it in an
He stopped, but maybe he couldn't see the revolver in the dark. His
body language said he was still contemplating making a break for it.
'So help me God,' she said, still at a conversational level, 'I'll blow
your brains out.' She was surprised by the cold hatred in her voice.
She wouldn't really have shot him. She was sure of that. Yet the
sound of her own voice frightened her . . . and made her wonder.
His shoulders sagged. His entire posture changed. He believed her
threat.
A dark exhilaration filled her. Nearly three months of intense taste
kwon do and women's defense classes, provided free to members of police
families three times a week at the division gym, had paid off. Her
right foot hurt like blazes, probably almost as badly as the second
boy's crotch hurt him. She might have broken a bone in it, would
certainly be hobbling around for a week even if there wasn't a
fracture, but she felt so good about nailing the three vandals that she
was happy to suffer for her triumph.
'Come here,' she said. 'Now, come on, come on.'
The third kid raised his hands over his head. He was holding a spray
can in each of them.
'Get down on the ground with your buddies,' she demanded, and he did as
he was told.
The moon sailed out from behind the clouds, which was like slowly
bringing up the stage lights to quarter power on a darkened set. She
could see well enough to be sure that they were all older teenagers,
sixteen to eighteen.
She could also see that they didn't fit any popular stereotypes of
taggers. They weren't black or Hispanic. They were white boys.
And they didn't look poor, either. One of them wore a well-cut leather
jacket, and another wore a cable-knit cotton sweater with what appeared
to be a complicated and beautifully knitted pattern.
The night quiet was broken only by the miserable gagging and groaning
of the two she'd disabled. The confrontation had unfolded so swiftly
in the eight-foot-wide space between the house and the property wall,
and in such relative silence, that they hadn't even awakened any
neighbors.
Keeping the gun on them, Heather said, 'You been here before?'
Two of them couldn't yet have answered her if they'd wanted to, but the
third was also unresponsive.
'I asked if you'd been here before,' she said sharply, 'done this kind
of crap here before.'
'Bitch,' the third kid said.
She realized it was possible to lose control of the situation even when
she was the only one with a gun, especially if the crotch-bashed pair
recovered more easily than she expected. She resorted to a lie that
might convince them she was more than just a cop's wife with a few
smart moves: 'Listen, you little snots--I can kill all of you, go in
the house and get a couple of knives, plant them in your hands before
the first black-and-white gets here.
Maybe they'll drag me into court and maybe they won't. But what jury's
