Gun in his hand. She saw the twitch of a finger, was sure he was going to shoot.
Then he sagged over the dashboard, eyes glazed, face slack, and she understood why he hadn’t tried to flee.
He’d been shot. He was dying … or already dead.
The gun dropped in her lap. A Glock. One of Cain’s.
She prayed it was loaded as she snatched it up.
Standing on the brake pedal, she spun the steering wheel. The van jackknifed, the room blurring past in a whirl of motion.
The prisoners were hidden behind the furniture. Cain alone was on his feet.
Trish leaned out the open doorway and tried to fire, but the gun wouldn’t work. Jammed or something, damn it.
Cain’s bullets strafed the van. The rear windows puckered and fell away in a rain of gummed shards.
The room’s only lamp disappeared under her tires, and the bulb winked out. Darkness now except for the swirl of her headlights and the dashboard’s glow.
On the passenger side, something white and flat expanded in the window frame-a wall-the dining area wall —
Impact.
The wall disintegrated, the van blowing through with the force of a bomb. Both headlights went dark, the dashboard gauges too, darkness everywhere, and then the world was upended, the van rolling over, a kicked can.
Trish clung to the wheel with one hand, clutching the gun with the other. The horn was blaring and someone was screaming, a high-pitched scream curiously like her own, and then the roof pancaked as the van landed upside-down, and there was silence.
She was caught in a cage of folded metal, the busted driver’s seat pinning her to the dash.
From across the room, more gunfire, punishing the van’s side panel. Cain, blasting the wreckage, trying to kill her while she was trapped inside.
Still holding the gun, she pushed free of the seat. Scrambled toward the driver’s doorway. Out.
As she threw herself to the floor, Cain targeted the front passenger window and ripped up the interior in a wild fusillade.
The van was wedged in the ruined wall just a few feet from the entrance to the side corridor. She crawled to the rear, panting, dripping sweat, her heart beating so hard she could see it, actually see it, in pulsing retinal scintillations across her field of vision.
Wetness.
A pool of spreading liquid on the floor.
Gasoline from the van’s ruptured fuel tank. Fumes rising, the smell acrid in her nostrils.
And Cain was still shooting, his bullets glancing off metal, hurling up sparks.
She flung herself into the hall of the east wing, and with a heart-stopping whoosh, the envelope of fumes flashed into white heat, engulfing the van in flame.
Backward glance. Heat scorched her eyebrows. The hallway blazed, walls and ceiling veined with fire, brushstrokes of flame painting magical frescoes on the cracked plaster. Somewhere a smoke detector shrilled.
Exposed in the hall, lit by the fireglow, she was utterly vulnerable if Cain could get past the burning wreck.
And he would. She knew he would. He wouldn’t stop until he was certain she was dead.
Her leg flared with new agony as she retreated farther down the hall, away from flame and smoke, in search of cover.
Ally’s bedroom appeared on her left, but the doorframe had collapsed, wedging the door nearly shut, and she couldn’t force it open or squeeze through the crack.
Keep going, then. Hurry.
Ahead, the master suite. Gulping breath, she stumbled across the threshold and hugged the wall.
A bar of light fanned from the bathroom directly to her right. In the dim glow, the loose handcuff swinging pendulously, she examined the Glock to see why it hadn’t fired. A spent case was caught in the ejector port, preventing the slide from cycling. She pried it loose, threw it away. Checked the magazine.
Eight rounds left.
Trembling, she peered into the hall just as a silhouetted figure materialized out of the mist.
Bellow of rage: “Robinson!”
“You want me” she whispered. “You got me.”
She whipped out from behind the doorframe, and suddenly she was a cadet in the academy again, taking target practice on the range.
Aim for the kill zone.
Now.
She pumped out a shot, just one, and the damn gun jammed again. But her aim was true, she knew it was.
And Cain didn’t go down, he didn’t go down.
He was shooting back, bullets blasting the doorframe and the thin drywall, and Trish ducked into the bathroom, stunned, unable to guess how she failed to hit him when she had him dead in her sights.
Footsteps pounded in the hall.
She looked around. No windows. No exits.
This was where she had to make a stand.
Another quick check of the gun. As before, her expended round hadn’t been ejected. Goddamned gun must be defective. She tossed the round, checked the magazine again. Seven rounds left. But .
The cartridge cases … God, the cases …
The crimped ends held no bullets, only cardboard wads.
Blanks.
That was why the slide wouldn’t cycle. A semiauto pistol wouldn’t work properly with blanks unless it was modified with a special adaptor. This gun, with no adaptor, fired only one shot at a time. Each spent round had to be ejected manually before the next shot.
Cain’s footsteps drummed closer. Nearly here.
Defenseless, she couldn’t fight him. Had to hide. Hide and hope.
The door to the linen closet hung ajar. She glanced inside, discovered a gap in the wall below the bottom shelf.
No time for questions. Go.
On hands and knees she wriggled through the hole into a larger space, dark and smelling of fabric softener and shoe polish.
Closet. Big one. The walk-in kind.
Noise in the bathroom. Cain, looking for her.
She pulled herself upright, stumbled into double doors. Locked from the outside.
From next door, a shout of triumph. “I… found … you!”
She still held tight to the gun, the useless gun, but not useless if only she could find live ammo for it, even a single round.
Crackle of wood, clatter of falling objects. A shelf in the linen closet had been torn loose.
Didn’t even need a full cartridge. A blank round had both primer and powder. All she needed …
The faint light from the bathroom was snuffed out. He’d wedged the shelf into the gap, sealing her in.
All she needed was a bullet.
The floorboards trembled. Cain was leaving the bathroom.
A bullet-nothing special, an inch of lead, a missile, a projectile—
Cain circled around to the locked doors.
Projectile.
She groped in her pants pocket.
“Figured it out yet, Robinson” His footsteps stopped outside the closet. “You’re shooting blanks!”
