Smoke

glass as if it were made out of cellophane, reached in and unlocked the dead bolt and turned the simple lock on the knob itself. Then, as if thinking now he should be quiet, he opened the door slowly and stepped inside. He had to bend his head to avoid hitting it on the frame.

From her place behind the couch, she had a good look at him as he entered the foyer. Giant, with a buzz cut so close to the scalp that his hair looked like a five o’clock shadow. His face was grim and blank of expression, deep lines carved between protruding bones, a long hook of a nose. She checked his body for the bulge of a gun and saw something inside his jacket that could very well have been a big revolver or a semiautomatic. He stood and lifted his nose to the air for a second and turned his head toward the living room, moved toward her slowly. She felt the reverberations of his footfalls in the floor beneath her own feet. She crouched lower. She’d need the element of surprise to have the advantage over his size. She’d need him to come very close to her before she revealed herself. The blood was rushing in her ears as he approached the couch. When he was not a foot away from her, she moved from her spot and held the gun in front of her, aimed directly at his center mass.

“Freeze,” she yelled, deepening her voice. “Get on the ground and put your hands behind your head.”

She hated the way her heart was pounding, the way her chest was heaving with her fearful breathing. He smiled at her like she was a pretty child putting on a show and that made her angry as well as afraid. He put his hands up and mock shivered, started backing away from her.

“Oooh,” he said.

“Get on the ground,” she yelled, making her voice as loud and deep as possible. She didn’t want to kill this guy; he might know something that could help Mount. But she would kill him if it came to that. He moved backward and she followed, her finger on the trigger of her gun. She could already hear the deafening boom it would release when she fired. He had his back against the wall now, knocking down a portrait of the Stenopolis family. She jumped when it crashed to the ground and shattered. In that instant she saw him glance down at the bulge in his jacket, saw his right hand twitch.

“Don’t even think about it,” she said, reaching behind for her cuffs. “How many times do I have to tell you? Get down on the fucking ground. Right. Now.”

He started to bend toward the ground, but telegraphed the lunge that followed by bringing his right knee up quickly. All her fear subsided now that the fight had begun. All her training from the academy and from the kung fu temple kicked in. She was pure action, no thought at all.

She sidestepped him easily and he crashed into the low coffee table, headfirst. She let a round go and felt the concussion in her chest, was temporarily deafened by the roar of the Glock, felt the sting of powder in her nose. She’d missed him, the bullet creating a valley in the end table and exploding the lamp on top of it. A piece of glass or something ricocheted and hit Jesamyn below her left eye. But she barely felt it, seeing that the giant had managed to draw his weapon, a huge revolver that looked like a Ruger with a big long barrel.

She dropped as he got to his feet, put her hands on the ground with the gun still in her grip and swept him hard, using her foot as a hook. Her ankle connected hard with his thick leather boots and it hurt like hell, but he fell right on his back, feet flipping up from beneath him like he was wearing roller skates. She heard his head connect with the floor and it sounded like a bowling ball dropping on a lane. The Ruger came loose from his hand and landed harmlessly on the velour couch. She was on him then, her knee in his solar plexus as the porch outside exploded with light and sound. He reached to pull her off him and she used her elbow to strike him hard on the side of his face. Once, he was still smiling. Twice, the smile faded and he started to get a dazy look in his eyes.

The front door slammed open and the room was full of voices and heavy footfalls. She knew the sound of her colleagues: radio static, booming voices, holsters unsnapping. She felt hands on her then and she got to her feet, still pointing her gun at the man dressed in leather. He looked stunned; two blows to the head and a knee to the solar plexus could do that to a guy, no matter how big he was. Still, it took two guys to flip him and two sets of cuffs linked together to bind his hands.

“We had to link the cuffs together for your partner like that,” said Bloom, coming up behind her.

She turned to look at him. The adrenaline was draining, leaving her shaking in its wake, the wound on her face starting to throb. “You followed me?”

She wouldn’t admit to it, but under the circumstances she was grateful. She’d been able to bring the guy down but she wasn’t sure she would have been able to cuff him. She might have wound up cuffing one wrist to the couch leg and calling for backup.

He nodded, watching as two uniformed officers pulled the intruder to his feet. He was a little unsteady, dazed, and he hadn’t said a word. One of the uniformed officers starting reading him his rights.

“I figured you’d lead us straight to Stenopolis.”

“But instead I led you to this guy. He matches Mount’s description. Don’t you think?” she said, nodding toward the leather-clad freak.

“We’ll see,” he said, noncommittal. “Anyway, I’d go so far as to say things are looking a little better for Stenopolis, except that he’s a fugitive on the run considered armed and dangerous.” He sighed. “It’s always a bad idea to run.”

She shook her head at him. He’d made all his assumptions already; he’d have to wrestle his ego a little before he came to terms with the fact that she’d been right all along. But she could tell he was the kind of man who’d put the truth first and she respected him for it.

Dylan came through the door then, looking afraid and a little angry. He walked over to her, eyes scanning the room, then resting on the big man in cuffs. She’d split off from Dylan after he brought her back to the precinct to get her car, saying she wanted to get home and rest. Really, she hadn’t wanted to drag Dylan into the gray area of entering Matt’s house and looking for clues as to where he might have gone. It could be bad for his career, considering he was already on temporary suspension. And, maybe most of all, she’d just wanted some distance from him.

“I thought you were going home,” he said to her.

“I thought you were going home,” she said, looking at him. She fought the urge to wrap her arms around him until she could stop shaking.

“I was. I heard the call on my scanner and turned around.”

He put a hand to her face and she winced at the pain. “You’re gonna need stitches on that,” he said as the two uniforms moved past them with the prisoner.

“Not before I talk to that guy.”

“I’ll be talking to him, Detective,” said Bloom. “I don’t need to remind you that this is not your case.”

“The hell it isn’t,” she said, pushing past Bloom. “I would have been the one to put the cuffs on him if your boys hadn’t come in. I would have had him for breaking and entering, assaulting an officer.” He put a gentle but firm hand on her arm.

“I don’t want to have to arrest you for obstructing an investigation,” he said quietly. “Which I could do, considering we both know why you came here.”

She looked him up and down. He was half the size of her most recent assailant, but there was something tougher about him.

“If you’d listened to me in the first place, we wouldn’t even be here. It never would have gone this far,” she said, looking down at his arm and then turning her eyes on him.

He gave her a black look and she let out a sigh, looked at the ground.

“Let me come with you, at least,” she said when he didn’t answer her.

He nodded grudgingly and released her arm. “Paramedics are outside. Let them patch you up first. Meet me at HQ.”

What is happening?” yelled Lydia.

“They moved in. They’re taking the compound.”

Dax’s sentence was punctuated by the sharp report of semiautomatic gunfire. In the distance she heard voices but they sounded faint and far away, yelling, as they stepped from the building they’d been in into the humid night. There was another sound, too, also faint and far away to Lydia’s damaged ears: the crackle of flames. The thick, hazy air seemed to hold an orange glow and smelled strongly of burning wood. She felt like she was breathing in the color gray. She held a hand over her mouth.

“Who’s moving in? The Feds? I thought they couldn’t come in here,” she said as they followed Dax at a run into the cover of a glade of trees.