Although the Asian woman wasn’t on their hit list, she had seen their faces. They would have to kill her, too.
That was okay. There was plenty of room for three in the cargo area of the Mercury Mountaineer, and Benny had recently sharpened his favorite cutting tools.
He closed and locked the back door. He didn’t want to make it easy for anyone to come in behind them.
On one job, a four-year-old girl had wandered into the house from next door, and Cindi had insisted on adopting her.
Now Cindi had the chloroform in her right hand and the Taser in her left. Benny relied on only the chloroform.
They weren’t worried about PD-issued sidearms. Basic guns for cops these days were often 9mm. He and Cindi could walk through a lot of 9mm fire if necessary.
Besides, if they were stealthy, their prey wouldn’t have a chance to draw down on them.
A laundry room opened off the kitchen. Deserted.
The hallway to the front of the house passed a coat closet. No one knew they were here, so no one would be hiding from them in the closet, but they checked it anyway. Just coats.
As they reached the living room, a gun roared upstairs. It was a big sound, as if an armoire had toppled over. The whole house seemed to shake.
Cindi looked at the chloroform in her hand. She looked at the Taser.
Another shot roared.
Cindi put the Taser in an inside jacket pocket, switched the chloroform to her left hand, and pulled her pistol.
Upstairs the big gun boomed twice again, and Benny drew his piece, too. The gun was a 9mm semi-auto, but this caliber would be a more serious problem for O’Connor and Maddison than for the Lovewells.
Chapter 64
Who the intruder had been, how he had gotten into the house, why he seemed to have targeted Arnie specifically — none of that mattered as much as the fact that he was of the New Race and that this case had come home in the most literal sense, as from the start Carson had been afraid it would.
The walls of their house, the locks in its doors, offered them no more security than did Arnie’s Lego castle. Perhaps the fate of this city, of the world, in the hands of Victor Helios, was such that no time would ever come again when they could spend a peaceful moment in their home. They couldn’t stay here anymore.
And they had to get out
Neighbors might not have been able to identify the precise location of the four shotgun blasts. Nevertheless, gunfire in this neighborhood would not go unreported.
Soon NOPD would have a patrol car or two cruising the area, on the lookout for anything suspicious. Carson preferred to avoid even a friendly encounter with uniforms. She didn’t want to have to explain the weapons for which she possessed neither a receipt of purchase nor department authorization.
Besides, a uniform no longer earned immediate trust from her. The brotherhood of the police had been infiltrated by the New Race; and those who were loyal to Helios might have been told — or might be told at any moment — to make the elimination of Carson and Michael their top priority.
She picked up the Urban Sniper that Randal had torn from her grasp. Fingering two shells out of the dump pouch at her right hip, inserting them in the side carrier to bring the weapon to full load once more, she said, “Good thing we went with slugs.”
“Buckshot wouldn’t have stopped him,” Michael agreed, reloading his shotgun.
“Maybe the shots will make the two in the Mountaineer hesitate.”
“Or bring them running.”
“We grab Vicky, go straight out the front door. Her car’s at the curb. We leave in that.”
Reloading his Sniper, Michael said, “You think they’ve got a hear-me-see-me on the plainwrap?”
“Yeah. They’ve been following us by remote view”
Arnie had gotten out of his chair. He stood gazing at his blood-spattered castle.
Carson said, “Honey, we have to go. Right now.”
The last thing they needed was for Arnie to be mulish. Most of the time, he remained docile, cooperative, but he had his stubborn moments, which could be caused by traumatic experiences and loud noises.
Four shotgun blasts and the intruder dead on the floor qualified on both counts, but Arnie seemed to realize that survival depended on his finding the courage not to withdraw further into his shell. He went at once to the door.
Michael said, “Stay behind me, Arnie,” and led the way into the upstairs hall.
Glancing at the intruder, half expecting to see him blink and shake off the effects of being repeatedly shotgunned, relieved to have her expectations disappointed, Carson followed Arnie out of his room, his refuge, desperately afraid that she would not be able to protect him any longer now that the Big Easy had become the city of night.
Benny started up the steps, and behind him Cindi whispered, “If there’s a baby in the house, let’s take it.”
He kept moving, his back to the staircase wall, sideways from riser to riser. “There’s no baby in the house.”
“But if there is.”
“We didn’t come here for a baby.”
“We didn’t come here for the bitch in the kitchen, either, but we’ll be taking her.”
He reached the landing, peered up the second flight. Nobody in the upstairs hall, as far as he could see.
Behind him, she wouldn’t relent: “If we take the baby, you can kill it with the others.”
Cindi was nuts, and she was making him nuts, too. He refused to get into this debate with her, especially in the middle of a hit.
Besides, if they took the baby, she wouldn’t let him kill it. Once she had it, she would want to keep it and dress it up in frilly outfits.
Anyway,
Benny reached the top of the second flight. With his back still to the wall, he stuck his head out, looked around the corner — and saw Maddison coming with a shotgun, a boy behind him, O’Connor behind the boy with a shotgun of her own.
Maddison saw him, Benny juked back, and where the wall turned the corner from stairwell to hall, a shotgun blast ripped Sheetrock, shattered framing, showered him with powdered gypsum and splinters of wood.
Dropping to his knees on the steps, Benny risked exposure to fire again, but down low, where Maddison would not expect him, and squeezed off three shots without taking time to aim, before pulling back onto the stairs.
Three pistol shots, all wild, but one of them close enough to sing like a wasp past Carson, suggested the wisdom of a change in plans.
Even from the brief glimpse she had of him, Carson recognized the man on the stairs. He was the guy in the Mountaineer, the one who had smiled and waved.
Figure there were two of them on the stairs, the woman behind him. Figure they were both New Race, and both armed with pistols.
To drop Randal, she and Michael had had to scramble his internal organs, shred both his hearts, and shatter his spine with three point-blank slugs from the Urban Snipers.
These two golems on the stairs would be at least as difficult to kill as he had been. And unlike Randal, they were armed and seemed to have some paramilitary framing or at least experience.
Without Arnie to consider, Carson might have relied on the power of their weaponry, might have stormed the stairs, but with the boy to worry about, she couldn’t roll the dice.
“Vicky’s room,” she told Michael, grabbed Arnie by the arm, and retreated toward the end of the hall.
