?Right. No sudden grabs. Play it by ear.?
She put her head back on the pillow, and her breathing became steady and deep.
Andrew stood up, watched her a moment. He wished he could sleep like that. He did love her, even if she did beat him up a little.
After a few minutes he went downstairs, still naked. He stared awhile into the refrigerator. Nothing grabbed his interest. He found his mandolin and took it out to the back deck.
There was a light breeze, just enough to raise goose bumps on his exposed flesh. He strummed random chords for a while, just sitting and looking at the enormous moon. He plucked strings and soon found his way into a song: ?Knocking on Heaven?s Door.?
His thoughts drifted back to the Indians loading their dead son into the back of a pickup truck. Would there be any answers for them? Would it help or hurt them to know their boy?s death was the result of events set into motion by people they didn?t know for reasons they wouldn?t understand? It wasn?t fair. It was bullshit. Somebody should do something.
Maybe somebody would.
39
The library impressed Mike. Leather-bound books, deep Persian rugs, and highly polished antique furniture all whispered old money. He paused in front of the portrait of the man with the eye patch. Involuntarily, Mike?s hand went to his own eye patch. Mike didn?t like the guy in the portrait. The look in the man?s eye seemed to say
Mike discarded the Saints poncho, checked the load on his shotgun. He wished he had more rounds for the .38. Lightning filled the windows, thunder, and the lights went out again. He backed into a desk, tripped through the room, knocked over a lamp with his elbow.
He heard something. Was that him, something he?d knocked over? No. Somebody was here, in the room with him. He spun around, the shotgun in front of him. He strained to see, a shadow, movement, a glint of something in the darkness. Had he heard something? A wisp of air, the whisper of feet across the floor.
There! Right in front of him, was that a shape? Another flash of lightning in the window illuminated the room for a split second. A shape to his right. He lifted the shotgun, took three steps forward.
The lights came back on, stunningly bright and sudden. Mike was blinded for an instant. He blinked, saw the woman in front of him the exact second she saw him. He pointed the shotgun at her. She trained a pistol on him.
?Drop it,? Mike said.
?Don?t make me laugh,? she said. ?I can put five rounds into you before you?ve pumped a second shell into the chamber.?
Mike took a deep breath. ?Little girl, at this range it would take only one blast of buckshot to turn that pretty face into hamburger.?
?Well, I guess we?ve determined we can gun each other into oblivion,? she said.
They stood like that for a second, sighting each other, hands sweating on grips, fingers itchy on the trigger.
?That shotgun looks heavy, old man. You can?t stand like that forever.?
She was right. The familiar ache was already creeping into his back and neck. Beads of sweat on his forehead. ?I can stand like this all night.?
They circled each other, both waiting for the other to flinch, slip up, look away. Mike wasn?t going to last much longer. His lower back was on the brink of a spasm. But he didn?t know what to do. If he pulled the trigger, she?d fire too.
Another long second ground past.
Finally, Mike said, ?How about I count to three and we both pull the trigger? Unless you got any other bright ideas.?
* * *
