Page 22 of Stuart Woods' Smolder

“Painfully, I would think.” As briefly as possible, Stone told him what happened.

“You actually hit him?”

Stone was deadly with a rifle, not so much with handguns.

“I’ve been practicing.”

“Have you called nine-one-one?”

“There’s a siren pulling up out front, so I’d say the NYPD has responded to my alarm.”

“Try not to kill anyone else before I get there.”

Chapter 7

“You’re sure there were four of them?” Detective Morris asked.

They were in Stone’s kitchen, out of the way of the crime scene techs. This was the third time Stone was going through what happened.

“I only saw four. There could have been more.”

Morris frowned, unconvinced. He was young and, based on his aggressive questioning, newly promoted.

“And you’re still saying the dead guy intended to shoot you, so you shot first?”

“I can’t tell you what was going on in his head, but when someone points a weapon atyou, Detective, what do you do?”

“This isn’t about me, Mr. Barrington. This is about—”

“He would have done exactly what you did,” Detective Brennan said calmly. He was Morris’s partner and a veteran detective Stone knew. “I think we’ve heard enough, don’t you, Jimmy?”

“I think he’s hiding something,” Morris said.

Brennan snorted. “You think everyone’s hiding something.”

Dino walked into the room. “Who’s hiding something?”

“Morning, Commissioner,” Brennan said.

Morris’s eyes widened in surprise. “Commissioner Bacchetti.”

“I was beginning to wonder if you fell back asleep,” Stone said. It had been more than thirty minutes since Stone had called him.

“Trust me. I thought about it. What’s going on here?”

“I’ve been explaining what happened to Detectives Brennan and Morris.”

Dino jutted his chin toward Morris. “How many times has he made you go through it?”

“Two and a half so far.”

“Not too bad. I remember you making suspects go through their story five or six times, when you were still green.”

“Yes, but they were all guilty.”

“And you’re not? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you did shoot that guy I saw the coroner wheeling out.”

“True. But as I was explaining—”

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