John Lutz - Chill of Night

In the dimness, enough light from outside filtered in for her to recognize the man in her living room.

Rooted by astonishment and fear in the dim room, Nell said his name in a choked voice:

“Terry.”

“I had to see you,” he said. “I was so worried about you, Nell. Couldn’t sleep. Wanted to protect you…needed to. I couldn’t forgive myself if something happened to you while I was tossing and turning in my bed, close enough to help but not helping.”

“How did you get in here?”

“I remembered some of the tricks I learned from my days riding with the police, so I knew how to get on the roof from next door. Then I came down through the service door. As for the apartment, I still have the key you gave me.”

All the time he’d been speaking, he hadn’t moved. Her fear was like a wall between them. A wall her love was trying to climb.

Nell wanted to believe him. Wanted to so badly. She knew he was leaving it up to her. Trust and terror. It would have to be one or the other for Nell. One direction or the other.

More awake now than she’d ever been, her mind raced as she made the calculations, figured the gravity of her choice, and factored in the risk.

Decision time. The edge of the blade.

She came unstuck from her terror and indecision and ran away from Terry, toward the bedroom and her gun.

He was moving now, too. She knew he was close behind, heard the rush of his body, could even imagine she felt the heat of his breath. The gun in the nightstand drawer. That was what she concentrated on, what meant everything to her now.

The gun.

“I can’t raise Garcia.”

The voice came to Beam over his two-way, from the bundle of rags on the concrete stoop.

Garcia was Sergeant Wayne Garcia, the uniform stationed at the end of the hall outside Nell’s apartment.

“Sir?”

“I heard,” Beam said. He thought for a moment. The problem was most likely simple equipment failure. He couldn’t imagine Garcia falling asleep. But there were other things he could imagine. “Let’s go see.”

He twisted the ignition key and heard only a low groaning sound. Tried again and got only a faint series of clicks. The van’s battery was dead. It held enough juice to power the radio, but not enough to turn the starter and kick over the engine. Instead of driving down the street to the apartment building, Beam would have to walk.

Shit happens, he thought. Especially around three in the morning.

He got out of the van and began trudging down the eerie dark street toward Nell’s building.

Ahead of him, the bundle of rags stirred and stood up.

Nell made it to the bedroom ahead of Terry and slammed the door behind her.

Almost immediately it crashed open, bouncing off the wall. Nell hadn’t stopped moving. She dived onto the bed, lunged to the far side of the mattress, and fumbled to open the nightstand drawer.

“Nell!” he said behind her. “Listen, Nell!”

She yanked the tiny drawer too hard and it came all the way out and fell to the floor.

Damn it! Gun!

She couldn’t see the gun.

It must be down there on the floor somewhere in or around the drawer. The drawer she couldn’t reach.

“Nell!” Terry pleaded again. He was on the bed with her, his weight bearing down hard on her upper body. Her right bicep was clamped painfully in his powerful grip. “Nell, damn it!”

Terrified, she craned her neck to glance up at him.

Then froze.

Terry and Nell weren’t looking at each other.

They were staring at the uniformed cop in Nell’s bedroom. He was holding in his right hand a gun with something bulky fitted to its barrel.

Terry acted first.

He rose from the bed and flung himself at the figure with the bulky handgun.

And ran into an iron fist that struck his shoulder and staggered him.

He knew he’d been shot.

He took a few backward steps, still with the presence of mind to stay between the cop and Nell. The cop very deliberately edged to the side to get a better angle on his target.

And Nell’s powerful Glock exploded the night’s silence.

The bullet snapped past Terry’s right ear and shattered the window.

“Get the hell outta the way, Terry!”

A faint sound came to Beam and the raggedy cop through the night, a flat bam! that reverberated only once, almost instantaneously.

More noise. Tinkling glass? A woman-Nell?-yelling something?

There was no doubt about the first sound. A shot.

Both men began to run.

In Nell’s bedroom, Terry didn’t get out of the way. He knew he couldn’t let Nell have the shot without making her vulnerable to the cop. Keeping himself between the two, he backed to the bed, feeling his right calf contact the mattress and springs.

He whirled and scooped a pillow backward toward the cop, seeing Nell kneeling on the side of the bed, seeing a perfectly round hole appear like a magic trick in the wall inches from her head.

He dived across the mattress and her body folded down under him.

Nell was trapped in the narrow space between the bed and the wall, with Terry on top of her, shielding her with his body.

His hip was jammed against the wall, his left arm beneath Nell. She was squirming beneath him, breathing hard. Something-her fingernails?-was scraping on plaster. Pain was like a red tide assaulting his consciousness. Every muscle tightened in Terry as he waited for a second bullet to hit him.

It did. In the back of the shoulder that was already shot.

More pain erupted. He moaned but managed to remain conscious.

Nell squirmed even harder beneath him, her breath hissing between clenched teeth. Finally she gained leverage and mustered enough strength that she forced him above the level of the mattress, and he saw the cop bolting from the bedroom.

He must know the sound of Nell’s shot drew attention.

The cop whirled, taking one more chance and trusting to luck. The gun made its muffled pop! The bullet went wild, hit the bedside lampshade, and made the lamp dance but not fall.

Nell was sitting up now, struggling to get Terry’s weight off her so she could work herself up the wall to a standing position and give chase.

Then she looked down at the blood on her hand holding her gun. At the blood on the wall. On her nightshirt.

“Jesus, Terry. Is this from me or from you?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “Think it’s all me. Hope…”

“Ah, your shoulder! That bastard!”

“Go get him, Nell.”

“Screw him!”

She tossed her gun aside and reached for the sheets, anything to stop the bleeding.

They were in the lobby of Nell’s building. Beam was aware of something, a faint stirring above, as if the shot had awakened every tenant, made everyone afraid in a way that was almost palpable.

Fear is in the building.

“Take the stairs,” he told the bundle of rags that was a cop. “I’ll take the elevator.”

Rags pulled a Remington shotgun from beneath his worn raincoat and dashed for the stairs. Beam heard him going up, treading light, taking two, three steps at a time. Then Beam turned back toward the elevators. He’d already pushed the up button.

One of the elevators had descended to lobby level. The door opened, and da Vinci stepped out. He was in uniform, and holding a handgun with a sound suppressor fitted to its barrel.

He didn’t notice Beam until he’d taken three or four steps. Then he stopped and made a half turn back toward the elevator.

But he was too late. The elevator door was just finishing sliding shut.

Beam stood between da Vinci and the street door.

Rags encountered no one on the stairs. He reached Nell’s floor and slowed down, moving carefully now.