Listening as if he were a newborn, as if he were hearing every sound for the first time.
The back door was breached first, creaking inward. There came a loud snap and then a muffled cry of pain as the heavy-duty rattrap taped over the light switch deployed.
Evan wheeled off the stool, striking a modified Weaver stance, sighting across the kitchen island. With the rush of bracing air, an earthy forest smell gusted in at him. Beside the partially open door, a dark form was silhouetted against the slice of night blackness, one elongated hand flapping in agony, his chest presented conveniently wide, shooting-target spread.
Evan put a round through his thorax and chased it with a head shot.
The man fell away and landed with a peaceful puff on the fallen leaves outside.
Behind him Evan heard the front door yawn open, and he threw himself to the side, rolling over his shoulder and coming up in a high-kneel shooting position.
The man—the last Collins cousin—came in with the FN P90 already barking, chewing up the stool that Evan had occupied a half second before. Evan shot him through the hollow of the throat.
Oil welled from the hole, and the man went to his knees, shuddering the planks of the foyer, his mouth agape.
Evan put the next shot between his teeth, knocking him back across the threshold onto the porch.
Evan’s position by the front door ensured that friendly-fire concerns would prevent the two remaining men from lighting up the entryway.
Already he heard the whine of the compressed floorboard in the living room, the spot where the corner of the Navajo throw rug used to lie. He started to pivot when he sensed a wall of movement flying in from the side, Wade Collins gripping the compact submachine gun in both hands, punching the butt end at Evan.
Evan wouldn’t have time to bring the barrel around, so he ducked the blow, clenched the steel frame of the Smith & Wesson, and brought knuckles and steel to bear in an upper cut. He connected squarely, the jaw giving off a pleasing crack.
He was alarmed at how little the big man swayed from the impact.
Wade was gargantuan, sheathed in muscle, his torso the girth of a refrigerator. If Evan allowed him to get his bearings, he’d be destroyed.
Before Wade could recover, Evan dug his feet into the floor to firm his base and threw a horizontal elbow into the broken bone, knocking Wade’s jaw right off the hinge.
This drew a reaction.
Bellowing through his shattered face, Wade grabbed Evan, toppling onto him and smashing him into the floor. The FN P90 clattered away. Wade’s earpiece popped free, bouncing on its clear coil. Evan’s gun hand was pinned beneath Wade’s mass, his finger wrenched clear of the trigger guard.
Ramming the bar of his forearm across Evan’s throat, Wade pressured down with all his weight, then clutched at his hip holster and came up with a SIG P229. With his free hand, Evan caught Wade’s wrist, forcing the pistol to the side. It fired into the floorboard a half foot from Evan’s head.
Evan’s ears screamed, a barbed hum shearing through the center of his skull. He caught a twisted, upside-down view of the doorway to the kitchen just as Orphan A pivoted around the corner, submachine gun raised.
Evan’s gun hand was trapped beneath Wade’s leg, the revolver out of reach.
Wade’s forearm crushed into Evan’s windpipe, cinching off air.
The P229 wobbled in Wade’s massive grip as he forced it through Evan’s resistance back toward his face.
Evan couldn’t hold him off much longer; the meat of Wade’s biceps was the size of a softball. He stared up into the broken maw of Wade’s mouth, a few teeth loosed from the gums.
Behind him he sensed Orphan A clear the threshold into the entryway.
Evan slowed everything down.
He sensed the trickle of sweat making a snail-like crawl down his temple.
Watched the drop of blood fall from Wade’s lip and splash against his forehead.
Noted the descent of Orphan A’s lead boot to the floor.
Evan took the predicament apart and put it together again to his own liking.
The moves went faster than the beats of a drumroll.
He released Wade’s gun hand, the abrupt lack of resistance causing the SIG to swing straight across Evan’s face to the other side before Wade could react and pull the trigger.
The bullet bucked the floor two inches from the other side of Evan’s head, pain stunning his eardrum. Wade’s weight shifted, his gun hand flailing and then thumping to the floor as he righted his balance.
Evan lunged for the dropped submachine gun on the floor and squeezed off a burst at Orphan A. The FN P90 was designed for the smallest kick possible, allowing Evan to get off a good number of rounds even one-handed, even stretched out flat on his back, even firing upside down.
The rounds flew wild, peppering the ceiling, but they were sufficient to make Orphan A dive back into the kitchen, pinball off the island, and scramble for cover.
The shells ejected out of the bottom of the upside-down FN P90, spouting up into the air, the hot brass pinging off Wade’s ruined face.
Wade knocked the submachine gun from Evan’s grip, and Evan rolled with his lunge, the two men tussling on the floor. Evan’s revolver slid off by the stairs, both men gripping Wade’s pistol, which wavered beneath their faces, the barrel rising parallel to their noses.
The slide was actuated from the last shot, the hammer back in single-action mode. Once the gun was aimed, the trigger would require only 4.4 pounds of pressure.
Given Wade’s size, the arm-wrestling match could end only one way. Before Wade could force the muzzle to Evan’s head, Evan relaxed pressure, jerking an elbow into the wreckage of Wade’s jaw. As Wade recoiled in pain, Evan flipped them once more so he was on top.
He couldn’t overpower Wade to turn the gun, so he reared back and then jammed his full weight down on the SIG, pressing its side into Wade’s cheek.
Wade’s eyes flared as Evan tugged the trigger.
As the pistol fired off blindly into the kitchen, the slide snapped back an inch and three-quarters, its sharp lower edge gouging through Wade’s cheek.
Instinctively, Wade released the pistol, flinching away, and Evan rotated the gun around and shot him through the side of the head.
He looked up to see Orphan A staring back from the kitchen, his eyes poked up over the top of the island, submachine gun aimed.
Evan dove off Wade, rolling for the stairs, gathering his Smith & Wesson along the way.
Rounds chased him to the second floor, chewing up the balustrade and rails. He dove across the landing, tumbling gracelessly down the length of the hall and smashing through the door of his old dormer bedroom.
He had a single instant to take in his cramped childhood room—the single bed now missing the mattress, the desk yanked out from the wall, the rows of empty bookshelves looking down like toothless mouths.
He heard Orphan A slot a fresh fifty-round mag into his weapon downstairs. Rising, he looked wildly around. There was nowhere to go.
He had a wheel gun with two bullets, and he was up against a fellow Orphan brandishing a submachine gun that brought nearly a thousand rounds a minute.
The familiar nighttime view looked back at him from the window, unmarred by any screen.
He eased the pane up and stepped outside, the heels of his boots finding the half-inch ledge of flashing securing the first-floor gutter. Gripping the peeling shutter with one hand, he eased the window closed and flattened to the side of the house just as Orphan A’s shadow darkened the hall.
One heel slipped off the tiny ledge, and Evan strained to force it back. Tightening his grip on the shutter with his right hand, he aimed the Smith & Wesson at the window with his left.
A bank of clouds obscured the moon, disseminating its glow across the oak-tree canopy, a blanket of silver.
He tried not to breathe too hard.
He tried not to breathe at all.
A burst of rounds nearly startled him off the side of the house. They shattered out the window, erupting through the wall just above his head.
He ducked hard, the shutter wobbling away from the wall, swinging him out onto one heel again. The shutter started to give.
Even over the high warble of the ringing in his ears, he heard chunks of the wall hitting the floor inside.
He tried to edge himself back onto the ledge but saw now that the top shutter hinge was pulling free of the wall, the screw protruding enough to show off a finger’s width of threading.
As Evan stared helplessly at the loosening hinge, Orphan A’s boots creaked into the bedroom.
62
Final Look Back