Rudd headed down the hall toward the voice, his gun held ready before him.
Anna stood there staring at him, eyes wide beneath a frowning brow, head tipped forward. She tucked in her lower lip in and ran the tip of her tongue back and forth over it.
“You look angry, Anna,” Reznick said. “You need to calm down.”
“You… you’re telling me… to calm down?” Her voice was hoarse and unsteady.
“That’s right.” He walked slowly to the kitchen with his glass. The ice had melted in what was left of his vodka and it had become watery. He went to the sink and dumped it, then to the refrigerator, where he opened the freezer. He got more ice, then took out the bottle. He put the glass on the kitchen table. As he poured his drink, he said, “I told you that you owed me, and that I would collect. Well. I’m collecting.”
She released an abrupt laugh as cold as a deadly-sharp icicle. “You’re collecting. You think my daughter, you think my little girl is something you can collect.”
“You’re little girl came to me.” He put the bottle of vodka back in the freezer. He turned around and froze.
“I thought we talked about that,” Anna said. She stood just a couple feet away holding a steak knife with a narrow, serrated blade.
Rudd was halfway down the hallway when a tall young man with curly, shaggy dark hair stepped out of an open doorway. He wore a white surgical mask. His eyebrows popped up.
Rudd raised the gun, but the instant he fired, the young man ducked back into the doorway.
Knowing he didn’t have much time, Rudd hurried forward down the narrow hall. Arms outstretched, elbows locked, right hand resting in his left palm, he turned sharply to the right and entered the room.
The young man spun away from an open closet with a sawed-off shotgun and took two steps toward him.
All at once:
Rudd squeezed off a shot. The young man’s left shoulder exploded in a spray of red, spinning him around and turning the shotgun toward Rudd.
Rudd fired again, and a red hole appeared in the young man’s pale blue T-shirt, just below his chest.
At the moment that the young man fired the shotgun, Rudd got one more shot off. Rudd’s shot took off half the young man’s head. The shotgun nearly cut Rudd in half and he was thrown backward into the hall.
When Andy fell back, he landed on a structure of glass tubes and bottles
There was a great ripping explosion.
A gout of flames and debris burst upward from the trailer.
The flames rose up and flared in the wind, and reached the dry, sweeping branches of the trees overhead.
“You want to think a minute, Anna,” Reznick said as he picked up his drink. He took a couple swallows, them smacked his lips. “Your little girl isn’t so little after all. She was hungry for it. And keep something in mind. I know something about you. Actually, I know a couple things.”
“A couple things, huh,” she whispered, glaring at him.
“First of all, I know you brutally murdered a man, and I could ruin you with a phone call. I’m pretty well covered, it would be your word against mine. Also, maybe it’s about time somebody told your little girl what Mommy does at night. That she takes her clothes off for lonely, horny, drunken men. That maybe she does more than just take her – ”
“How do you – how dare you – “
Reznick took another drink.
Anna attacked him with the knife.
He dropped the drink and raised an arm. The glass shattered on the floor and vodka splashed over his feet.
The knife sliced through the flesh of his forearm.
He grabbed her right wrist with his left hand, then with his right hand, he tried to pry the knife from her fingers.
She swung her knee up and slammed it into his crotch.
He doubled over with a grunt and she stabbed him in the neck.
That was when the explosion occurred, but Reznick was in too much pain to notice, and Anna’s ears were ringing too loudly.
Kendra sat on the back edge of the trunk of Mommy’s car, sniffling, with tears trickling down her cheeks.
Dexter and Conan were taking turns chasing each other back and forth along the edge of the road, yapping at each other, nipping at each other’s tails.
Kendra felt horrible inside, like she was collapsing. She did not even notice the harsh smell that sometimes passed her by on the rushing, whipping wind. Branches creaked overhead as they swayed in the strong wind. Her long hair flew all around her head.
She was horrified that Mommy had seen her naked with Marc. Now she knew what was going on between them, which was supposed to be just their secret. Kendra wondered what she would do to her – what would her punishment be?
Why had she come home so early? She wasn’t supposed to get off work until two!
Kendra was on the verge of a sob when she was momentarily deafened by a loud explosion that lit up the night a bright orange on the other side of the road, through the trees that grew between the two narrow lanes.
She lifted her head and her eyes widened, then narrowed, as she watched a trailer – the trailer in unit seventeen – explode in flames that rose up to the trees. The trailer became momentarily airborne, then crashed to the ground with a terrible clamber.
Kendra’s breath was sucked from her lungs for a moment.
The flames rose up along with debris.
The flames licked at the whipping branches and caught almost immediately.
Kendra shot to her feet and called the dogs to her. They hurried to her, and she picked them up, holding one in each arm.
Flames crawled like great orange spiders through the branches overhead, spreading a fiery web.
“Oh, no,” Kendra said, her voice high and shrill. “Oh, no, oh, Jesus, please, no.”
Somehow, Anna twisted her wrist around and stabbed the blade into Reznick’s wrist. He blurted, “Ah!” and let go of her as blood began to flow.
With her lips peeled back over her teeth, she came forward, thrusting the knife at him. She got his left arm, his right arm again. Then his chest.
Reznick backed up against the refrigerator.
He slapped her face once, a backhanded swipe, hard.
Anna stumbled backward a couple steps.
He moved forward and reached for her wrist again.
Anna slashed the knife and caught the palm of his right hand. The blade sliced diagonally from the web of flesh between his thumb and forefinger, across his palm, and down to the heel of his hand. It was a deep cut, and blood came from it in a sheet that ran from his palm down his wrist and over his arm.
“You fucking men,” she growled. “You all want the same fucking thing. All of you. You’re useless. Useless.”
She darted forward and thrust with the knife. She got the inner elbow of his left arm.
She thrust again and again.
Reznick could not seem to stop her, so he tried to stop the knife. He grabbed for the blade with his bare hands. He got it once with his left hand, but she pulled it out – the blade sang on his skin as it moved along, slicing it open deep. Blood bubbled up and dribbled down to the floor in spatters.
He grabbed it with his right hand and tried to twist it out of her hand, grinding his teeth until they crunched in his head.
She threw herself forward, putting her full weight behind the knife while the blade was in his right hand, and he could not hold it.
The blade entered him just below his sternum and slammed him back against the refrigerator. It entered him all the way to the wooden handle.
Mouth open, he slowly bowed his head and looked at the knife sticking out of him.