The woman standing near the fireplace in the living room didn’t look stupid, and she was holding a blue-steel automatic as if she knew the safety was off.
Kyle figured that this must be Alison, Steve Romero’s wife.
There was a huge man, with a crew cut so severe that his skull burst out through it. He was wearing stained blue chinos and a faded sweatshirt that gaped over his belly.
That had to be Randy.
Steve Romero was backed against the wall, holding the smoking sawed-down 12 gauge. A pitted hole on the far wall, close by the window, showed where his shot had gone wide. Kyle noticed that his friend had a darkening bruise on his cheekbone and a thread of blood creeping down his chin from the corner of his mouth.
A lamp had been knocked over, spilling pungent oil across the wooden floor. Another stood near the door, its golden glow leaving the room in pools of light and shadow.
Kyle noticed a fourth person standing behind the woman, but he was mainly in darkness. He figured that this must be Sly, Steve’s eighteen-year-old son. The boy completely motionless, hands clenched at his sides.
“This the nigger cavalry?” said Randy slowly, grinning at Kyle.
“Who you going to shoot with that deer rifle, boy?” sneered the woman. “Bolt action like that, you’ll only get off one shot. Then either I shoot you in the guts or Randy rips off your balls and stuffs them down you throat.”
“I’ll wipe you away, bitch,” growled Steve, gesturing with the shotgun.
“Not unless you put another shell into that little shotgun,” said Randy.
Kyle found that his brain had turned to frozen Jell-O, There were so many permutations that he couldn’t make any sort of decision. It seemed that he had to try to shoot someone, but the woman was the most likely target. It didn’t seem easy to pull the trigger.
The barrel of the Mannlicher wavered indecisively between Alison and the hulking Randy.
“You boys just walk outside and keep walking and never come back,” suggested the woman. She had the faded prettiness of a once-good-looking woman who now enjoyed her liquor.
“Yeah. Get the fuck out,” echoed Randy.
“I’ve come for Sly. Come for my son. I want to take him with me to somewhere better than this.” Steve’s voice was surprisingly steady.
“No fucking way. Sly’s real useful here.”
“Sure. Useful. But you don’t love him. You never have.”
Alison laughed, a hard sound like brittle steel. “Course. I don’t think anyone could love that.” she said, gesturing behind her with the small pistol.
“I love him and I want him. Won’t leave without him.”
“Then there’ll be blood on the floor. The nigger with the rifle first, and then you.”
“Shoot her, Kyle,” said Steve. “Come on, man, just do it.”
“I’m going to… going…” But his heart told him he wasn’t.
It was the large figure of the boy in the shadows that broke the moment of paralysis.
He loomed up behind his mother and clubbed her clumsily across the back of the head with the flat of his hand.
“You won’t hurt Dad,” he shouted.
Alison went down like a heifer under the poleax, the gun dropping to the parquet.
Randy was quick off the mark for a big man, but he wasn’t quick enough to beat the .357 Magnum round from the rifle.
It hit him in the chest, just to the right of the sternum, spinning him around and dumping him in a yelping tangle of arms and legs by the fire.
Kyle brought the Mannlicher to his shoulder, all the hesitation and fear gone. Ignoring the scope sight, he centered the barrel on Randy as he struggled to his feet, blood already staining his shirt.
The second bullet smashed through the open mouth, taking out several teeth, most of the tongue, the soft palate and a fair part of the lower brain before it exited, distorted and mangled, into the blazing logs in the hearth.
“You bastard,” breathed Kyle quietly.
They dragged the heavy body outside into the blizzard and left it beyond the shelter of the rear porch.
Steve had tied up his hysterical ex-wife, bound her wrists behind her with another strong cord around her neck, knotted to the frame of the double bed in the end room.