Twisted Prey (Lucas Davenport #28)(102)

Grant nodded, and Douglas led the way to the living room, where Claxson was sitting in a leather chair, another glass of whiskey by his hand. Grant doubted that she’d be offered one. Douglas asked, “Would you like a drink? I have a split of champagne, unless you like a nice snort of Jack Daniel’s.”

So she’d been wrong about that. She was still behind Parrish, ten feet from Claxson, with Douglas off to her right, walking toward the liquor cabinet.

Grant didn’t bother to reply. She had her hand on the pistol; the pistol felt electrified, as the checkering on the grip bit into her hand. She’d flicked off the safety as they walked down the hallway from the front door. Now she pulled it out and, with no hesitation, shot Parrish in the back between the shoulder blades.

The muzzle blast was like a slap on the head, though slightly muffled by the carpets, drapes, and soft furniture. Parrish pitched forward onto his face. Claxson shouted something she didn’t comprehend and tried to get out of the leather chair, rolled slightly to his left, eyes wide, and she shot him in the chest and side—two quick taps—from five feet.

Douglas had the crystal whiskey glass in his hand, and he pitched it at her head. She pulled her head back, got splashed with the whiskey. Douglas blurted, “Please don’t,” and she thrust the pistol at him and shot him twice in the chest.

Parrish and Claxson were dying but alive. Claxson had a pistol and had managed to claw it out, but it had fallen from his hand, as he faded, and now lay on the floor beside him. Grant stepped over to him and shot him twice in the head, stepped back, shot Parrish twice in the head, and finally went over to Douglas, who appeared to be dead, but she shot him in the forehead anyway.

She’d heard of people who’d been terribly wounded but had survived, so she took time to check each of the bodies: they were all clearly gone. As she bent over Parrish to retrieve his car keys—she’d drive the Toyota back to Washington—there was a bright flash of car lights, coming fast, and somebody at the door, pounding.

She froze. FBI? Davenport and the marshals? No way to get to Parrish’s car. She turned, ran to the back of the house, opened a door on the far wall of the darkened kitchen, and stepped out onto a deck.

The steady drizzle continued, and she ran across the back lawn and stepped through the row of trees at the back of the house. She was nearly blind under the canopy of trees, the starless sky offering no light, the headlights from the cars in front of the house and the glow of lights from within waning dramatically as she moved deeper into the woods.

Then a spark, a light of some kind, barely visible, two hundred yards away, maybe more, blinking on and off, occluded also by individual trees as she moved past them.

She heard a splintering crash from the front of the house and realized that somebody had broken through the heavy front door. She moved deeper into the woods but, unable to help herself, stopped and looked back.

Douglas hadn’t pulled the drapes on the side window in the living room, and Davenport was there, in its brightly lighted rectangle, like a man in a painting, moving toward the bodies, a burly man next to him, as well as two women—one white, one black—and she could now see Davenport shouting something and waving to the black woman, who was carrying a rifle, and she disappeared out the front door.

An insane rush of anger flooded through Grant, seeing Davenport there like a target in a shooting gallery. Without stopping to consider, she raised the pistol and fired three shots at the window and saw Davenport and the white woman go down.

She turned back to the spark of light she’d seen just before. It was a long way away, several hundred yards at least. She dropped the gun in her bag, and with her hands in front of her face to ward off unseen tree branches, she jogged toward it, tripping once, twice, three times, but she managed to stay on her feet.

She kept her eyes on the light, and eventually it grew closer and sharper. Somebody shouted behind her, yet the voice was hushed. The steady patter of the drizzle off the forest leaves, she realized, had the effect of muffling the shouting.

She moved on toward the light, came up behind a house. A different light went on nearby—motion-activated, she thought. There was no further activity.

Had to keep moving, she thought. She ran to the front of the house and out to the street. The street curved back toward Chesapeake, where she didn’t want to go, and the other direction seemed too dark. A cul-de-sac? She wasn’t sure, but she had no choice and ran that way, only to discover that it was.

But there was another spark of light across the lawn and through more trees, a couple of hundred yards to her left and away from Douglas’s house. She crossed the lawn, entered the trees, nearly fell again, eventually worked her way out to another street. This one had more houses, and she ran down the blacktopped road. With the solid footing, she could move faster. The house with the light she saw had three cars parked in the driveway, and she went on by.

She could follow the road guided by the lights coming from the houses on either side, and now by the sky overhead, which was light gray rather than almost black when obscured by trees overhead. She stepped in a hole, stumbled, caught herself, ran on. There was more shouting behind her, now distinctly distant, and, even farther away, the wail of a siren.

She hadn’t panicked. Not yet. But she could feel it clawing at her throat, trying to choke her, but she pushed it down. The farther she could get from Douglas’s house, the safer she should be. And the woods, always lapping at the sides of the road, provided impenetrable cover if she needed to hide from a passing car.