“Sure.”
Dave Bradley appeared in the kitchen, grinning broadly. “Nothing beats a good old singsong around the…” He let his words trail off as he sensed the strained atmosphere. “What?”
Carrie dragged him into the hall to explain and to go upstairs for the recon.
Casually Jim rattled the key in the lock and called out loudly, “Sly, the lock is stuck. Can you hang on a short while or come around to the front of the house?”
Jim knew that there was a powerful, battery-operated security light at the front of the house.
Sly didn’t answer. Jim pressed his ear to the door but couldn’t hear a sound.
“Sly!”
“No, don’t hurt me…” The thin little voice trembled with terror.
That was all it took.
Jim drew the Ruger, killed the light behind him and threw open the door.
The drifting moonlight revealed a frozen tableau in the muddied yard of the farmhouse.
Sly Romero, less than six feet away from the door, half-turned away, hands clasped in front of him. His mouth was half-open, and there were tears on his cheeks. Even in that flashing moment, Jim had time to notice the dark bruise and streak of black blood at the corner of the teenager’s mouth.
Circling around him, paralyzed by the sudden opening of the door and the appearance of the big man with the gun in his hand, were five strangers.
A faded blonde held a small automatic. It brought Carrie’s warning about the purse gun to a sudden, hideous reality for Jim Hilton.
He recognized her immediately, but the four men were strangers. All were in dark-colored shell suits, with woolen caps and ankle-high hiking boots. All of them were hefting hunting rifles, all pointed toward Jim.
“Hi, Alison,” he said in a friendly, conversational tone of voice, throwing her off-balance and buying himself the fraction of an edge that he needed.
“Jim….” she began, the old cocktail waitress’s false, official smile beginning to slide into place.
There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation.
He brought up the six-inch barrel of the big .44, the checkered hammer already thumbed back, his index finger on the wide trigger.
Sighed and squeezed.
The full-metal-jacket round only had to travel a dozen yards. It hit Alison Romero just below and between her full, sagging breasts. It angled slightly to the left, then struck the center of her spine, distorting and flattening. Driving to the right and upward, it blew a hole the size of a coffeepot beneath the woman’s left shoulder blade.
Her mouth opened, and she staggered back six or seven paces, the automatic dropping from her fingers. A huge spray of blood and splinters of shattered bone burst out behind her, splattering in the mud.
The jolt of the Ruger Blackhawk Hunter ran through Jim Hilton’s wrist, clean up to the shoulder, while the dull boom began to echo out toward the surrounding hills.
Before Alison’s knees crumpled and sent her sprawling and dying onto the ground, Jim had fired two more times at the group of men with her.
Sly had yelped once at the sound of the first shot, hands going over his ears while he dropped to elbows and knees, keeping well out of Jim’s line of sight.
The tallest of the attackers, who’d been close to the woman on her left, took the .44 slug through the middle of the chest, a few inches above the belt buckle. It doubled him over and sent him down to his knees, a thin cry of shock and agony leaking from his open mouth.
By now, though only a second and a quarter had passed since Jim lifted the revolver, the gang was on the move. The third bullet hit the outside man below the ribs, going straight in and through and out, carrying on to hit the wall of the barn with a dry, splintering crack. He tottered a few unsteady paces to his left, but remained upright.
The Ruger held six rounds.
One of the men was diving forward, opening fire as he went down. A window shattered behind Jim, yards along to his right. In return he put his fourth bullet into the gunman’s right cheek, a finger’s width from his nose. Since he was lying in the dirt, the .44 round drove through the top of the man’s mouth, ripping away five upper teeth and penetrating into the center of the skull, where it ricocheted off the thick bone and bounced around and around, puddling the brain into bloody gravy.