Джозеф Файндер - Judgment

The footsteps came closer. She froze, standing there in the dark, in the middle of this tiny office. A security guard? If so, she didn’t know what she could say. She had Hersh’s keys, which counted for something. He’s in the hospital and asked me to pick something up for him.

That might work.

She breathed in, and out, and stayed perfectly still.

The footsteps were right outside the door.

She exhaled slowly, silently.

The footsteps moved on. She waited for another thirty seconds or so to make sure the guy was gone.

Then she put the phone-flashlight on and began to search through the chaos.

The first open file drawer seemed to have client files. There was a gap in the B section. Maybe that was her file. If Hersh had made a file with her name on it, someone had taken it.

She went through the other files, looked over the piles on the desk and on the floor. Nothing that had to do with the Russian man, Protasov, nothing that had anything to do with her case.

Either someone had found what he wanted and took it — or he’d searched and given up. But as far as she could see, the file wasn’t here.

She didn’t get home until after two in the morning. She had to be in court no later than eight thirty. She could push it to maybe a few minutes before nine, if she really needed the sleep. She’d get five hours. That would be fine. In law school there’d been nights when she didn’t sleep at all.

But she couldn’t sleep. She was wired and tense. She thought about Hersh, so badly wounded, beat up nearly to death. And about how nervous Paul Ashmont, this CIA career professional, was about her getting close to Protasov.

You would be putting yourself in great danger , he’d said.

Now she found Duncan in their bedroom, awake and distraught.

“Jesus, Jules, where the hell have you been?” he said angrily.

She told him about Philip Hersh and what she’d seen.

“Do you understand how worried I’ve been?” he said.

“I’m sorry. You’re right. I should have kept you in the loop. I’m sorry I didn’t.”

He exhaled. “Tell me what happened in DC.”

She told him about the Russian oligarch and his minions in Washington. About the CIA guy she’d met at the bar and his theory of Yuri Protasov.

And she told him her plan.

After about an hour she was finally able to go to sleep, but it was a light, troubled sleep.

It felt like just a moment later, though it was more like a couple of hours, that she heard Duncan whisper her name. She opened her eyes, saw that he was standing by her side of the bed, in his T-shirt and boxers. She sat up. “What?”

He put a finger to his lips. Shh .

She whispered, “What is it?”

“Do you hear that?”

“Hear — what?”

He cocked his head to one side. “Downstairs.”

“What?”

“I heard something from downstairs.”

“You think it might be Jake?”

He shook his head. “Someone’s in the house.”

She listened for a few seconds, looked at Duncan, shook her head. She didn’t hear anything.

“What did you hear?” she whispered.

But he didn’t seem to be listening. He walked around to his side of the bed and knelt. He pulled something out from underneath it, something dark in his hand.

She gasped. “No!” Then she whispered: “Duncan!”

He was holding a gun in his right hand, black and squared-off, a semiautomatic pistol. She had very little experience with guns. When she’d tried skeet shooting as a teenager, she had used a shotgun to hit the clays. She’d fired a revolver once — she’d asked her father to teach her how — but was freaked out by how loud it was. She hated it, hated anticipating the explosion, and it always messed up her aim.

“Do you know how to use that thing?” she said.

He didn’t reply. He kept moving toward the hall.

“What if it’s Jake down there?”

“ Shh .” He padded out into the hallway.

Her heart was racing. She got up and followed him out. She caught up to him. She put an arm on his shoulder and whispered in his ear, “Duncan, call the cops.”

“No time,” he said, heading to the stairs. “We can’t wait twenty minutes.”

“Honey, don’t,” she whispered again, but he wasn’t listening. She descended the carpeted stairs right behind him. At the landing he froze.

“Oh, Jesus,” he breathed.

The door to her study — the old pantry that they’d converted into her home office, long and narrow — was open, as it always was. And she saw a pale spill of light.

In her study.

Far off, maybe thirty or forty feet away.

The light was jittery, moving. Like someone was holding a penlight.

Someone was in the house. Someone was there.

They’d nearly killed Philip Hersh, and now they were coming for her. Or for her family. They were professionals, they were assassins, and they’d already killed several people. These were people who wanted something, and she was standing in their way, and they wouldn’t hesitate to kill her.

Or Duncan.

He put a hand in the air, signaling stop .

He cocked his head. She listened.

And she heard what he heard. She heard a drawer being opened slowly.

Duncan moved swiftly, barefoot, toward her office, his right hand up, the gun pointed. There is a safety on most pistols , she thought. Was the safety on? What if he aimed the gun, and it was grabbed from him, turned back on him?

Now he was standing at the threshold to her office, his right hand extended, the gun pointed, and he said, in a quiet but firm voice, “Don’t — fucking — move.”

And then came the explosion, deafeningly loud, so loud that her ears shrilled a high-pitched squeal. She saw a flash of fire at the end of the muzzle, and then the gun jerked back, nearly coming out of his hand.

And she heard a shout, more like a roar, like the bellow of a wounded animal. She raced to the study, frantic. There was a crash. A gust of cold air hit her. One of the French doors was open, a few small panes of glass shattered, the pebbles of glass on the carpet twinkling in the moonlight.

Duncan came in from outside, panting. “He took off. Bat out of hell.”

“You shot him.”

He nodded. “He pulled out a gun. I had to.”

She heard thundering footsteps coming from the stairs: Jake.

“That was loud. Someone’s going to report it. One of our neighbors.”

“What happened?” Jake shouted, racing across the room toward them. “Was that a gunshot?”

Jake, get back upstairs!” Duncan said. The gun was no longer in his hand. He’d dropped it to the carpet.

“What just happened? Did a gun go off?” Jake, like his dad, dressed for sleep in T-shirt and boxers.

“Upstairs! Now!”

“Did someone get shot?”

“Go!” She’d never heard Duncan yell at him that way before.

“Jesus!”

Looking like he’d been slapped, Jake winced, turned, and walked heavy-footed away, back upstairs. But he would be listening at the top of the stairs, lurking at the upstairs railing.

She closed the door to her study. Duncan had walked over to the open French door. He was picking up some papers that had flitted to the floor in the breeze.

“Duncan, that was insane!” she said. “Where... where the hell did you get that gun?”

“I know a guy who knows a guy. I just — five hundred bucks for the gun plus some ammunition.”

“This is crazy! I’ve turned us both into criminals.”

He put his arms around her, pulled her close. “Breathe, Jules.”

She nodded, closed her eyes. “He wasn’t here to kill anybody. He was here to look for something.”