her fingertips, found the larger main button, and hearing the bat clattering on the stairs, she flipped it and was rewarded by white light.