John Sandford - The Night Crew

'Not much blood,' she whispered.

'Yeah, I don't think it's too bad, but Jesus, my leg just doesn't want to work,' he said.

'I'm gonna go look at Daly. Can you cover me?' And for just a tiny sliver of a second she thought how odd it was to be using the language of television cop shows: cover me. What did she know about cover? 'I'll go out on the porch.'

'Yeah. Turn off the light, first. And we gotta try the phones.'

'Daly first.'

Anna hit the light, waited for a second, then went through the door on her stomach while Harper sat in the door, scanning the dark, ready to fire at any sign of a muzzle blast.

But the woman was dead: Anna knew it the moment that she touched her. She was already going cold, and had the peculiar stillness of those who'd gone on. But she grabbed the woman's shirt, and pulled her back through the door.

'Alive?' Harper whispered, as they pulled back.

'No. I don't think so.'

Anna slumped against a wall, and Harper touched the woman. 'No, she's gone.'

'Let's get back to Pam.'

'Let's get the phone.'

Glass's breath was short, harsh, irregular. As Anna knelt over her, she blew a blood bubble, which burst on her blood-crusted lips. Anna said, 'She's in trouble, Jake. We've got to get her to a hospital.'

Harper was already crawling across the office. He groped on top of the desk, found a phone, pulled it down, listened, said 'Shit.'

'What?'

'Dead. He must've pulled wires somewhere. Probably outside the house.'

'We've got to get her out of here,' Anna said urgently. 'We can't wait. JakeI think she's dying.'

They sat for a moment, huddled over Glass, watching her breathe. Thinking. Anna asked, finally, 'Can you walk?'

'I don't know.' Harper looked around, found a blind spot where he couldn't be seen, pushed himself up on the wall, tested the leg and nearly collapsed.

'Maybebut not very far. I could hop pretty fast.'

'Forget it,' Anna said. Then: 'Here's what we do. We've got to get him talking to us. Anything. Just get him talking. Then we'll know about where he is, which side of the house. Then I'll sneak out the other side, with your car keys. Once I'm away from the house, in the dark, he'll never find me. And he doesn't know where your car is. Once I'm in the car, I'll come crashing up hereI'll get as close to the back porch as I can without wrecking it. That's five feet you'll have to cross. Can you carry Pam that far?'

'Anna.' He was staring at her, unhappy. 'Anna, I can carry her, but, Jesus, that's crazy.'

'Can you think of anything else?'

He looked down at the linoleum, thinking. A few seconds later he said, 'If we can figure out where the phone goes out, and where he is, if they're different, I might be able to patch the wires.'

'Do you know anything about telephones?'

'No, but if he's just cut the wires.'

'I don't know if you can just put them back together,' Anna said. 'Even if we find out where he is, and you can get out, he could move. If you're just lying out there on the ground, messing with wires. you'd be dead. If I ran, it doesn't matter what he does once I'm out of here: he can't catch me.'

'Christ.' He ran his hand through his hair, moved, groaned.

'And if we mess with the wires, and the phones still don't work, we'll have lost the timeand we don't have any time.' She touched Pam, looking across her at Harper.

Harper broke his eyes away for a moment, then shook his head, grinned, put his hand on top of her head and mussed her hair. 'Don't worry about wrecking the car,' he said. 'Fuck the car. Put it right on the porch.'

'Okay.'

'Let me get my back against the wall with Pam. If he tries to come in, I'll light the motherfucker up.'

Anna nodded, grinned back at him, squeezed his good leg: 'It's the only way. Let's see if we can get him talking.'

Anna started, crawling to a window on the back of the house, knocking it out with a chair. The shattering of the glass should attract his attention, if he was still out there. She sat on her heels like a dog baying at the moon, and shouted: 'Steve. What do you want? What do you want?'

Nothing.

Jake had moved to the hallway between the back room and the office. He called softly, 'Nothing here.'

'Steve,' Anna shouted. 'Where are you? What do you want? Are you still there?'

The voice, not far away: 'I'm still here.'

And a second later, a shot: not the pistol any more, a loud crack, and plaster flew from the wall overhead.

'Shit,' Harper yelped. 'He's got a rifle. A big one.'

'Always gotta be killing something around here, putting them out of their misery,' the voice shouted.

He was over toward the garage, or maybe the barn, Anna thought.

'What do you want?'

'I want you dead,' the voice answered. 'But I want to mess with you for a while.'

Another shot, this time into the office.

Anna crawled past Harper, who said, 'We've gotta get better protection. Sooner of later, he'll think about shooting lower, onto the floor, and then we're in trouble. Those goddamn slugs are going halfway through the house. Maybe all the way.'

Anna said, 'Okay,' and crawled into the office. The desks were wooden. Not much help. There was another door off to the left, and she went that way.

'What do you think now, about messing with my head? What do you think now?' Judge screamed, still from the direction of the garage.

'We weren't messing with you,' Harper shouted back. 'How were we messing with you?'

'You're always messing with me, all of you,' Judge screamed back.

Anna crawled through the door and found herself in the bathroomand in the corner was a cast-iron bathtub, just what you might hope for in an old ranch house. She crawled back through the office.

'Jakethere's a big old iron tub in the bathroom.'

'That'd help,' Harper said. 'Let's see if we can move her.'

Judge was still screaming at them: 'All the time, all my life, you fuckers. Let's see what you think about it now I've got the big gun.'

'What the hell is he talking about?' Harper panted. He trailed his leg behind him as they moved Glass across the office floor and into the bathroom, wincing every time he had to pull his leg forward.

'I don't know,' Anna said. 'He's nuts.'

'Let me do this,' Harper said. He was on one knee beside Glass, and picked her up, gently, and lifted her over the side of the tub. She opened one eye and said, 'Car?'

'She's awake,' Harper grunted.

'We're trying to get you out of here,' Anna said.

She crawled to the door and shouted at Judge: 'The cops are coming. If you get out of here now, maybe you've got a chance.'

'If the cops were coming, they would have been here,' Judge screamed back. 'If I take you down, I walk. I'll drag you out in the desert somewhere, with a shovel.'

Anna turned away, said to Harper, 'I'm going, out the side of the back room,' and Harper said, 'Goddamn, Anna.'

Anna: 'Yell something at him.'

Harper pushed himself up from behind the bathtub and as Anna crawled down the hall to the back room, shouted, 'Shut the fuck up, you fuckin' moron.'

Crack. A slug pounded through the side wall of the back room, but much lower this time. Anna was sprayed with splinters of lath and plaster. The bullet missed by three feet.

'Anna?'

'Yeah, I'm okay.'

The windows on the side of the back room were double-hung, with slide latches. She turned the latch on the first one, struggled to lift the window, got it up. There was a screen on the outside, with hooks inside. She unhooked it, and pushed it open.

Harper was shouting: 'The women are both still alive in here. If you stop now, you'll just go to treatment.'

Crack.

Something wooden exploded in the office. 'Is he in the same place?' Anna called back to Harper.