JACK
THE SMELL OF AMMONIA spikes up my nostrils, and I wake up to the worst headache I’ve ever had. I open my eyes, squinting against the flashlight in my face, realizing I’m on my bathroom floor.
Mom stares down at me, her face a picture of worry.
“You okay?” I ask her. My throat is really dry, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.
“I’m fine, dear. How are you feeling?”
“Sleepy. Wake me up in a few hours.”
I close my eyes again, get another whiff of ammonia.
“Mom! Quit it!” I reach up to push the smelling salts away.
“Harry says you shouldn’t sleep after a head injury.”
Harry?
“You need to wake up, sis,” he says. “We’re still in a lot of trouble.”
It comes back to me in a big, ugly rush. Alex. The snipers. Finding out Harry McGlade might be my brother. I raise my hand to my head and gently probe the spot that hurts the most. I touch matted hair and tape, and what might be a staple.
“Did I get hit in the head?” I ask.
“You were shot,” Mom says. “You’ve been out for over half an hour.”
“That long? I remember turning off the circuit breaker. But nothing after that.”
“You’re lucky,” Harry says. “I’m going to remember this last half hour for the rest of my life.”
I cough. “I’m thirsty.”
Harry sticks his hand out the bathroom door, and comes back with a bottled water from the refrigerator. Mom shines the flashlight on him, and I can see that he’s been crying. I take the water, oddly touched by his concern. He must really be worried about me.
Mom puts her hand on my face, strokes my cheek.
“One more,” she says.
Harry vigorously shakes his head. “No. Please. Thirty-eight is enough.”
“Just one.”
“I can’t take it,” he says. “I’m one big hematoma.”
“Don’t be a baby. You have plenty of blood left. Let’s try your leg.”
Mom holds up a syringe. Harry tries to back away, but he doesn’t have anywhere to go.
“Not that leg!” Harry cries. “The veins are all collapsed!”
My mother doesn’t heed him, jabbing him in that leg.
“Holy hell, it hurts so bad!”
Fresh tears flow down his cheeks. So much for him worrying about me.
“Harry’s such a brave boy,” Mom says. “Aren’t you, Harry?”
He moans. “I need aspirin. A shitload of aspirin.”
That seems like a good idea. I sit up, intent on visiting the medicine cabinet. Vertigo kicks in, making everything lopsided, and the pain gets so bad I see spots. I sip some water, try to get my vision to track correctly.
“Is Jack okay?” Latham, from the living room.
“She’s a bloodthirsty demon!” Harry moans. “Draining me dry!”
“I’m okay,” I call to him. “How are you doing?”
“Getting drowsy.”
“Maybe he needs a transfusion,” I say to Harry.
“Don’t worry.” Mom yanks out the needle and pats his thigh. “Harry’s a universal donor.”
“Harry needs some pain reliever,” he says, “because he feels like he just doggy-styled a cactus.”
Harry reaches into the vanity over the sink and finds the Tylenol bottle. He pries off the cap with his teeth, pours a bunch in his mouth, then washes them down with a beer he liberated from my fridge.
“This might hurt,” Mom says to me.
She sticks the needle into my arm, next to dozens of other marks. I look like a junkie after a bender from hell. There isn’t much pain, though. My throbbing head is too much competition.
I drink more water, Harry tosses me the Tylenol, and I swallow three. Mom finishes shooting me up, and then takes a few pills herself. We help each other up. I’m still a little dizzy, but I can function. I give Harry a pat on the shoulder and he shouts.
“Sore! Very sore!”
I consider myself a kind person, but showing kindness to Harry McGlade takes Herculean effort.
“Thanks for the blood, Harry.”
His eyes soften. “Hey, that’s what family is for. We already share the same blood, right?” Then he adds, “And if you develop any kind of itchy rash in the feminine area, I’ve got some cream left over from my last doctor visit.”
I don’t want to think about that.
“What next?” Mom asks.
I finish the water, toss the empty bottle in the trash can. Sort of a silly gesture, worrying about being tidy when there’s a shot-up refrigerator sticking out of the door.
“I’m going back to the bedroom, to get my gun. Then I’m going to find a way outside.”
“They can see in the dark,” Mom says. “They have those scopes.”
That makes sense. The lights were out and they still managed to hit me.
“I’ll move fast. They can’t shoot what they can’t hit.”
Mom hugs me. I hug her back. She’s trembling.
“I thought…” Her voice cracks. “I thought I lost you.”
I want to say something meaningful, something poignant, but I’m getting pretty choked up too. So I settle for kissing her on the forehead and telling her I love her. Then I disengage, heading for the door.
Harry blocks my way.
“Gotta go,” I say.
He holds open his arm.
Oh God. He wants a hug.
I brace for it, stiffening as he encircles my waist. But rather than the sleazy feeling I normally get when Harry touches me, this time it isn’t too bad.
“Be careful, sis.”
I give him a perfunctory pat on the back, and he whimpers in pain.
“Your back too?”
“She stuck me everywhere I had skin.”
I pull away, saying, “Keep an eye on Mom.”
He doesn’t say anything glib or smart-ass. He simply nods.
I slip past him, switch off the flashlight, and duck into the hall.
10:13 P.M.
KORK
I OPEN MY EYES and wonder where I am. I try to lift my hands, and see I’m chained under a sink. My body hurts all over.
I must have been a bad girl. Father punishes us when we’re bad. He calls it Penance. I’m afraid of Father, afraid of his punishments. I feel like crying.
Then my mind clears. I’m not ten years old anymore. I’m all grown up. And this isn’t our house. It’s Jack’s.
I’m in the kitchen, all alone.
Anger replaces fear.
My eyes sting. I rub my face on my shoulder, wipe away some blood. My forehead is cut. My head aches. My right hand still stings from when the gun was shot from my grip. None of the damage is serious.
I test the pipe I’m chained to. It’s cold, metal, two inches thick. A drain trap, under the sink. I give it a hard yank. Then another. It’s solid.
I scoot up closer, rest my head on the bottom of the cabinet. It smells like dish soap and moldy sponges. I can’t see very well — so I work by feel, palpating the U pipe, seeking the joint. I think righty tighty, lefty-loosey, and lock both fists around the octagonal coupling. It isn’t a pipe wrench, but it’s all I have.
I twist. My hands are strong, from thousands of fingertip pushups while in Heathrow. My arms are bigger than most guys’. But the pipe doesn’t want to cooperate. It refuses to turn, preferring instead to dig a nice trench of skin out of my palm.
I twist and twist until it feels like my veins are going to burst out of my temples. The joint won’t budge.
I stop, then spend a few minutes trying to use my handcuff chain as a tool, levering and turning and pulling.
My efforts leave me with sore wrists, but no closer to escape.
I close my eyes, let the solution come to me. I broke out of a maximum security prison for the criminally insane. I should be able to get out from under a stupid sink.
Voices, elsewhere in the house. I m
ake out a few words, but they don’t interest me. I’m not the only one trying to kill Jack and her family. But I don’t believe those jokers outside pose much of a threat to my plans. If they had any skills, everyone would already be dead. They’re jackals. I’m a lion. Lions don’t fear jackals.
I feel the pipe, higher up, where it meets the sink. The joint here is plastic, bigger, the size of a peanut butter jar. And it has nubs on it, to grip when attaching the drain to the pipe. I form my fingers around them and twist.
Red and yellow spots form in my vision, and my head begins to shake. I strain and strain until my entire world is reduced to five square inches of force and pain.
I release it and forcibly exhale. My hands are trembling.
But it moved a fraction of an inch.
I crack my knuckles, then go at it again, a smile enveloping half my face.
10:15 P.M.
JACK
I’M GRATEFUL I CAN’T REMEMBER being shot, because that might have made me reconsider my actions. Though I’ve never used a night-vision scope, never even saw one in real life, I’m familiar with how they work, thanks to Tom Clancy movies. The hallway is pitch-black to me, but to the snipers I am an easy target, glowing bright green.
Thanks to Mr. Clancy, I also have an idea how to mess with their aim.
I stick out my left hand, reaching for the wall. When my fingers graze it I run forward four steps. I lift the flashlight up to chest level, switching it on and pointing it through my bedroom door, out the window. Then I immediately dodge right.
The light will temporarily blind anyone peering through a night-enhanced scope, causing a bright flash. If someone has a bead on me, they might reflexively shoot when the light goes on. Hence the change of direction.
The shot doesn’t come.
I toss the flashlight into the bedroom, toward the far corner, and jog toward the window in a crouch. I duck down, beneath the pane, safe. Then I feel around the floor. I find my dropped Kimber.
Hurt isn’t strong enough a word for the feeling in my head, and my stomach isn’t happy with the bottle of water I chugged. I rest for a minute, slowing down my breathing, picturing what I need to do next.
Unlike my Colt, the Kimber is bigger, badder, and more accurate. This is the gun I use in marksman competitions. I need to get outside, locate the bastards, and get within a hundred feet of them. Once they’re within range, my handgun is more effective than their long guns. They’re using bolt action, single fire, and it takes a few seconds to load each bullet. My .45 holds seven rounds, and it shoots as fast as I can pull the trigger.
If I can get close enough.
Originally, I intended to sneak out the bedroom window. Getting shot in the head made me think about other possible exit points. My house is built in an L shape, but that still means four right angles. There are only three snipers, so they can’t completely cover all four sides.
The trick is to find an exit they aren’t covering.
The front door won’t work. The large bay window in the living room offers too good a view inside. Mom’s room has a window, but it’s on the same wall as mine, and a shooter can easily watch both. The kitchen patio doors lead into the backyard. Again, they’re big and offer a full view, but I can get through them quicker than climbing out a normal window. The garage has a window, but it’s behind an endless stack of boxes that we never unpacked after moving in. The bathroom window is frosted, and no one has shot through it yet, but it’s decorative and doesn’t open. If I break it, that will leave Mom and Harry exposed.
Life would be so much easier if I’d just bought a house with a basement. I could have crawled up a window well, gotten out at ground level, and come at them low, under their noses. I’m sure these guys are amateurs. They’ll sweep left and right, but won’t know to sweep up and down.
My concentration shatters when the window above me does, glass shards sprinkling my hair and shoulders. Something thumps to the floor in front of me, and I recover from the startle and extend my arm, pointing the .45, pulling the trigger halfway before stopping myself.
It isn’t a person in the room with me. The flashlight in the corner is pointing in this direction, and it silhouettes a familiar shape, nestled in the broken glass on my carpeting.
A rifle.
I stand up and stick my gun through the hole in the window, looking left, then right, for the person who threw a rifle into my bedroom. I catch a dark shape turning the corner into the backyard, but it’s gone before I can squeeze off a shot.
I don’t pause to think. I use the butt of my gun to brush away the jagged glass still jutting out of the pane, lift my knee up, and climb through the window frame. I hear my mother calling my name, but don’t want to answer, don’t want to give my position away.
I’m dizzy, winded. I touch the brick wall, use it steady myself. Then I half run, half stumble toward the backyard, to the corner the man disappeared around. I pause, my back against the house, both hands on my Kimber. The evening has cooled off, and there’s a strong enough breeze that I feel it through the bandage on my head. The lawn is cold and tickles my bare toes. I hold my breath and listen.
Night sounds. Leaves rustling. Crickets. The faint whistle of the wind. Just your average autumn night in the suburbs.
I count to three, then spin around the corner, gun pointing in front of me. I can’t see much in the dark. I make out some low shadows on my patio, chairs and a table. My lawn goes back about twenty yards, and beyond it is the tree line. Enough cover for me to disappear into. If I can’t find the snipers, I’ll go into the woods and come out the other side, to a major highway, and bring back help.
Before I take a step forward the ground spits up dirt and grass a few feet to my right.
“Go back inside!”
A man’s voice, coming from deep within the same woods I want to enter.
I backpedal, firing blindly into the trees, wasting two bullets. I press my back against the wall, not too far from my bedroom window.
The next shot eats into the brick less than a foot in front of me, digging out a chunk big enough to stick my hand into.
“I told you to get back in the house!” the man yells. “Go get your rifle, or I’ll shoot you where you stand! I ain’t asking again!”
I think about running in the opposite direction, toward the front of the house. Less cover there, but maybe I can make it to my neighbor, up the road.
Probably not smart. My shooting has assuredly caught the attention of the other two snipers. They’ll be waiting for me.
Not seeing any other choice, I go back to my bedroom and climb through the window, careful not to step on any glass.
“Jacqueline!” Mom.
“I’m okay!” I call back.
My eyes trail down, to the rifle. Why did the sniper give it to me? Some kind of trick or trap?
I reach over slowly, like it’s a rattlesnake ready to strike, and wrap my fingers around the barrel. I pull it close, see a piece of paper rolled up in the trigger guard. I unroll the note and read the semi-legible words scrawled on it:
There are three of us.
You have three bullets.
Let’s play.
These assholes actually think this is a game.
I holster the Kimber and check the rifle. It’s a Browning, bolt action, walnut stock, a twenty-inch barrel, weighing about seven pounds. No scope, no sights. I open the ammo tube and find three .22 LR hollow point rounds. Much smaller than the ammo the snipers are using, but still potent enough to drop a deer. I roll them between my fingers, shake them next to my ear, give them each a sniff. They seem like the real thing. I feed them back into the tube, yank the bolt, and chamber a round.
If they want to play, I’m happy to oblige.
10:22 P.M.
MUNCHEL
MUNCHEL WATCHES the split-tail climb back through the window, and he feels every hair on his arms stand at attention. He isn’t tired. He isn’t scared.
He’s electrified.
> This has been the greatest day of his life. And when that cop returns fire, it will take everything up to the next level. He imagines this is the desert, hot wind blowing in his eyes, sand in his teeth, his platoon pinned down by enemy fire, and Private Munchel — no, Sergeant Munchel — is called to take them out with extreme prejudice. But the insurgents have a sniper of their own, a famous Taliban bitch who’s a dead shot at a thousand yards, and only Sergeant Munchel has the skill to—
“Where in the hell are you?”
The radio startles Munchel, jolting him out of his reverie. He swears, unclips the radio, then presses the talk button.
“What’s the problem now, Swanson?”
“The problem is that you disappeared for an hour, and when you come back there’s gunfire. Loud gunfire, not our silenced rifles.”
“They’re suppressors, not silencers.” Pessolano, cutting in.
Swanson sighs like a drama queen. “I don’t give a shit what they’re called. Tell me what’s going on.”
“The woman cop,” Munchel says. “She had a gun in the house, shot at me through the window.”
“I already killed her,” Pessolano says.
“You must have missed, because she was shooting at me just a minute ago.”
“You sure it was her?”
“’Course it was her. Looked just like her.”
“Could of been her twin.”
“Her what?”
“Her twin sister. Like that Van Damme movie.”
“It wasn’t her goddamn twin, Pessolano. You just goddamn missed.”
“Enough!” Swanson cuts in. “Her gun is too loud. Someone is going to hear it and call the cops.”
Munchel grins. “Well, it’s about to get even louder, boyo, because I gave her a rifle.”
He pictures Swanson’s face turning bright red with anger. It amuses him greatly. Ever since they first got together, Swanson has been playing leader. But he sucks as a leader. He’s too scared of everything, and has zero creativity.
And what is this shit Pessolano is talking about twins? That guy has been bragging and boasting about his war record nonstop, but he can’t even confirm a kill.
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