?Now step away from it.?
Mike stepped away.
?You just keep still while I call the lady of the house and we?ll see what to do with you.? The maid edged toward an intercom on the wall.
The lady of the house. That would probably mean two people pointing guns at Mike, and then he wouldn?t have a chance. He had to do something right now or his long drive from Oklahoma would be for nothing. He tensed to grab for the .38 in his belt.
A flash of lightning. Thunder boomed, and the lights went out.
Mike went for the revolver, backpedaled and tripped over his own feet and went down. The maid fired blind, and Mike heard the slugs hit the far wall. She must have thought he was going for the shotgun.
He fanned the .38 in a wide slanting arc, squeezed the trigger five times. Hopefully one of the shots would hit.
Everything went quiet except for the rain and Mike?s own heavy breathing. He tried to get up. He couldn?t. His back had locked.
Mike dragged himself along the floor, groped, and found the wall. He?d give himself ten seconds to catch his breath, then he?d use the wall for support and somehow get to his feet.
The lights flickered back on.
Mike lay three inches from the maid?s face, her big eyes rolled up and lifeless, mouth open like a cartoon trout?s. One of his shots had hit. Mike had gotten lucky.
Slowly, painfully, he pulled himself to his feet. He had one shot left in the .38, stuck it back in his belt. He picked up the shotgun and went looking for the lady of the house.
* * *
Nikki sat up in bed, rigid and alert. She?d heard something. Gunfire.
She rolled over and checked her laptop. The computer was connected to the house system. She tapped a few keys, scanned the display, but the system didn?t show a breach, no forced entry. Nikki knew the difference between shots and thunder. Something bad was happening.
The digital clock blinked 12:00 at her. A brief power outage, but that wouldn?t affect the security system, which was wired to a separate power source.
She pulled the .380 from under her mattress and jumped down from the canopied bed. She quickly peeled off her socks and tossed them aside. Too much hardwood flooring in this house, and she couldn?t afford to slip and slide. Better traction with bare feet.
Out in the hall. She looked both ways. Nothing. She cocked her head, listened, but heard only the storm. She headed for the stairs.
At the bottom, she spun a full circle, both hands tight on the .380. She looked into every corner. Nothing. She crept silently down the hall and gasped when she got to the front foyer and saw Althea, blood spreading in a pool from beneath the maid?s corpse.
Grief for her longtime servant flared only briefly, then turned to cold calculation. Nikki?s eyes kept moving. She needed information. How many? How had they gotten inside? Would the single magazine in the .380 automatic be enough?
Another level of thought contemplated bigger questions. Who was here to kill her and why? The man with the voice. It could be no other. She had botched the job, sent her sisters to do what she should have taken care of personally.
With shocking clarity, Nikki realized she had been slowly removing herself from the business, backing off and bowing out a little at a time. She had come too close to getting killed too many times, and she knew now she?d lost the stomach for it. Killing had been her father?s business. She could not now think of a single reason she should continue. She wanted her life back, wanted off the leash.
The man with the voice wouldn?t like that.
She set her jaw, headed back down the hall toward the library. The man with the voice would be made to understand. He did not own Nikki Enders. She would send his killers back in a box.
