A man’s footsteps scurried across the vestibule, joining the urgent rapping sound of high-heeled shoes descending stairs.
“Wait for me!” The servant quickly followed.
“Matt!” Jill shouted.
From the back of the mansion, Pittman heard other footsteps scraping on broken glass. A shadow moved. Pittman fired, his ears ringing from the.45’s fierce blast. The recoil threw him off balance. From the darkness at the back of the house, he saw what seemed to be a spark. Simultaneously he felt more than heard a bullet strike the wall next to him. For a frenzied moment, he feared that the blast from his.45 had deafened him. In a greater frenzy, he realized that he hadn’t heard the shot from the back of the house because the gunman had used a silencer. The ringing in Pittman’s ears had obscured the muffled spit. He fired again, squirming backward, flinching from the impact of four soundless bullets striking the wall where he’d been crouching.
“Matt!” Jill screamed.
We don’t have a chance, Pittman thought, scurrying faster backward. We can’t possibly kill all six of them.
“Jill, come on!”
“Where!”
“The basement!”
As Jill rushed past him, hurrying down the stairs that the others had used, Pittman fired once more toward the back of the house, spun and fired toward the front door, then charged into the stairwell and slammed the door shut.
Not that the closed door would do him any good, he suddenly realized. It did have a lock, but the knob for the bolt was on the opposite side. He couldn’t possibly keep the gunmen from coming through.
Fear made him nauseous. Lights in the stairwell revealed stone steps that led to a concrete floor. Jill had already reached the bottom. Pittman backed down, aiming toward the closed door. He saw the knob being turned and fired, his ears ringing worse as the powerful bullet splintered the door, walloping through, a man on the other side screaming.
The two men at the front door had been a diversion, Pittman thought. They had pounded on the door to drive everyone toward the back of the house, where the men who’d broken in waited with silenced pistols. The slight commotion at the front probably hadn’t attracted much attention from the street. The silenced pistols couldn’t be heard outside the mansion.
No one knows what’s happening in here! Pittman thought. The servant was supposed to have phoned the police, but Pittman hadn’t seen him do it. Had the servant been distracted by fear? Nobody realizes we need help! We’re trapped down here! The only way someone outside can know we’re in danger is…
The blast from Pittman’s.45. That could be heard outside. As he continued to stare up toward the door to the basement, he saw the knob being turned, and he fired again, his ears suffering from the pistol’s torturous blast, the confines of the basement magnifying the roar.
Someone outside is bound to hear, Pittman told himself. Although the ringing in his ears was excruciating, he prepared to fire yet again. But suddenly a warning instinct told him that he was almost out of ammunition. How many times had he fired? He strained to remember. Six. He had only one round left. If they try to rush us…
Jill, he thought. She hasn’t fired yet. Her pistol’s still fully loaded. He spun toward her, wanting to trade weapons, and froze in surprise at the sight of the car in the basement. Its length and height were totally unexpected. It was a silver Rolls-Royce, its paint and chrome gleaming from obvious daily care. Someone had backed it in. A pulley in the ceiling led to a garage door that could be raised electronically.
Pittman’s surprise was offset by dismay when he saw how panicked Mrs. Page, Denning, and the servant were. They had scurried into the car, slamming the doors, evidently locking them. Jill was straining to open the driver’s door while Mrs. Page struggled to shove a key into the car’s ignition switch.
“Mrs. Page, unlock the door! Let me in!” Jill’s shout was muffled by the ringing in Pittman’s ears.
Pittman redirected his attention toward the door at the top of the stairs. Again the knob turned. Again he fired. The ejection slide on top of his pistol stayed back, indicating that the weapon was empty.
No! He shoved the.45 into his coat pocket and ran toward Jill. “I need your gun!”
She was so preoccupied, pounding on the driver’s door, trying to get into the Rolls-Royce, that she didn’t seem to notice when Pittman took the pistol.
It held more ammunition than the.45. As a consequence, Pittman felt briefly confident. But then he realized that he was still trapped. If Mrs. Page started the car, opened the automatic garage door, and sped away, it wasn’t possible for Jill and himself to defend themselves against six gunmen.
The door at the top of the stairs opened slightly. Pittman fired, the recoil from the 9 mm less violent than that from the.45. It was obvious what the gunmen were doing-holding back, staying on either side of the door, taunting Pittman by moving it, trying to entice him into wasting all his ammunition.
Sickeningly, his heartbeat surged as he wondered why the police hadn’t arrived. Surely a neighbor must have heard the shots and phoned for help. Why were the police taking so long?
Jill kept pounding on the driver’s door. “Let me in!”
Abruptly Mrs. Page pushed a button that caused the locks to disengage, making a thunking sound. She opened the door. “I can’t get the car to start!”
“My father owns one of these! Let me try! Move over!” Jill shoved at her, squirming behind the steering wheel.
Pittman ran to the car and saw that Denning was scrunched next to Mrs. Page and Jill. He yanked opened the passenger door, dragged Denning out, and shoved him into the backseat with the servant.
As Pittman dove into the back with them, he yelled to Jill, “Let’s get the hell out of here!”
Jill slammed her door and turned the ignition key. “It doesn’t work!”
“Try again!”
“It doesn’t want to turn all the way!”
Pittman scurried from the car and aimed toward the stairs. “Hurry!”
“The key!” Jill said. “This isn’t the right key!” Hands shaking, she sorted through other keys on a ring.
Even with his protesting ears, Pittman heard sounds on the stairs. Shadows, then shoes came rapidly into view. He fired. Splinters from concrete spattered the shoes. The gunmen scrambled back out of sight.
Jill shouted, “Got it!”
The Rolls-Royce’s engine roared.
“Hurry!” Pittman fired once more at the stairs and dove back into the car. “Lock all the doors!”
Jill pressed a button that engaged the locks. She pressed another button. With a rumble, the garage door began to rise.
Pittman glanced in dismay through the car’s rear window. The gunmen were charging down the stairs.
“They’ll shoot out the windows!” Pittman yelled. “Stay down!”
“They can’t!” Mrs. Page shouted.
A bullet struck the rear window, ricocheting.
“My husband was afraid of terrorists!”
“What?”
Jill revved the Rolls-Royce, speeding forward as the garage door rose above the hood. With a crunch, the car’s roof struck the rising garage door. But the Rolls kept hurtling from the garage. It soared up an incline and jounced down onto ground level. Through the windshield, Pittman saw three of the gunmen crouched in a shadowy lane behind the house. They were waiting, aiming toward the car. He couldn’t hear the shots from their silenced weapons, but the upward jerk of the pistols showed that the gunmen were firing. Bullets struck and deflected off the hood and the windshield.
“What the-?”
“The windows are bulletproof!” Mrs. Page said. “The whole car is! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”
Jill swerved, increasing speed, veering past the gunmen, who now fired at the side of the car.
Pittman felt the vibrating impact of the eerily muffled bullets hitting the Rolls.
Jill struggled with the steering wheel. “This thing handles like it’s a tank!”