Page 85 of Murder Road

His hands rose. I didn’t see him move, but I felt two hands shove my shoulders, so hard I lost my balance. The hands pushed me to the floor.

“Get down,” said the voice in my ear.

I opened my mouth to scream.

There was a crack outside, and the bedroom window broke, shards of glass falling to the floor.

A second crack. A third. My ears hurt. Something hit the wall, and plaster exploded, sending decorative knickknacks falling to the floor. I stared at the hole in the wall and realized that someone was shooting through the window.

“Eddie!” I screamed.

There were footsteps outside the window. “I can hear you in there,” a man’s voice said, harsh and angry. “Stand up.”

The back door banged; Eddie had been in the backyard. His shout was hoarse. “April!”

“Get down!” I screamed as the gun went off again. The footsteps outside receded, running for the back of the house, and I cried out, “Lock the back door!”

I crawled on my hands and knees across the bedroom floor toward the doorway. Eddie was crouched in the corner of the kitchen, his hands on his knees. The back door was closed. His gaze crawled over me. “Are you all right?”

I nodded. Eddie opened his mouth to say something else just as a blast hit the back door, making me jump.

“Come out, you two!” the man’s voice shouted. “You think I couldn’t track you down? You parked your car in front of my goddamned house while you broke in! I know exactly who you are!”

John Haller. My mind went blank with shock. Instead of calling the police on us, John Haller was here, right now, shooting at us. He’d come around the side of the house to fire through the window at me while Eddie was in the backyard. How close had he come? If he had walked a few more feet and looked into the yard, Eddie would have been an open target, defenseless. He would have died right where Robbie had.

Another shot hit the back door, but the door didn’t break. I watched Eddie’s gaze move to the front window, the front door. His eyes were blank, calculating. He had gone somewhere in his head that his training had taken him, somewhere he’d gone during his months in Iraq. He didn’t even look afraid. My hands were shaking.

A hot breeze blew through the broken bedroom window like a breath, lifting the fussy curtains. I heard the footsteps coming back, and I forced one of my trembling hands up to signal to Eddie. He gestured for me to get out of the bedroom, outside the door.

“It was Shannon’s film you took, wasn’t it?” John Haller shouted. I crawled outside the bedroom door and put my back to the wall. I wondered if the neighbors would call the police, how long it would take the police to come. “Took me a minute to figure it out. I bet you think you’re smart. I bet you thought I’d crawl in my hole and not say anything, didn’t you? Get out here.”

This was insane. We were under siege, right here in Rose’s house in the middle of a summer morning. The police had to be coming—but how many? Two cops? Three? I had seen the size of the Coldlake Falls PD. I pointed to the phone in the phone nook on the other side of the living room, but Eddie shook his head. “No time,” he said.

I heard an intake of breath outside as Haller heard Eddie’s voice. “This isn’t going to end how you think it is,” Haller said, his tone calmer. “I knew from the second that cop knocked on my door that it was over, and I’m ready. Are you? Because I’m not waiting around.”

The footsteps moved away again, this time toward the front door.

I heard a scraping sound. Eddie had taken a kitchen knife from the counter and slid it across the floor toward me. I stopped it with my foot and grabbed it by the handle. “He’s coming in,” he said calmly. “We can’t stop him. You have one chance, and then I’ll take him.”

I looked to the front of the house. Eddie was right—there were both the front door and the front windows that looked out over the street. The door would be hard, but the windows would be easy. A couple of shots to the glass, and Haller could get inside, where Eddie and I were sitting here, waiting, unarmed.

“Should we go out the back?” I asked. My voice was weirdly normal, like it had been that first night, when I realized that Rhonda Jean was bleeding to death. I was still shaking, but it didn’t matter. My thoughts had stopped scattering like a flock of startled birds. Twelve-year-old April—born as Crystal Cross in Los Angeles, California—had taken over.

“He’ll just follow,” Eddie said. “Someone else could get hurt. I’d rather take him here.”

I was already on my feet, running in a low crouch toward the front of the living room, keeping clear of the picture window. Eddie moved behind the sofa, out of sight. For a big man, he moved with absolutely no sound.

I took in the window, trying to calculate my best position. I had to be where Haller wouldn’t see me before it was too late. I had just tucked myself against the wall under the left corner, behind a side table, when a shadow moved across the window.

I only had a split second to think before a gunshot smashed the glass, and I ducked so I wouldn’t get hit with the shards. The sound must have been heard through the entire neighborhood. Did he think he was going to walk away from this, whether Eddie and I died or not? He’s insane, I thought. He must be.

“I reloaded,” Haller’s voice said. “Here I come.”

I could hear sirens in the distance. Someone in the street was shouting. I pressed myself against the wall, going still as I heard the scrape of something on the windowsill. Then John Haller’s legs swung over and his feet hit the ground. He had a rifle in his hand, and his gaze was on the sofa, where he’d caught sight of Eddie. He hadn’t seen me. He raised the gun.

I pivoted and jammed the knife into the back of his thigh as hard as I could.

Haller roared and dropped to one knee. He kicked hard, catching me in the chin, and I dropped onto my ass, scrambling back against the wall. Haller turned to aim the gun at me.

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