David Morrell - The Covenant Of The Flame

'I left everything the way it was.' Her mother struggled after her, coughing. 'The day I learned that your father was dead, I took one final look at this room, closed the door, and never came in here again. I told the servants to keep that door closed.'

With increasing revulsion, Tess noticed that even her father's slippers, layered with dust, remained beside the bed. She was too distraught to ask her mother what on earth had made her turn this room not into a shrine but a crypt. But the smoke was denser. All she had time to care about was…

She yanked open the top drawer of a table next to the bed, fearing that her father might have taken his pistol with him when he went to Beirut. But exhaling sharply, she saw that the handgun was where he always kept it.

Her father had been an operative in Marine Intelligence when he served in Vietnam. That was where he'd met Brian Hamilton, a Marine general supervising 'Eye' Corps. After the war, her father had joined the State Department, belonging to its little-known Intelligence division. Later, after Brian Hamilton had retired from the military, he too had joined the State Department, in the diplomatic division, eventually convincing Tess's father to switch from Intelligence to diplomacy. But Tess's father had retained his nervous habits from Vietnam. Although he seldom went armed when on an assignment in a potentially dangerous foreign country, he'd made sure to keep a handgun in the house where he could easily get to it in case someone broke in at night.

The weapon was made in Switzerland, a SIG-Sauer 9mm semiautomatic pistol. A compact short-barreled handgun, it held an unusually large number of rounds in the magazine, sixteen, and unlike most other pistols, it had a double action, which meant that it didn't need to be cocked to be fired. All you needed to do was pull the trigger.

Tess knew all this because when she was twelve, she'd happened to see her father cleaning the gun and had shown such curiosity that her father had decided she'd better be taught about it so she'd respect it and, more important, stay away from it. After all, she'd been a tomboy. She hadn't been repelled by guns the way many girls her age might have been, and she took to target shooting as easily as she'd developed expertise in basketball, track- and-field, and gymnastics.

Frequently, when her father went to a range to practise his marksmanship, he'd invited her to come along. He'd taught her how to take the weapon apart, clean it, and reassemble it. He'd instructed her in the proper way to aim – both hands on the pistol, both eyes open, both front and rear sights lined up. But the main trick, he'd said, was to focus your vision not on the sights but rather on the target. The sights would seem blurred as a consequence, but that was okay, you got used to it. After all, the target was your objective, and you had to see it clearly. Any time the sights were in focus but the target was blurred, you were aiming wrong.

After an equally thorough explanation of how to load the magazine, insert it securely into the handle, and pull back the slide on top of the pistol so that a round was injected into the firing chamber, her father had finally allowed Tess to fire the weapon.

Don't yank on the trigger. Squeeze it.

She'd felt slightly apprehensive about the recoil, but to her delight, from the first, she'd discovered that the jerk when the gun went off had not been nearly as bad as she'd feared. Indeed she'd enjoyed the recoil, the release of power, and the noise of the gun going off had been muffled by the ear protectors that her father insisted she wear.

Toward the end of her teenage years, she'd been able to place all sixteen rounds in a circle the size of a basketball at a distance of thirty yards, but then, as she'd started college, she'd lost all interest in shooting with the same abruptness that she'd initially been fascinated by it. Perhaps because her father had been away from home so much.

She grabbed the pistol from the drawer and mentally thanked her father for having taught her. He might have saved her life.

She pressed a button on the side and disengaged the magazine from the handle, nodding when she saw that the magazine was loaded. After reinserting the magazine, she pulled back the pistol's slide and let it snap forward, chambering a round. The hammer stayed back. She gently squeezed the trigger and with equal gentleness lowered the hammer so the gun wouldn't go off accidentally. So far, so good.

But it worried her that the pistol hadn't been cleaned and oiled in six years. The slide had felt slightly hesitant when she pulled it back. If her worst fear was justified and she was forced to defend herself, would the gun jam when fired?

Tess didn't dare think about it. 'Come on, mother! Let's go!'

'But you still haven't told me! Why did you want the gun?'

'Insurance.'

'What do you mean? '

Tess didn't answer but rushed with her mother through the cobwebs toward the open door and the hallway.

Now the flicker of flames downstairs radiated upward and made the hallway seem lit by shimmering candles. Urging her mother, Tess raced to the left toward the top of the staircase, staring nervously downward, pistol ready. But instead of targets, what she saw was a blaze that crackled, growing to a roar in the vestibule. The bottom of the stairs was consumed by flames. Tess felt and stumbled back from the upward rush of heat. There wasn't any way that she and her mother could run through the swelling fire and cross the vestibule to reach the mansion's front door. For certain, her mother didn't have the dexterity to keep up with Tess, and equally for certain, Tess had no intention of getting ahead of her mother.

At the sight of the flames, her mother whimpered.

The back stairs!' Tess said. 'Hurry!'

She guided her mother along the smoke-filled hallway. Coughing, bent low because the air near the floor was less hazy, they came to the stairs that led down to the kitchen.

Here, too, a flicker illuminated the bottom, but at least it was a reflection off a wall. The fire itself wasn't in view.

We might have a chance, Tess thought.

She led the way, descending, telling her mother, 'Stay close!'

The smoke alarms kept wailing.

At once a figure appeared at the bottom, charging toward them.

Tess aimed the pistol.

A man blurted, 'Mrs Drake?'

'Jonathan!' Tess's mother said.

Nervous, Tess lowered the pistol.

The butler reached them. He wore pajamas. 'I was sleeping! The smoke nearly…! If the fire alarms hadn't wakened me…!' He had trouble breathing. 'I tried to come up the front staircase to warn you, but the vestibule's - !'

'We know,' Tess said. 'Can we get out through the back?'

'The fire's in the kitchen, but the servants' quarters haven't been touched.'

'Yet.'

The three of them rushed down the stairs.

'Did you see anyone else inside?' Tess demanded.

'Anyone else?'

'Edna? What about Edna?' Tess's mother sounded hoarse.

'I woke her and told her to leave before I came for you,' Jonathan said.

'You didn't see anyone else?' Tess repeated urgently.

The butler sounded confused. 'Why, no, Miss Drake. I don't understand what you mean. Who else would - ?'

Tess didn't have time to explain. At the bottom, she squinted to her left toward an open door and the harsh glare of flames in the kitchen.

The heat was so intense that she had to raise an arm to shield her face.

But the heat singed that arm. If the flames reach this hallway…!

Before Tess realized what she was doing, she lunged, grabbed the side of the door, and slammed it shut. Her hand stung.

Nonetheless the pain was worth the risk she'd taken. The door provided a buffer. She clutched her mother and stumbled forward, following Jonathan along a hallway toward the servants' quarters.