“Yes,” she said, and hurried down the hall, brushing by David as she went.
Tim took a second shotgun from the closet and what looked like several boxes of ammunition.
“The fuck’s going on, Tim?”
“Come ’ere,” Tim said, and beckoned David to follow him into the adjoining room.
It was the room with the two computer monitors, only now the screen savers were gone. David saw that each screen was divided into quadrants, each quadrant providing a live CCTV feed from various places around Tim’s property, to include the exterior of the farmhouse. The digital clock on the screen told him it was 4:53 A.M.
Tim tapped the keyboard and the buzzing alarm silenced. He tapped the keyboard a second time and the images on the computer screens changed. In one of the quadrants, a pair of headlights cut swiftly through the night along an unpaved wooded road. David recognized it as the road leading up to the farmhouse.
“Shit,” David said.
“They’re maybe three minutes out,” Tim said. “The system should have picked them up sooner. I’ve got an alarm system down in the foothills by the main road that never went off. They must have deactivated it somehow.”
“They found us . . .”
“I don’t know,” Tim said. “They don’t look like the government or the police. Something isn’t right.” His fingers danced along the keyboard, and the angle of the cameras changed yet again. This time, they were afforded a long shot of the oncoming vehicle, its dual headlamps jouncing over the rutted dirt road, the video grainy and tinted emerald green. “It’s just one vehicle.”
“Maybe more are on their way,” David said. The idea sent his stomach into his socks.
Tim tossed him a box of ammo. “You know how to use a shotgun?”
“No.”
Tim shouted for Gany, then pulled a pistol from the rear of his pants. He handed it to David. It was Cooper’s Glock. “Use this, then.”
Gany appeared in the doorway. Ellie clung to her hip and peered into the room. She looked frightened.
Tim handed Gany the shotgun. “Take Eleanor to the back bedroom. Barricade the door. Anyone forces their way in there, you use this.”
“Yeah, okay,” Gany said, breathless.
“Dad,” Ellie said. Her gaze fell on the pistol in David’s hand.
“It’ll be okay, baby,” David told her.
“Come on,” Tim said, and shoved them all out into the hallway.
They split up, Gany and Ellie heading down the darkened corridor toward the rear of the house, Tim and David hurrying toward the front. Tim swung open the front door and a cold night wind accosted them. They went out onto the porch.
David couldn’t see the approaching vehicle’s headlights yet through the trees, but he could hear the growl of its engine. It was moving very quickly toward them.
“Go to the far end of the porch,” Tim instructed. He pointed to a pitch-black corner. “I’ll stand front and center. I’ve got floodlights on the roof,” Tim said. “When the vehicle pulls up, motion sensors will turn the lights on. They’ll be lit up like a football field and they won’t be able to see us. But just in case, you go over there. I’ll soak up their attention. They won’t see you with your gun pointed at them in the dark.”
David looked at the gun in his hand.
“How good of a shot are you?” Tim asked.
“Fuck if I know.”
Astoundingly, Tim laughed.
Headlights appeared through the trees.
David ran to his corner, tucked himself down in the shadows. The gun felt like it suddenly weighed fifty pounds; he needed both hands to lift it up and rest his wrists along the porch railing for support.
Tim shoved a number of slugs into the shotgun, charged it, then pointed it toward the approaching vehicle as he took up position at the top of the porch steps.
He hugged my daughter on those steps, David had time to think.
The headlights broke clear of the trees, the large SUV’s engine snarling like a wild animal. At the same instant, the floodlights on the roof burst on, so bright David winced and turned away, though not before he saw the white, mud-stippled SUV come burning across the lawn in a cloud of bluish exhaust.
The vehicle came to a sudden stop, its tires gouging trenches in the earth. Giant insects flitted by in the twin glow of the SUV’s headlamps.
The gun shook in David’s hand.
For several seconds, nothing happened. But then Tim leveled the shotgun at the vehicle and shouted for the driver to identify himself. This was greeted by more silence. “In the event that you’re illiterate or maybe you just happened to miss all my fucking signs,” Tim called out into the night, “you’re fucking trespassing. You’ve got five seconds to back outta here before I blow out your tires.”