Jeffery Deaver - The Bodies Left Behind

Brynn tensed, gripped the pistol in a shooting pose. She stared at the reflection at the front of the house.

Go for the shot, she told herself. Your only advantage is surprise. Use it. He’s in the living room. It’s only twenty feet. Step into the doorway. Fire a burst of three, then back to cover. You can take him.

Do it.

Now.

Brynn swallowed and stepped away from the wall, turning toward the living room. She gasped as the voice from behind her, in the dining room, shouted, “Listen, lady, you do what we’re saying!” A skinny man in a combat jacket, with short, light hair, a tat on his neck and eyes mean, had come through the French doors. He was lifting a shotgun to his shoulder.

Brynn, spinning to face him.

They fired simultaneously. Her slug came closer than his buckshot-he ducked and she didn’t-puncturing a stuffed dining room chair inches from him as the pellets from his shotgun crunched into the ceiling above her. The light fixture rained down.

He crawled out the French door. “Hart! A gun! She’s got a gun.”

She wasn’t sure these were his exact words, though. The shots were thunderclap loud and had numbed her ears.

Brynn glanced into the living room. No sign of Hart. She started toward the back kitchen door. Then paused. She couldn’t just leave if the Feldmans’ friend was still here.

“I’m a sheriff’s deputy,” she shouted. “Hello! Is someone in the house? Are you upstairs?”

Silence.

Brynn desperately scanned the windows, shivered, sure somebody was aiming at her even as she crouched in the shadows. “Hello?”

Nothing.

“Is anybody here?”

The longest twenty seconds of her life.

Leave, she told herself. Get help. You can’t do anything for anybody if you’re dead.

She raced out the back door, gasping in fear and from the effort. Her keys in her left hand, she made her way to the front yard. She saw no one.

The sun was down altogether and the darkness was growing fast. But there was still just enough light in the sky, barely, to make out one of the intruders running toward some bushes. His back was to her. It was the wounded man, Hart. She drew a target but he vanished in a thicket of bearberry and rhododendron.

Brynn scanned the front yard. The other man, with the shotgun and the narrow face, wasn’t visible. She sprinted for her car. When she heard the rustle of bushes from behind her, she dropped instantly. The shotgun fired. Pellets hissed around her and clattered off the Ford. Brynn fired twice into the bush, breaking the number one rule about never shooting except at a clear target. She saw the slight man disappear behind the house, running in a crouch.

Then she stood and opened her car door. Rather than jump in, though, she remained standing, a clear target, pointing the black Glock at the bushes where Hart had fled. Struggling to steady her breathing. And her shooting grip.

Come on, come on…I can only wait a second or two-

Then Hart rose fast from the bushes. He was close enough for her to see him blink in surprise that she was waiting for him. Brynn too was surprised; she hadn’t been expecting him so far to the right, and by the time she’d corrected and fired three shots he’d dived to cover. She believed she might’ve hit him.

But now it was time to escape.

Jumping into the car, concentrating on getting the key in the ignition, not looking around. The engine roared and she slammed the shifter into reverse, flooring the limp accelerator. The car skittered backward along the gravel, whipsawing-now rear-wheel drive. She glanced behind her to see the men converging in the driveway, running flat-out after her. Answering one of her questions: she’d missed Hart, after all.

The skinny man stopped and fired the shotgun. The pellets missed.

“Our Loving Savior, look over us,” she whispered, an invocation they said as grace every night and that she’d never meant more than now.

Brynn had taken the State Police’s pursuit and evasive driving course several times. She’d used the techniques often in the high-speed chases when after a speeder or a getaway car. This, though, was the opposite: evading an attacker, something she’d never imagined would happen. Yet her hours of practice came back to her: left hand on the wheel, right arm around the passenger seat, gripping the pistol. Two long football fields…She came to the end of the driveway and debated turning around to drive in forward or just stay in reverse and back down Lake View toward the county road. To pause even for five seconds to turn around could be disastrous.

The men continued to sprint.

Brynn decided: Stay in reverse and keep going. Put some distance between them.

As she approached Lake View Drive she realized it was the right decision. They were closer than she’d thought. She never heard the shotgun fire again but pellets snapped into the windshield, starring it. She took the turn onto the private road and accelerated as fast as she dared, staring out of the dirty rear window and struggling to keep the car under control. It whipped back and forth and threatened to slam into the rocks or trees to the right or tumble down the embankment to the lake on the opposite side of the road.

But she managed to keep control.

Brynn eased off the gas a little but kept the speed at thirty. The transmission was roaring in protest. She doubted she could make it to the county road before the gears tore apart. She’d have to turn around soon. The private road was too narrow to do so but she could use the driveway at Number 2. It wasn’t close-three, four hundred yards of the serpentine private road-but she had no choice.

Her neck stung from twisting to look backward. She glanced down at the cup holder. “Goddamn.” The man who’d checked for keys had taken her cell phone. She realized she still gripped the gun in her right hand, finger around the trigger. Glocks have a very light pull. She set the weapon on the seat.

Brynn looked quickly behind her-out the front windshield. No sign of them. She turned back and steered the car through a curve to the left. The house at 2 Lake View was now about two hundred yards away.

The driveway was growing closer. She let up on the gas a bit; the raging whine of the gears diminished.

She was thinking: Pull in fast, get into drive and-

A solid load of buckshot crashed into the driver’s side of the car, both windows vanishing into hundreds of pieces of ice, pelting her. A sphere of buckshot stabbed through her right cheek and knocked out a molar. She began choking on the tooth and the blood. Tears flowed and she couldn’t see the road any longer.

Wiping her eyes, Brynn managed to hawk up the tooth and spit it out, coughing hard on the blood, which spattered the steering wheel, slippery as oil. She lost her grip and didn’t make a curve. The car, going about thirty-five, dove off the edge and started down the steep rocky hill toward the lake.

She flew out of her seat, her feet nowhere near the brakes, as the Honda rolled backward down the cliff. It dropped about six feet and the trunk slammed onto a shelf of limestone, hood pointed straight up in the air. The gun hit her in the ear.

The car balanced for a moment, with Brynn sprawled across the backs of the two front seats. Then, with the utmost leisure, the Honda continued to topple, belly flopping upside down into the lake. The car filled instantly with dark water as it sank. Brynn, stunned, was snagged beneath the steering wheel.

She screamed as the frigid water embraced her body, swatting her hands in panic. She called out, “Joey, Joey.”

And inhaled a breath that began as air and ended as water.

“WELL, WE’RE FUCKED,”

Lewis said. “Oh, man. She was a cop.”

“Don’t panic.”