She didn’t hesitate, didn’t waste a heartbeat, and was scrambling from the debris-strewn floor when the tall man who had been talking on the phone started shooting. Except it wasn’t at her. The mystery of why lasted for a second, when she glimpsed the flash of white fur (Apollo!) racing around the living room, drawing the man’s attention — and bullets — to him.
Woman’s best friend, she thought, unable to stop the stupid grin spreading across her face even as she pushed up to her knees just in time to see Apollo disappear into the kitchen. The island granite counter — or what little was left of it — blew apart as the tall man fired after the dog.
Run, boy, run!
A blur of motion drew her eyes back to the immediate danger as the man with the Uzi reappeared in the opening in front of her, blocking her path to the chaos in the kitchen.
She snapped off a shot — too fast — and chipped the corner where the back hallway met the living room, and the man pulled his head back before he could unload on her a second time. But he didn’t stay hidden for long. He stuck his right hand — and the Uzi — into the opening and pulled the trigger.
She launched herself to her feet and lunged to the right, smashing into an obliterated section of the wall and hugging it as the floor and far wall came undone against the onslaught of full-auto fire. The man obviously couldn’t see what he was shooting at and was pointing his weapon in the general vicinity of where he had last seen her.
Allie didn’t think there was anything left in the back hallway to be destroyed, but she was very wrong as more Sheetrock exploded almost in tune to the cyclic whirring of the submachine gun in front of her. The man didn’t stop shooting until he had run out of bullets, and he finally jerked the Uzi back behind the wall. She heard the click of his magazine ejecting and the man scrambling to reload.
“Don’t open the fucking door!” someone screamed. It sounded like the tall man, but he, along with Apollo, had vanished out of her view somewhere to the left of the kitchen.
Then Apollo was barking again, except this time it sounded slightly muffled, almost as if he was…
Outside the house!
How had Apollo gotten outside?
Shut up and run! a voice boomed inside her head.
And she did. Allie pushed off the wall, spun around, and ran toward the back of the hallway, the basement door so tantalizingly close and yet so far. Thank God it was still ajar and she only had to grab the doorknob and throw the door open, then let the darkness inside swallow her up as she felt the top landing under her soles. She didn’t stop running until she had reached the middle of the concrete steps, and only then did she slow down until she had stopped completely, twisting around and dropping into a crouch—
The door was swinging open and a figure was moving in the doorframe by the time she had turned completely around. She fired.
The man’s head snapped back and he dropped, followed by the clatter of a weapon falling. The man had collapsed partially in the doorframe, and one of his legs was keeping the door from closing, giving her a decent view of the destroyed hallway beyond.
“Shit!” someone hissed from the other side of the door.
She didn’t dare move, or lower her gun, and waited for a target to appear, but none did. Instead, the body she’d shot began sliding backward — someone was pulling it — until the man finally cleared the doorframe, allowing the door to close back up. She thought she heard voices again, but with the door closed it was difficult to be sure.
The gun in her hand was feeling light, but Allie remained frozen, the gun unmoving, while her heart hammered against her chest.
Reload, a voice inside her head commanded. Reload the gun now!
But she didn’t move. Even if she wasn’t rusty, it would have taken too long to swap magazines. Three seconds at least. Not long by any stretch, but that was three seconds too long to be without a loaded gun—
The doorknob moved slightly, and she put a round through the wooden frame, at dead center. Heavy footsteps echoed as whoever was on the other side took a couple of quick steps back. The doorknob didn’t move again.
Silence.
She finally forced her legs to move and took one step backward, then two. She repeated the process until she was standing at the bottom of the steps. She kept her eyes and the gun focused on the door while devoting a part of her attention to slowing down her heartbeat. All the days and weeks and months of practice at the range came flooding back, and she found that she wasn’t anxious at all.
She was just…calm.
She hadn’t heard anything fall after her last shot, so she had probably missed. Not that it changed anything; the goal of the shot was to let them know she was still dangerous and to discourage them from trying to come at her head-on. The prospect of having to face off against another Uzi made her shiver involuntarily.
Maybe her warning shot worked, and maybe it didn’t, but no one came through the door.
Allie took two more quick steps away from the stairs before shooting a glance over at the basement window behind and to her right. A figure moved on the other side of the rectangular opening, and she swiveled around, the gun raised to fire—
Big brown eyes were watching her curiously.
Allie couldn’t help herself and smiled.
A dog versus an Uzi. She’d take the dog every time.
It was harder to climb out of the basement than it had been to climb in, but if some squatters had already done it multiple times, she told herself, there was no reason she couldn’t, too. Of course, those squatters didn’t have to keep looking over their shoulder to make sure armed gunmen didn’t storm inside and murder them.
She used the sofa as a stepping stone and stretched up enough to grab the sides of the window and pull herself up. She deposited herself back on slightly damp earth at the same time Apollo was pushing his way back through the two bushes that had hidden the window. The dog sat down on his haunches in front of her.
“Anything?” she whispered to him.
In lieu of a response, Apollo turned around and continued to stand at attention.
She pulled the gun out from behind her back and glanced into the basement to make sure it was still empty, that no one had rushed inside while she wasn’t looking. It bothered her there was no one outside the window waiting for her. She’d expected to be shot regardless of which direction she went — back into the house or out the window. Except there was nothing waiting for her besides Apollo.
This can’t be right.
It didn’t take a genius to figure out how she had gotten into the basement. She should have had to shoot her way out, but as she looked around at the darkened back of the house, there were no signs of men in suits, not even the one she’d seen at the front of the house.
Maybe they’re out of fresh bodies. Or maybe I just don’t rate as important to them.
That thought led her to the obvious:
Walter. They’re here for Walter. Why waste more men chasing a woman with a gun outside the house when their prize is inside?
Dammit, Walter, what does everyone want with you?
Apollo’s head snapped left at the same time she heard voices coming from the back patio. The speaker was too far in the house for her to make out words, but there was, like last time, just one person talking.
The tall guy. Maybe he was even on the phone again.
“What’s he saying, boy?” she whispered.