must have been hauled out of bed. She was a mess, just running on adrenaline now, and fear for her kids.
She padded into the room again, this time carrying a Glock 17 pistol and a magazine that he could see held sixteen gleaming bullets.
He took the gun and the magazine, inserted the magazine, and pulled the slide back to get a round into the chamber. He whispered, 'Tell me the truth. Are you really good with this?'
'I'm okay. I've kept up my qualification for ten or eleven years.'
'Do you have any reluctance at all to kill one of those guys up there?'
'No. None,' she said.
'Okay.' He handed her the gun. 'I think they've got your kids in different rooms. They're probably tied or cuffed. If I go in and kill the guy in one room, his buddy will fire on your other kid. So we have to go in both rooms at once. You don't say, 'Stop or I'll shoot' or 'Freeze' or 'Drop it.' You step in and shoot him. And you have to shoot him enough times so he's beyond shooting back.' He held her arm to keep her from going. 'If you can't do it just like that, tell me.'
'I can do it. I want to do it,' she said.
He picked a piece of paper and a pencil off the desk and put it on the hardwood floor where they sat. 'Draw me the two rooms. Show the door, the back window, the bed, any chairs.'
He watched her draw, then nodded. 'You take this one-your son's room. I'll get the girl. First we go up as quietly as we can. If anybody comes out of a room, kill him. It won't be your kid.'
He put his arm around her shoulders to help her up and they began to walk. At the doorway he whispered, 'Quiet, now. Remember, we step in shooting.'
'Let's go.' She stepped across the big oriental rug in the living room, letting it muffle the footsteps. When she reached the foot of the staircase, she didn't hesitate. She began to climb. Her bare feet made no noise.
He followed and realized that what he was seeing was probably something she had learned when she'd gone up the stairs when her kids were babies. Nobody knew how to go through a house as quietly as the owner. He was tempted to make her stop halfway up to listen for the men, but she was doing so well he waited until they were a step from the top to put his hand on her shoulder. She stopped and looked back at him. He held his hand up to his ear, and they both listened.
There was a steady, low-level hum of talk coming from the boy's room. That seemed good. What worried him was that he wasn't hearing noises from the other room where the girl was. He hoped she wasn't dead.
He looked at Elizabeth and nodded in the direction of the boy's room. She stepped up to the second floor hallway and sidestepped toward the open door. Schaeffer moved toward the other door. He felt a sudden chill. He hadn't taken the time to tell Elizabeth some of the things she needed to know about this situation. She had to step into the middle of the doorway boldly with her eyes wide and the gun out in front of her. There was only the search for the shot and no conceivable reason to hold fire. He reminded himself that she had said she was 'qualified' with her pistol, and he had to assume that federal officers were given situational training. If not, then it was too late.
He held her on the edge of his field of vision as he stepped closer to the girl's room. When he was beside the girl's room, he leaned forward just far enough to see that the door was open. He turned to meet Elizabeth's eyes.
She stood with her left shoulder touching the woodwork around the doorway, holding the gun up with both hands and her finger on the trigger. But her eyes were closed. What the fuck was she doing? She opened her eyes and they met his. He could tell that she'd been praying. He swallowed his irritation. He nodded to her and saw her begin her pivot into the doorway.
He launched himself into the middle of the other doorway, staying low, his right arm extended. The man was young, broad shouldered with spiked bleach-blond hair and a tan that looked as though he'd acquired it on a tanning bed. He held the girl on his lap, and his hand was under her tank top. She was crying. There was a shot from Elizabeth's gun in the next room and he jumped, saw Schaeffer in the doorway, and tried to pull his hand back and push her off his lap so he could reach his gun where it lay on the pillow.
Schaeffer fired a round into his chest, then one more into his head as he toppled back. The girl ran past him out of the room and toward her brother's room. Schaeffer picked up the man's pistol and walked after her into the other room.
Elizabeth was beside her son's bed, trying to tear at the strips of duct tape that had been used to tie him to the iron rails of the bed. Schaeffer stepped to the man lying on the floor. He had been shot twice in the chest, but there seemed to be some movement. He was breathing. Schaeffer fired a round through his head.
'You killed him! Aren't you supposed to call an ambulance?' the daughter said.
'Quiet,' Elizabeth said. 'We'll talk later.' Elizabeth's hands were shaking so much that she couldn't get the tape off her son's wrists.
Schaeffer said, 'Go talk now. I'll do this.'
Elizabeth put her arm around Amanda and they went out. Schaeffer opened his pocketknife and cut the tape at the wrists and ankles. The boy sat up and then stood.
'Thanks. When he tied me up, he said it was so I wouldn't do anything stupid when I heard what they were doing to my mother and sister.'
'We were all lucky they were overconfident.'
The boy left the room, and Schaeffer put his small pistol away and took the one the dead man had in his belt, then found two spare magazines in the man's pocket. As an afterthought, he rolled the body over, took out the man's wallet, looked at the California driver's license, then put it back.
He walked out into the hallway and found the three standing on the hardwood floor, their arms around one another, rocking back and forth. The mother was the shortest of the three, even shorter than the daughter, who still had that sylph look that some girls had even into their late teens, that made them seem to be something thinner and lighter than flesh and bone.
'I'd better get out of here,' he said.
Elizabeth let go of her children, took his arm, and walked with him down the stairs. 'Nobody's coming yet.'
'They don't usually call ahead. I should go.'
'Not yet. I want to-'
'Stop. Jesus didn't send me. I'm here because this was the best place to hunt for those guys. And you saved your own kids.' He turned to head for the back door.
'Wait, please,' she said. 'I know exactly what to do. You just have to trust me.'
'Why would I do that?'
'Because everything changed tonight. All three of us would be dead by now, instead of the three of them. We're alive; they're not.'
'I've got to go.'
'On your way out, stop by the man you caught trying to rape me. Do what's necessary. Skin the fingertips, shoot him in the face a few times so they can't use it to identify him. You'd know what to do better than I do, but make sure they can't tell who he is by looking. Afterward, leave the gun here. If you need another one, take his.'
He studied her for a moment.
'Go ahead. I swear you won't be sorry.'
34
At the end of the third week, he was back in her house. She watched him looking around as he stepped in the door. 'Where's the rest of your furniture?'
'Some of it is in storage, and some of it was ruined by the blood or the crime-scene people and their fingerprint dust,' she said. 'I'm doing some remodeling.'
'What are you changing?'
'I'm having the walls knocked out in the little office and adding that space to the kitchen, which is behind it.
