From the back, now: 'I was really disappointed,' he said. 'And then at that golf place? When I'd set everything up, just you and me? And you did it again, you humiliated meyou humiliated me. What made you think you could get away with that? And now you're going to pay, Anna. Just like that Pig.'
Anna whispered harshly, 'Jake, you gotta help me. Jake, I lost my glasses. Jake, I can't see. where's the gun? Jake?'
She heard him coming. She took her glasses off and put them in her pocket, and the world around her went soft. She pulled her knees up tight to her face, hunched her shoulders, pulled herself further back into the darkest corner of the room.
Heard his footfalls.
'Go away,' she cried. 'Just go away. haven't you done enough?'
'No.'
Now he was inside. Close. But she still couldn't see him. She tried to pull back even further, pull her knees higher. 'Go away,' she moaned, 'Please, just let me alone.'
'Look at me, Anna. I've got a gun.'
'I can't see,' she cried, 'I can't see anything, my glasses.'
A brilliant light cut across her face, just for an instant, and was gone.
'Aw. Little girl can't see?'
'Go away.'
He was coming in now, like a rat to a cheese. She was holding her breath, waiting for a blow, the wait unbearable.
'Here I am, Anna.' He was right there, on his hands and knees, only six feet away. She could see his face in a fuzzy way, the blond hair, the square chin, the eyes a little too close together.
He had the pistol in one hand, the muzzle pointing roughly toward her face. The butt of the rifle was on the floor, and he was leaning on it. 'We're gonna have some fun. We could have had some fun for a long time, if you'd come away from your bodyguard in that parking lot, but you had to do this.'
The tip of the barrel touched one cheek, which seemed to be turning black.
'Do what?' she whimpered.
'Fuckin' bite me,' he said. He moved closer, his hand still at the cheek. 'So it's payback time, Anna. Steve is gonna have lots of fun.'
Close enough: 'Have fun with this,' Anna said. And the way she said it startled him. She could see well enough to identify the flinch, the sudden clutching fear, and then she opened her knees.
The pistol was there, of course, between her thighs, and pointing at the middle of his throat.
He had just enough time to say, 'Don't.'
Anna shot him.
And sat for three full seconds in dazed, blinded silence, Steve Judge slumped in front of her. He hadn't jerked back, or been thrown back: he'd simply gone straight down. She fumbled her glasses out of her pocket, pushed them back on her nose, tried to stand up.
'Jake?' she called weakly.
'Anna?' He was close. She took the flash from her pocket and shined it back toward the bathroom. Harper was propped in the doorway, the rifle in his hand, a long trail of blood behind him, his face as pale as parchment.
'I killed him,' Anna said.
At that moment, Judge stood up.
His eyes were crazy and half of his neck seemed to be missing. But he had one hand clasped to the wound and he pushed up and pivoted toward her, his eyes crazy, his mouth open, the white teeth straining at her.
Anna stepped back, thrust the pistol out, and fired into his chest from six inches: one, two, three, and Judge went down again. Harper, behind her, was shouting, 'No more, Anna,' but Anna stepped over Judge and fired two more shots into his head.
This time he didn't move.
'Asshole,' Anna snarled. She was still pulling the trigger, the clicks echoing in the suddenly silent shambles.
Anna carried Pam to Harper's car, brushed glass fragments off the seat and put her down. Harper was too heavy: he crawled, dazed, to the porch, and Anna turned the half-wrecked vehicle around until she could get him in the passenger side and wedge the door closed. Something was wrong with the door, but it seemed to hold.
Her scalp was bleeding badly; every time she put her right hand to her ear, it came away with a palm full of blood. She pointed the car down the drive, and took it out as easily as she could.
They'd come in and out the same way each time, and that was the way she knew: there might have been a faster way to get an ambulance out to them, but she didn't have time to look.
She tried the phone after five minutes. No connection. She tried again at seven or eight minutes, without luck. At ten minutes, she got 911.
'My God, everybody's shot,' she babbled as she guided the car to the side of the road. She knew about where she was, gave enough direction that an ambulance could find them.
She called Wyatt, told him.
He was still shouting questions when she dropped the phone.
Chapter 31
Anna Batory was waiting at the dock when they came in on the Lost Dog, Creek and Glass with another couple, a pair of gay and ferociously competitive endodontists.
Creek cut the outboard when they were fifty feet from the berth, reached over the side, released the transom lock and pulled the motor out of the water. The boat's momentum carried it gracefully on, and then Creek pushed the tiller over and it turned, slowed, slowed more, and Glass stepped over the rail onto the finger pier, dropped the bow line over a cleat and snubbed the boat off.
Anna stood up, brushed off her butt. 'How'd it go?'
Glass was bubbling: 'It was amazing. These things, there was a boat, I mean.'
'Spit it out,' Creek laughed.
'Some of those boats were as big as locomotives. And they were this close,' Glass said, spreading her hands a foot apart. 'One guy got hit in a turn, and he called this other guy an asshole, and they're gonna fight when they get back.'
The beating barely showed on her anymore: when she'd gone into the hospital, the doctors were afraid that her brain had been permanently damaged. As it was, she'd been almost herself in a week, and out of the hospital in two. At four weeks, the bruising had faded, and the cuts were healed. She looked like somebody had scrubbed parts of her face with a Brillo pad, and her nose wasn't as straight as it once had been, but she no longer looked like she might die.
She still had headaches, though: the doctors said they might continue for a while. Maybe a long while. On the other hand, they might stop. Any day now. Or something like that.
Creek, a month later, was almost as good as new; was beginning to talk about the whole episode as a myth that might have happened to someone else. As a good story, to be embroidered upon, on slow nights in the truck.
Anna was the only one who still hurt.
The cuts on her face had all been minor. The cut in her scalp had been deeper, and had done something to the hair follicles: a thin, knife-edge line of hair was growing out white. The doctors said it would probably never be black again; but it might. Or something.
But her main problem was Harper.
After she'd shot Judge, she'd turned, and in the light of Judge's flash, had seen Harper crawling toward her, trying to help her. Answering her cries for help. When it had turned out that Anna had been mouse-trapping Judgewhen she'd emptied the pistol into Judge's headsomething had changed.
He loved her, he said, but he wasn't coming around. She could feel him avoiding her. She pushed, tried to talk: and only once got him going, after a two-martini dinner, and he talked about her face when she'd fired the last shots into Judge.
Anna realized that she frightened him. She didn't want to, but she did.
The endodontists helped clean up the boat, and said goodbye.
'Are we going for beer?' Anna asked Glass.
'God, I hope so. My throat is full of dust.'
'When's he gonna let you drive?' Anna asked.
'Mmm, I've got no definite commitment, but I'm thinking to myself, probably in the beer can races, next week.'
Behind her, Creek rolled his eyes, and Glass said, 'Creek.'
'What?'
'I felt your eyes rolling.'
'Aw, Jesus Christ,' Creek said.
They went down the street to a diner, and found another two dozen racers around the bar and in the dining room. Anna ordered a cheeseburger and a Diet Coke, Creek and Glass got beers. After a while, Creek and Anna began talking about the next night: they would be back on the street in twenty-four hours.