At the corner she halted, listening. Because there was no wind, she could clearly hear the vicious hissing, a sound that only stoked her anger.
Murmurs of conversation. Couldn't catch the words.
Stealthy footsteps hurrying toward the back of the house. A low, suppressed laugh, almost a giggle. Having such a good time at their game.
Judging the moment of his appearance by the sound of his swiftly approaching footsteps, intending to scare the living hell out of him, Heather moved forward. With perfect timing, she met him at the turn in the sidewalk.
She was surprised to see he was taller than she was. She had expected them to be ten years old, eleven, twelve at the oldest.
The prowler let out a faint
"Ah!" of alarm.
Putting the fear of God into them was going to be a harder proposition than if they'd been younger. And no retreating now. They'd drag her down. And then…
She kept moving, collided with him, rammed him backward across the eight-foot-wide setback and into the ivy-covered concrete-block wall that marked the southern property line.
The can of spray paint flew out of his hand, clattered against the sidewalk.
The impact knocked the wind out of him. His mouth sagged open, and he gasped for breath.
Footsteps. The second one. Running toward her.
Pressed against the first boy, face-to-face, even in the darkness, she saw that he was sixteen or seventeen, maybe older. Plenty old enough to know better.
She rammed her right knee up between his spread legs and turned away from him as he fell, wheezing and retching, into the flower bed along the wall.
The second boy was coming at her fast. He didn't see the gun, and she didn't have time to stop him with a threat.
She stepped toward him instead of away, spun on her left foot, and kicked him in the crotch with her right. Because she'd moved into him, it was a deep kick, she caught him with her ankle and the upper part of the bridge of her foot instead of with her toes… He crashed past her, slammed into the sidewalk, and rolled against the first boy, afflicted by an identical fit of retching.
A third one was coming at her along the sidewalk from the front of the house, but he skidded to a halt fifteen feet away and started to back up.
"Stop right there," she said. "I've got a gun." Though she raised the Korth, holding it in a two-hand grip, she did not raise her voice, and her calm control made the order more menacing than if she had shouted it in an He stopped, but maybe he couldn't see the revolver in the dark. His body language said he was still contemplating making a break for it.
"So help me God," she said, still at a conversational level, "I'll blow your brains out." She was surprised by the cold hatred in her voice.
She wouldn't really have shot him. She was sure of that. Yet the sound of her own voice frightened her and made her wonder.
His shoulders sagged. His entire posture changed. He believed her threat.
A dark exhilaration filled her. Nearly three months of intense taste kwon do and women's defense classes, provided free to members of police families three times a week at the division gym, had paid off. Her right foot hurt like blazes, probably almost as badly as the second boy's crotch hurt him. She might have broken a bone in it, would certainly be hobbling around for a week even if there wasn't a fracture, but she felt so good about nailing the three vandals that she was happy to suffer for her triumph.
"Come here," she said. "Now, come on, come on."
The third kid raised his hands over his head. He was holding a spray can in each of them.
"Get down on the ground with your buddies," she demanded, and he did as he was told.
The moon sailed out from behind the clouds, which was like slowly bringing up the stage lights to quarter power on a darkened set. She could see well enough to be sure that they were all older teenagers, sixteen to eighteen.
She could also see that they didn't fit any popular stereotypes of taggers. They weren't black or Hispanic. They were white boys.
And they didn't look poor, either. One of them wore a well-cut leather jacket, and another wore a cable-knit cotton sweater with what appeared to be a complicated and beautifully knitted pattern.
The night quiet was broken only by the miserable gagging and groaning of the two she'd disabled. The confrontation had unfolded so swiftly in the eight-foot-wide space between the house and the property wall, and in such relative silence, that they hadn't even awakened any.neighbors.
Keeping the gun on them, Heather said, "You been here before?"
Two of them couldn't yet have answered her if they'd wanted to, but the third was also unresponsive.
"I asked if you'd been here before," she said sharply, "done this kind of crap here before."
"Bitch," the third kid said.
She realized it was possible to lose control of the situation even when she was the only one with a gun, especially if the crotch-bashed pair recovered more easily than she expected. She resorted to a lie that might convince them she was more than just a cop's wife with a few smart moves: "Listen, you little snots-I can kill all of you, go in the house and get a couple of knives, plant them in your hands before the first black-and-white gets here.
Maybe they'll drag me into court and maybe they won't. But what jury's going to put the wife of a hero cop and the mother of a little eight-year-old boy in prison?"
"You wouldn't do that," the third kid said, although he spoke only after a hesitation. A thread of uncertainty fluttered in his voice.
She continued to surprise herself by speaking with an intensity and bitterness she didn't have to fake. "Wouldn't I, huh? Wouldn't I? My Jack, two partners shot down beside him in one year, and him lying in the hospital since the first of March, going to be in there weeks yet, months yet, God knows what pain he might have the rest of his life, whether he'll ever walk entirely right, and here I am out of work since October, savings almost gone, can't sleep for worrying, being harassed by crud like you. You think I wouldn't like to see somebody else hurting for a change, think I wouldn't actually get a kick out of hurting you, hurting you real bad? Wouldn't I? Huh? Huh? Wouldn't I, you little snot?"
Jesus. She was shaking. She hadn't been aware that anything this dark was in her. She felt her gorge rising in the back of her throat and had to fight hard to keep it down.
From all appearances, she had scared the three taggers even more than she had scared herself. Their eyes were wide with fright in the moonlight.
"We been here before," gasped the kid whom she'd kicked.
"How often?"
"T-twice."
The house had been hit twice before, once in late March, once in the middle of April… Glowering down at them, she said, "Where you from?"
"Here," said the kid she hadn't hurt.
"Not from this neighborhood, you aren't."
"L.A." he said.
"It's a big city," she pressed.
"The Hills."
"Beverly Hills?"
"Yeah."
"All three of you?"
"Yeah."
"Don't screw around with me."
"It's true, that's where we're from-why wouldn't it be true?"
The unhurt boy put his hands to his temples as if he'd just been overcome with remorse, though it was far more likely to be a sudden headache. Moonlight glinted off his wristwatch and the beveled edges of the shiny metal band.
"What's that watch?" she demanded.
"Huh?"
"What make is it?"
"Rolex," he said.
That was what she'd thought it was, although she couldn't help but express astonishment: "Rolex?"
"I'm not lying. I got it for Christmas."
"Jesus."
He started to take it off. "Here, you can have it."