"I said shut up!"
I clamped my lips shut and reached behind me. The Parkers kept a letter opener in the small drawer of the side table. If I could only reach it, maybe – shit, I didn't know. But I'd feel a lot better if I had something, anything, in my hands.
Slowly, the man moved closer. His shoes made a faint, padded sound against the hardwood floors.
My heart racing, I tried to make out his features. I looked wildly to the left and then to the right. I wanted to run, but I didn't know where.
He had a gun. I had nothing.
Maybe I could dive across the floor, and take cover under the coffee table. Yeah, right. Like the coffee table was bulletproof. Suddenly, my breath hitched, and my eyes felt too big for my face. Behind the stranger, something was moving – a shadow shaped like a person.
Oh my God. I knew that shadow, because no one other than Lawton moved like that. As I watched, it crept silently toward the stranger with deadly purpose.
If the stranger saw him, we were both in deep trouble. A flash of consequences went through my brain, ending with Lawton dead on the floor. I couldn't let that happen.
I made my voice sound small and weak, not hard to do, given the circumstances. "Please," I said. "Don't hurt me."
His laugh, low and deep, turned my insides to mud, but I forced myself to speak again. "I'll do anything you want. And I mean–" I swallowed. "Anything."
"Oh yeah?" Slowly, his right arm lowered. "You bet your ass you will."
Suddenly, the shadow behind him moved, barreling into the stranger at lightning speed. The man flew forward, and I jumped out of the way. The darkened forms slammed, hard, into the end table.
The table tipped, sending the lamp crashing to the floor, and the stranger with it. I saw the shadows of fists, and the sound of their impact, along with grunts and curses.
Desperately, I looked around for the gun. It had gone flying, right? But I didn't see it. I rushed toward stairway and dove for the light switch. I flicked it on.
The shadows became people, and the destruction became obvious. Near the front window, the man on the floor was still, his face a bloody mess and his arms limp at his sides. The fingers on one of his hands looked twisty and mangled, like they'd been stepped on hard, or beaten with a sledgehammer.
At last, I spotted the gun, a dull black thing with a short barrel, lying where the stranger had last been standing. I stepped toward it.
"Wait," Lawton said in a low, urgent voice. "Don't touch it."
I stopped and looked over at him. He got to his feet and gave the guy a final vicious kick. The guy didn't budge.
He rushed toward me, and I fell into his arms, feeling his strong chest at my cheek and his hands clutch me close.
"There's someone else here," I told him in a low whisper. "Toward the kitchen."
When I tried to pull back, he gripped me tighter. "There was," he said, "but not anymore." He glanced toward the back of the house. "Now c'mon, we're leaving."
On the way toward the door, he pulled the sleeve of his hoodie over his right hand and stooped down to pick up the gun. He thrust it into the hoodie's front pocket and reached for my hand.
"Wait," I said. "My purse."
"Screw the purse," he said, hustling me out the back door and into the Parker's back yard. Silently, we made our way through the back yard until we reached the tall iron fence that marked the beginning of Lawton's estate.
He made a foothold with his hands. "Over the fence," he said. "And don't stop 'til you're inside the house."
I looked down at his hands. "But how will you get over?"
"I'll jump it," he said. "But not right now."
"Why not?" I said.
"Because I've got to take care of something."
"What?"
