But the next second took the decision away. With a cry of 'Enough talk!' Laser Eyes aimed his gun towards Will, his eye squinting as he took aim. Will could see that the gunman's real target was not him at all: he was shooting at Beth and the baby she was carrying.
Uselessly he held up his hands to cry, 'No!' But the word barely came out. Instead, Will felt himself shoved from the side. As he toppled over, he heard first one gunshot, then another — and saw the falling, almost flying, figure of Rabbi Freilich. The rabbi had leapt up and pushed Will out of the way, smothering Beth with his own body. The rabbi had made his own decision: to take the bullets aimed at Will's unborn son.
Will seized the moment, charging at Laser Eyes, rushing at his gun hand. The man squeezed the trigger, but he had been knocked off balance: the shot went through the glass of the street-facing window. Will had to get the gun from him. But now he could see his father, the blade bright in his hand, moving towards the corpse of Rabbi Freilich — looking for Beth.
Finding a strength he had never known, Will was now gripping the assassin's gun arm, trying to pull it behind his back: the Nelson arm-lock he had learned at school. The man began to squeal, his hold on the weapon weakening. Will got a finger on the handle, but it was not enough. With one eye, he could see his father had nearly pulled Freilich free: in a matter of seconds, he would be able to plunge the knife into Beth.
Will wanted to pull away from Laser Eyes and stop his father but he knew it would be no good: he would be shot before he had crossed the room. He had to get the gun. He gave one more pull on the man's arm in a desperate attempt to wrench the pistol away, but it did not work. The gun did not fall from his hand. Instead the assassin instinctively tightened his grip, inadvertently squeezing the trigger.
Will heard the noise and looked down at his hands, expecting to see them blown away. He was covered in blood but, he realized a second later, it was not his own. Laser Eyes had shot himself in the back.
Now there was a clear line of sight to his father, who had briefly turned away from his task at the sound of the gunshot.
For a moment, Will caught his eye. He turned back, his face flushed, as he finally shoved Freilich's lifeless body to one side. He raised his knife high, ready for the plunge into Beth's stomach.
Will flew at him, the same rugby-tackle motion his father had taught him perhaps twenty years earlier. It knocked the older man down, away from Beth but still with the knife in his hand. Now Will was on top of him, staring straight into his face.
'Get off me, Will,' he rasped, his neck muscles engorged.
'We have so little time.' His father's strength shocked him. It took a supreme effort to keep his arms pinned to the floor; his own wrists were straining. Monroe Sr's neck was swelling with the effort to throw Will off. And still he kept the knife in his hands.
Suddenly, Will felt a new pressure. His father was using his knees to spring Will off him and it was working; Will was being pushed back. With one more kick, he threw Will off and jumped to his feet. Still with knife in hand, he took three purposeful strides towards Beth, who was now backed against the side wall.
Will could see his father draw back his hand, ready at last to stab Beth's womb. But Beth grabbed Monroe Sr's wrist with both hands, using all her strength to push it back. The knife hovered for a second — held in suspension by the equal strength of a true believer's desire to bring about heaven on earth and a mother's determination to protect her unborn child. The two forces were a match for each other. Will realized he had seen this fire in his wife's eyes once before: it was the same feral determination he had glimpsed in his dream. Then too Beth had been defending a child from terrible harm.
Now the man's greater muscle began to show. His hand was advancing, the knife cutting wild arcs in the air, just in front of Beth's belly. The blade made contact — scoring a deep gash in the cloth of her skirt.
Will was filled with a sudden hot burst of adrenalin, the adrenalin of the truly desperate. Staggering towards the slumped body of Laser Eyes, he uncurled the assassin's fingers, still rigidly gripping the weapon, and wrenched the gun away.
Standing parallel with Beth, he aimed precisely at his father's head and squeezed the trigger.
EPILOGUE
Six months later
Will always liked the office ritual of a cake. A group email would go around the office, or at least one part of it, announcing that someone was marking a birthday, celebrating a landmark anniversary or, most often, leaving.
These little ceremonies — a speech from the department head, a response from the honoree — always gave Will a warm pleasure. Mainly it was because he was still new enough to the Times to enjoy the sense of membership of a grand old institution — and these occasions ladled out that sentiment by the bucketload.
'Farewell to Terry Walton. 4.45 at the Metro Desk.' It hardly mattered that Will was no fan of Walton's; it would still be fun. Not that he had seen him much in the six months since everything happened; Walton had scarcely been around.
Maybe he was winding down for his retirement or the job running a local paper in Florida or whatever else it was he was going to do next.
Six months. It felt longer. Everything about that week felt long ago, even far away — as if it had happened on a distant planet or in a different age.
He had had so many hard conversations, the hardest with Tom, at his bedside, explaining why exactly he had taken a bullet. There was no good reason, Tom had concluded, coolly logical even in the intensive care ward. Just as there was no good reason why the bullet had missed his heart by a few inches, lodging in his shoulder bone instead. 'If I'd been shorter, I'd be dead,' Tom had said, woozily. 'Or do I mean taller? You see what I mean? There is no logical reason for any of it. We live in the absence of reason.' After that, he had fallen back to sleep.
TO and Will visited him often in those first few days, but neither of them was guest of honour. That place was reserved for Beth. When she walked in, Tom managed a wide beam, rather than a watery smile. She bent over for a mini-hug and told him he had helped save her life and the life of her child.
He said: 'Any time.'
Will had had to recount the events of that night and that week over and over again. First to detectives and lawyers, explaining that he had killed his father in defence of himself, his wife and his unborn son — an account that was soon born out by forensic examination of the house in Crown Heights and subsequent inquiries into the Church of the Reborn Jesus. The police could also see the terrible fate that had befallen Rabbi Freilich and Rachel Jacobson. Both Will and Beth spent hours reliving that dreadful night, giving statement after statement, until they were exhausted.
When they were on their own, Beth described how she had been well treated, how Mrs Jacobson had mothered her in that house — constantly apologizing for her captivity, promising that soon all would be explained. Beth had been first scared, then furious and finally desperate to get word to Will that she was safe. But, she said, she never once doubted that she would survive. The Hassidim swore they would not harm her and for a reason she had never quite understood, she believed them.
So they went together, Will and Beth, to the funerals of Rabbi Freilich and Mrs Jacobson which, following Jewish custom, were held quickly, as soon as the coroner released their bodies. There were huge crowds, perhaps three thousand for Rabbi Freilich, a mighty show of collective grief.
Only then did Will appreciate Freilich's position among the Hassidim: he had been their surrogate father, guiding them ever since they had lost their Rebbe.
A handful of people at the funeral approached Beth, making a small bow of their head as they came close. Will understood they were showing respect not to her or him, but to their unborn child, destined to be one of the lamad vav.
Will saw a familiar face and he headed over immediately.
'Rabbi Mandelbaum, I need to ask you something.'
'I think I know what you want to ask, William. Perhaps you'll allow me to give you some advice. Don't think too deeply about what we discussed that night. It would not be good for you. Or your child.'
'But-'
