Thomas Perry - Runner

She waited, but still heard no movement in the hallway from Richard Beale or Sybil Landreau. She left the bedroom and moved along the wall toward the central room. She heard a click from somewhere behind her, turned toward it, and dropped to the floor.

The muzzle flash blinded her for a half-second and the report was incredibly loud in the bare hallway, but the shot went over her head and pounded into the wall. Jane fired a round at the flash, and then two others below it, but she didn't think she hit anything. The hallway was deserted. Sybil Landreau had fired and then ducked into the last room off the hall, the one with the bars on the window.

Jane made a quick decision. She pushed off the wall and sprinted up the hall toward the room. She dashed along the corridor as fast as she could, switching pistols as she ran. As she approached the final door, she extended her right arm ahead of her with her finger on the trigger.

She saw a faint sliver of moonlight appear on the floor of the dark hall, then widen. She stopped and went flat against the wall as the face of Sybil Landreau appeared.

Jane fired, but the face was pulled back. The door slammed, and Jane heard the lock bolt slide into its receptacle. Jane moved across the corridor to the other wall, took ten more steps quietly, and stopped just past the wooden door. The doorknob was on the right, the hinges on the left. Jane knew where Sybil Landreau would be standing at this instant. She would have her back to the wall, close to the hinge side of the door, waiting for Jane to kick it in.

Jane aimed her pistol two feet to the left of the door and about four feet up from the floor and fired three rapid shots into the wall. Then she moved a few feet to the end of the hall. There was no return fire, no sound of movement from inside the room. Jane waited for a minute, then two minutes. She took three steps, brought her right leg up, and gave the door a hard stomp-kick just below the doorknob.

The wood at the doorknob splintered, and the door flew open. Jane saw Sybil Landreau sitting beneath the window, and fired. Sybil Landreau dropped her weapon and toppled to the side, inhaling with a raspy whistle and exhaling with a bubbling sound, as though her lungs were filling with blood. Only then did Jane realize the woman had already been wounded by her shots through the wall. Jane stepped close and picked up the gun Sybil had dropped, then knelt over her. "Where's Christine?"

Sybil smiled, her eyes burning with a sudden intensity. "Dead."

"The baby?"

"Dead."

"Who killed her?"

"You did, bitch."

Jane stood and moved to the door, stepped out, and then closed the door behind her to keep the hallway dark. She still had one more person to hunt. She moved to the bedroom where she had entered the house, went back to the window, and looked out.

Richard Beale was still somewhere within the house and grounds, unhurt. The place where he could hide and control the most space that Jane might cross was out in the back yard, but she couldn't see him. Jane stayed where she was for a few minutes, staring out the window into the dark and carefully identifying each unmoving shape, but she saw no sign of him. She quietly stepped out into the hall again.

Jane silently approached the central room, but didn't go in. She knew that Demming had been lying there waiting for her to come within range of his gun. She came to the end of the hall and looked across the big room at him.

He was still lying in the center of the empty hardwood floor with his gun in his right hand. But now the pool of blood beside his leg had grown. His left hand was holding the end of a belt tightened around his leg above the wound.

Staying back in the shadows, Jane leaned into the room to try to spot Richard Beale. She heard the sound of a car engine starting outside.

Jane hurried back the way she had come, climbed out the window quickly, and dashed across the back lawn and around the far end of the garage. She saw the big black Escalade, then made out Richard Beale in the front seat. She ran along the garage behind the vehicle toward the blind spot on the passenger side. When she reached the back of the vehicle, he suddenly threw the Escalade into reverse and backed it toward her.

She dived to the side as the Escalade slammed against the garage door, bumping it inward and breaking the vehicle's left taillight. Jane stayed low and moved forward on the vehicle's right side, but Richard lowered the side windows and fired several wild pistol shots in her direction. Jane could tell some of his shots hit the inside of the car, the frame. Others splintered the front door of the house and broke a window somewhere behind Jane, but none of them were low enough to hit her.

Richard Beale shifted into drive. He was clearly not interested in chasing her down right now. He simply wanted to leave this place. He jerked the vehicle forward toward the front gate. Jane could tell he was pressing the remote control and waiting for the gate to open for him. The backup battery allowed the motor to engage, move the gate an inch or two until the padlock stopped it, and then begin to retract. Richard would press the button again, and it would move, stop, and reverse over and over.

Richard stopped the vehicle in front of the gate, jumped down from the driver's seat, and ran to the iron barrier. He stood there, half-hidden by the bulk of the black Escalade, tugged on the padlock, aimed his gun at it and fired a round, tugged it again, then ran to the smaller pedestrian gate, and found it padlocked, too.

Beale climbed back into his SUV, put it into reverse so he could swing it around, then backed it into the gate. The iron gate gave a musical sound as the chain snapped and the gate's wheels jumped off their track, but it didn't open. Jane moved toward the vehicle in the dark. Richard got out, stepped on the front bumper, walked over the hood to the roof of the SUV, and prepared to jump over the gate to the street.

Jane moved into position in the bushes a few yards from his vehicle, where she had hidden earlier. "Where is she, Richard?"

He turned toward her voice, trying to make out her shape in the darkness. "Sybil shot her. It was an accident. She was trying to get away. "

"Where's the baby?"

"It died when she did. This was all for nothing." He turned toward the gate again.

"Richard! Don't!"

He jumped from the roof of the SUV toward the pavement on the outside of the gate, and Jane fired two rounds. As he dropped, the muscles in his legs turned limp and unresisting. When he landed he collapsed and lay still beyond the gate.

Jane stepped to the small pedestrian gate, unlocked the padlock and took off the chain, slipped out to the street and knelt beside Richard. She felt his carotid artery, but could detect no pulse. She saw that the side of his head was wet, looked more closely, and realized that one of her shots had passed through his temple. She moved to his feet, bent and grasped his ankles, dragged him inside the gate, and left him hidden from the street by the tall hedge.

She looked back at the huge, dark house, and began to move to the area near the glass door at the back of the house. Claudia Marshall was lying on her back as she had last seen her. Her eyes were fixed, gazing sightless up at the sky, and her mouth had fallen open.

Jane stepped to the glass door and looked into the big room. Steve Demming was in exactly the same position as he had been in before. She quietly slid the door open and stepped into the hallway. She made her way down the hall to the room where she had left Sybil Landreau. She pushed the door open and stood back, but there was no sound or movement. Sybil was still lying on her side near the wall. Jane stepped in and touched the woman's throat, trying to find a pulse, but she was dead, too. Jane closed the door again and went up the hallway.