Page 66 of The Furies

And inside the Strange house, the shooting began.

CHAPTER LXXI

Kicking in a door is hard work, even without a mild concussion, so I let Louis take care of it. Angel was already running to the back of the house, gun in hand. The front door eventually surrendered, but we didn’t go tearing inside. That was a very good way to get killed, and the shots had sounded as though they came from two different guns. I risked a cautious glance around the jamb into Ambar Strange’s open-plan living area. Will Quinn was lying by the fireplace, haloed by its flames. I could see no sign of injury, and his eyes were open, but he appeared dazed and in pain. Dolors Strange was kneeling beside him, while Ambar was standing in the center of the room with a gun in her hands, the muzzle pointing in the direction of the kitchen and the open back door. The gun was shaking because Ambar was shaking, too.

“Ambar,” I said, “don’t shoot. It’s Parker. I have two colleagues with me, one of them moving on the back of the house. Don’t shoot them either.”

She turned toward me, and the gun turned with her. I returned to the shelter of the doorframe.

“Put the gun down, Ambar,” I said. “Please.”

“Ambar, do as Mr. Parker says,” said Dolors. “He’s gone.”

I chanced another look. Ambar, dazed, was lowering the gun. I walked over and gently took it from her hands, while behind me Louis advanced to the back door. The gun was a 9 mm Springfield XD, a good weapon for a woman, with minimal recoil and a long sight radius. With practice, she’d probably hit whomever she was aiming at in the confines of her home.

“Kepler?” I said.

Ambar didn’t answer, but Dolors did.

“Ambar shot him,” said Dolors. “There’s blood all over the kitchen floor.”

“Is he still armed?”

“He has a revolver. He fired it, but he was already hit by then. I don’t know where his bullets went, but they didn’t injure any of us.”

“What about Will?”

“I think he’s having a heart attack.”

An acrid odor hung in the room that I couldn’t place. I thought it might have been coming from the fireplace, but I didn’t have time to consider it further.

“Call an ambulance,” I said, and made for the kitchen door, skirting the wall because I didn’t want to be a target for Kepler. Dolors was right: Ambar had wounded him. The blood was bright red, so there was serious trauma involved. Louis had paused by the sink and killed the kitchen light.

“Angel?” I said.

“Over to the right,” said Louis. “He says someone just went into the trees.”

Behind Ambar’s house was a patch of undeveloped land where people walked their dogs under pines.

“Then we’ll have to go after him,” I said.

The containers for trash and recycling stood behind a low concrete wall to the left. It wasn’t great cover, but cover nonetheless. I didn’t waste time thinking, because if I thought about what I was doing I’d probably feel the pressing urge to stay where I was. Nothing discourages movement so much as the prospect of being framed in a doorway while an armed man contemplates taking a shot at you. I was out the door and hidden by the dark before I could draw another breath, Louis at my heels.

“He’s hurt,” I told Angel when we reached him. “But he’s also armed.”

“We could always wait until he bleeds to death,” said Angel.

“Or until he gets away,” I said.

“Pessimist. So we go?”

“We go,” I said.

We moved in unison, running fast for the trees, spread out and staying low. The trail of bright blood was easy to follow in the moonlight, and harder to spot as we got into the trees, but at least the pines offered some cover. My eyes were growing used to the dark, and I thought I could pick out a pale shape slumped amid the shadows.

“I see him,” said Louis.

“I have him too,” I said.

---