She shouted, “Stay where you are!”
Matthew was already up, halfway to the door, but he sensed the urgency in his mother’s voice enough to turn and head back to the living room.
The doorbell had quieted, and now there came a banging at the door—bang bang bang bang bang—and her first thought was that it was somebody crazy outside, some whacko who might go away if ignored long enough, but then just as quickly she worried that if nobody answered, the person might never go away.
She peered through the window in the side. A man stood on the doorstep, a tall black man in his mid-twenties, wearing khakis and a black T-shirt, a man Tina had never seen before. He pounded his fist against the door as he kept looking back over his shoulder.
Tina shouted, “We’re not interested!”
The man paused, checked the street once more, then stepped back to address her.
“Please open the door. Your sister Holly sent me.”
Her dread instantly snapped into panic. She knew she should ask this man more questions—how did he know Holly? where was she?—but before she knew it she unlocked the door and pulled it open, and that was when she saw the gun in the man’s right hand, and her first thought was her sons, how all they wanted to do was see The Rock’s new movie, and now this man was going to kill them.
But the man didn’t raise the gun, didn’t point it at her, and instead spoke in a calm, measured voice.
“You and your boys need to come with me right now.”
She thought, How does he know about the boys?
But before she could voice the question, she heard the car coming their way, coming fast, coming too fast.
The man heard it, too. He turned his head to the street and the car coming their way. Not just down the street, but swerving toward the house.
The man lunged forward, pushing her back into the foyer, right as the car jumped the curb and tore over the lawn and crashed through the front door.
Forty-One
“Mom? Mom!”
Matthew’s voice, mixed somewhere in the crush of noise—pieces of the house falling around her, the car’s engine ticking, blood thrumming in her ears—and the man was on top of her, shielding her with his body, and his voice was hot on her ear as he shouted.
“Get out of here!”
The next thing she knew the man rolled away, brought up his gun, and started shooting at the car. The driver attempted to open his door, but the car had smashed into the house too close to the wall, which meant the door wouldn’t open far enough.
Tina didn’t see what happened next because she scrambled to her feet and swung her focus toward Matthew standing in the living room entryway, frozen, his eyes wide, tablet held at his side, and she screamed at him—“Run!”—and at first it didn’t look like he was going to move, stuck there as if hypnotized, but one of the bullets ricocheted into the wall only a few feet away from him, and like that he blinked and looked at her as Tina ran toward him, grabbed his hand, and yanked him deeper into the house.
A volley of gunfire erupted behind them, the man who pushed her inside shooting at the driver and the driver shooting back, and now Matthew was racing beside her, running awkwardly because she wouldn’t let go of his hand, but that was okay, that was fine, she wouldn’t let him go, would never let him go, and she saw the back door ahead of them, the morning light shining through it, and the backyard was there, the swing set and sandbox the boys never used anymore, but more importantly, there was escape, and she was so intent on getting the two of them out of there when she suddenly remembered Max.
She pivoted at the stairs, yanking Matthew with her, all at once regretting the decision—she should have let him go, pushed him forward toward the backyard, toward safety—but he was with her now, racing up the stairs too, and she could hear the shower still going in the bathroom, but she also heard Max’s voice, calling out to her, shouting mommy mommy mommy!
“Where are you going?”
She thought it was Matthew’s voice at first, though it was deeper than she remembered, much lower bass, and in her delirium she glanced down at him and saw he was looking back over his shoulder, and that was when she shifted her focus and saw the man on the first step, the gun at his side, his face awash in confusion.
Before she could respond, bits of plaster exploded around the man, and an instant later she heard more gunshots and kept running, pulling Matthew along, faintly aware that the man was firing back at the driver while he hurried up the stairs after them.
Max met them at the top of the steps, and he was soaked and naked, having jumped straight out of the shower when he heard all the noise, and she let go of Matthew so she could pick Max up with both hands, just scooped him up like he was a toddler again, and his weight slowed her down but she didn’t care and just kept running, straight for the master bedroom.
The man followed, walking backward up the steps, firing intermittently at the driver.
The bedroom overlooked the backyard, and one of the windows was right above the patio, and though the overhang was slanted she knew it would be possible for the boys to squeeze through the window, and yes, she knew they might get hurt in their fall to the grass below, but it wouldn’t hurt like a bullet in the head would, and her thoughts were so jumbled she suddenly wondered what The Rock would do in a situation like this, how he would
