Keith didn't know who was going to make the first move, but he was fairly certain that there weren't many moves left on the board now.
Images of Billy Marlon flashed in front of him — Billy at the bar in John's Place, Billy asking Keith if he could come along, Billy in the pickup truck on the way up here, Billy sitting with Keith in the dark woods... Billy writhing in agony in that hole. Billy dead.
Keith thought, too, of Annie. He knew she was here, not far away, and she knew he was here in this room.
Keith decided to make the first move, not based on rage or ego, but on the assumption that Baxter knew someone was in the room and that Baxter also knew approximately where that person was, while Keith didn't have a clue as to where Baxter was.
Keith began to rise to one knee, then heard a woman's voice from the direction of the fireplace say, "He's in the far right corner, crouched with a pistol."
Before she even finished, Keith sprang up on one knee, aimed over the back of the sofa, and fired two rounds at Baxter, who had taken cover behind a wooden chest in the corner. Keith fell back behind the sofa and rolled to the right, toward the wall, as two answering rounds ripped through the sofa.
Keith lay still behind an upholstered chair.
In the two seconds it had taken him to fire, he'd caught a glimpse of Annie to his left, kneeling on the floor near the fireplace, naked. He was sure she'd seen him.
Keith was certain that at least one of his rounds had hit Baxter, but again the body armor had saved him. Keith wasn't too happy with the six-shot Smith & Wesson Police Model 10 that Baxter's men used, especially not in this situation where, with one bullet left, he couldn't take a chance and open the cylinder, extract the used casings, and reload chamber by chamber.
He wondered if Baxter was using the Glock, which had a seventeen-round, quick reload magazine. It didn't matter anyway, because, as Keith suspected, now that Baxter knew for sure it was Landry, the round-counting game was about to be cut short.
As if Baxter had read Keith's mind, Baxter called out, "Don't shoot, Landry. I'm standing right behind her. I got a gun to her head. So you just stand up where I can see you, hands high."
Keith figured that was coming, because he knew Baxter. He noticed that Baxter's voice was steady, but not altogether calm, even though he had everything going for him.
"I want to see empty hands first."
Keith had only one option left, and Baxter had given it to him by firing. Keith played dead.
A few seconds went by, and Baxter called out, "Hey, asshole. You want her to die? Stand up like a man, or I blow her fucking head off. I kid you not."
Keith heard Annie's voice say, "Don't do it, Keith..." followed by a loud slap and a cry of pain.
Baxter yelled out again, "Hey, hero, you got five seconds, then she's dead. One!"
Keith didn't think Baxter was going to kill her, and there were a lot of reasons for that, not the least of which was that Baxter didn't want to lose his human shield.
"Two!"
Keith knew if he stood, he couldn't expect a quick death. He held the revolver close to his body to muffle the sound, opened the cylinder, and extracted the five spent casings.
"Three!"
Keith began quietly slipping rounds into the empty chambers.
"Four! I swear to God, Landry, you stand up, or she's dead."
Annie called out, "No! Don't..."
Another slap and another cry of pain, during which Keith snapped the cylinder quickly back into the frame.
"Five! Okay, she gets it."
Keith held his breath and steadied himself. He wanted to stand, to shout, to shoot, to let Baxter take him, to do anything in that split second except what he knew he had to do, which was nothing.
There was a long silence in the room, then Baxter said, "Hey! You dead, or playin' dead?"
Keith exhaled and smiled. Come here and find out.
"I can wait all fucking night, Landry."
Me, too. Keith waited. One thing he thought he could count on was Annie telling him if Baxter moved toward him. Baxter's hostage, his shield, was also Baxter's problem. But apparently Baxter had also figured that out, because the light suddenly went off, and the room was black.
It was so still in the big room that Keith could hear the mantel clock ticking from thirty feet away. Then he heard Baxter say to him, "One of us got an infrared scope, and one of us don't. Guess who can see in the dark."
He heard the floor squeak across the room, then heard it again, this time closer, then the squeaking stopped.
He pictured Baxter standing in about the middle of the room now, scanning along the floor, the walls, around the furniture with his night scope mounted on his rifle. The game was almost done, and Keith had only two moves left — stand and shoot into the dark, or play very dead.
He moved his right hand with the revolver under his buttocks as though he'd fallen dead on his forearm. With his left hand, he took his knife and sliced into his hairline, then smeared the blood over his face and left eye. He slid the knife into his pocket and kept both eyes open, staring dead at the unseen ceiling above him.
He heard Baxter move again, very close now, on the other side of the long sofa. Baxter said, "Well... so you ain't playin'."
Keith couldn't actually see him, but he felt his presence looming over him, and, by his voice, he knew that Baxter was about ten feet away and that, at this close distance, the infrared image would be too blurry to detect a sign of life. Nevertheless, Keith didn't draw a breath and kept his eyelids frozen and his eyeballs dead in their sockets. But he couldn't keep the sweat beads from forming on his upper lip. He had a sense, a feeling, of the infrared scope boring into his face, the muzzle of the rifle pointed at about his throat. Somewhere across the room, he heard Annie sobbing.
Baxter said, "Hey, Landry. You playin' possum on me?"
Keith knew he needed a head shot, but that wasn't possible in the dark. A hit in the body armor was the best he could hope for, and that would knock Baxter off his feet, then he'd use the knife.
"I hope to God you ain't dead, shithead. I want you to feel this."
Keith understood that the next thing to happen would be Baxter firing into his leg or his groin, and he knew he had to go for it now. He yanked his gun hand free and fired three times, up and to his right where he'd heard Baxter's voice, then rolled, fired three times again, then came to a stop tight against the wall near the shattered glass door. He stared into the dark and waited.
He never heard Baxter yell out in pain, never heard the rounds slap against the body armor, and never heard the sound of a man falling. He realized that Baxter must have moved or crouched low after he'd spoken and before Keith fired. Baxter had made a smart move. Keith had made a fatal move. He heard Baxter's voice, coming from a different place, saying, "So long, sucker..."
Instead of the explosion of Baxter's rifle firing into him, he heard a dull thud. He had no idea of what that was, but it meant he wasn't dead, and he jumped to his feet, lunging toward the sofa with his knife in his hand. He collided with the sofa and slashed out with his knife, then something hit his legs and fell to the floor, making another, softer thud.
There were no more sounds in the dark room, then he heard a groan, then a floor lamp came on beside the sofa.
It took him a second for his eyes to adjust to the light, and even then he wasn't completely processing what he saw.
Baxter was kneeling on the sofa in front of him, slumped over the back, his head and bare arms dangling toward Keith. Baxter was wearing a thick gray nylon vest, and Keith saw blood running from his left arm where Keith guessed one of his bullets had grazed him. Keith looked into Baxter's eyes, which were open and were focused on him.