Devoted(54)
She had dozed off twice during the hours she’d waited in line for the overturned eighteen-wheeler to be moved to one side of the highway, and now she yawned extravagantly. This had been a long day, wearying not just because of its length but because of the sadness attendant to it. But the wonder of Kipp and her responsibility for him kept her in motion.
A couple miles short of Olympic Village, she consulted the Pied Finder app again. She was dismayed to see that, after remaining for hours in the same location, Kipp had gone on the move once more. His blinking signifier placed him on Interstate 80, west of Truckee, heading toward Donner Summit. The speed at which he moved meant he must be aboard a vehicle.
Perhaps he was in the company of a good person, or maybe someone not so good. Whoever his companion might be, that person couldn’t know that Kipp was more than a dog, that he was a treasure. Anyway, this wasn’t anyone whom Dorothy had chosen for the role of caregiver, and Rosa would, by God, not fail Dorothy.
Although she was already doing the speed limit, she pressed down on the accelerator.
59
Pistol in hand, seven rounds remaining in the magazine, Megan hurried barefoot across Woody’s bedroom, into the upstairs hallway, as Shacket threw open the front door with such force that it banged hard against its stop. He had shattered the sidelight and reached through to twist the thumb turn on the deadbolt.
Wind seethed into the house, huffing and wailing, and the alarm shrilled, and Megan reached the head of the front stairs in time to see Shacket snatch a large vase from the foyer sideboard and throw it against the wall in a rage before he disappeared panther-quick into the hallway, heading toward the back of the house.
He was insane, but he was something stranger than crazy: wild and weird and powerful and unpredictable. If he had charged up the front stairs, she would have shot him repeatedly. But as bold as he might be, he wasn’t improvident.
She recalled something that he’d said: We all make mistakes though, don’t we? I made one when I left my pistol in your kitchen earlier . . .
He’d returned to get his gun. He could ascend one set of stairs or another, probably from the kitchen, firing as he reached the top.
She went back into Woody’s room, pushed the button in the doorknob to engage the privacy latch. A hard kick would spring that flimsy lock. Brace the door. No straight-backed chair. Just Woody’s wheeled desk chair and an armchair.
Shacket was coming, and coming fast.
Left of the door, a seven-drawer highboy stood on four legs, too heavy to drag across the carpet. She tipped it, and it crashed onto its side, blocking the door to the height of the knob.
The phone ringing. Alarm shrieking, wind jamming the house, and the phone ringing. She snatched the handset off the cradle, knowing it must be the alarm company, and didn’t even listen, just shouted, “Man with a gun, in the house, now, now, now!”
She didn’t hang up but dropped the phone and moved to the bathroom doorway.
Woody was where she had left him, but on his side now, in the fetal position.
She turned her back to the boy and faced the hallway door, on the farther side of the room, wanting to kill Shacket for what he’d already done to Woody, for terrorizing the boy, for touching him. If the bastard suddenly had a come-to-Jesus moment and threw down his gun and begged forgiveness, she’d shoot him anyway, shoot him again and again, kill him with great satisfaction.
He should have been here by now. The howling wind, the creaks and rattles and thumps it raised, the insistent bleating of the alarm, again her heart thundering, but she heard no gunshots, no pounding on the braced door.
She wondered where he was, thought of how he’d gone out the window and landed on all fours in the yard, his eyes like burning coals in his moon-pale face. Her imagination brought her a mental image of him climbing the house wall with the alacrity of a spider, raising the double-hung window from outside and entering the bathroom behind her.
Help was on its way, armed deputies, although not likely just around the corner, still a few minutes away, when a few minutes was an eternity.
Suddenly Shacket rattled the doorknob but only for a moment, then fired two shots at the lock, disintegrating it. He tried to shove the door open, but the highboy was heavy. He pushed harder, and the door arced an inch, two inches.
She was at an angle to the gap, couldn’t see him, but she fired at the jamb, fired again, and saw the pressure on the door relent.
She had five rounds left.
How many did he have—six, eight?
Again he shoved hard on the door, moving the toppled highboy another inch, two inches. If it came to a firefight, maybe his aim would be as uncanny as his animal physicality. The solid-core door was two inches thick. Trying to shoot him through it was likely a waste of ammunition.
The door moved two inches, then another two. Soon he would force entry. Judging by his rabid behavior thus far, he’d enter fast and low, firing as he came, and he would expect her to be where in fact she was, defending the entrance to the bathroom in which her troubled boy lay immobile.
Megan shrank back, using the doorjamb for what little cover it might offer, the pistol in a two-hand grip, aiming at the widening gap across the room, where the sonofabitch would soon appear.
The distinctive waffling wail of a patrol-car siren spiraled through the cacophony of wind and shrilling alarm, sooner than she had expected and swelling fast.