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He never saw the shovel hanging from a nail on the garage wall. His sleeve hooked the blade and the shovel came down like a thunderclap, hammering into a garbage can, rattling off the car and onto the floor.
“What?” said Je
Lucas knew. “Shadow Love,” he whispered.
CHAPTER
29
“The basement,” Lucas snapped.
He grabbed Je
In the garage, Shadow Love, stu
Lucas took the stairs a half-second behind Je
“Workroom,” Lucas shouted, flattening himself against the stairwell wall, his gun hand extended up the stairs. “Get under the workbench.”
Shadow Love’s next two shots blew open the door from the garage, the slugs ricocheting through the kitchen. The door was at an angle to the stairway. Lucas fired three shots through the opening, hoping to catch Shadow Love coming in. There was a clatter in the garage, then a whip-quick series of flashes with the crack of the rifle. Lucas slid to the bottom of the stairs as the vinyl flooring came apart at the top of the stairs, the slugs slamming into the slanting head-wall over the steps. Shooting from the garage, with the rifle, Shadow Love had the advantage: he could fire down with a good idea of where his shots were going, but Lucas couldn’t see to shoot up. Shadow Love knew that. The garbage can rattled and Lucas risked a quick step up and put two more shots through the wall where the can was. Shadow Love opened up again. This time, the shots were angled down into the stairwell. Though they were still overhead, Lucas was forced out of the stairwell and into the workroom, with the door left open.
Shadow Love controlled the stairs.
The garage stank of burnt gunpowder, auto exhaust and gasoline from the lawn mower. Shadow Love, panting, squatted by the step into the house and tried to figure the shots he’d taken. Eight or nine, total: better count it as nine. The gun was loaded with a thirty-shot banana clip, and he had one more clip in his jacket. He might need everything he had—they might not be enough—if Davenport barricaded himself in the basement.
The black spot was there, and he could feel the anger cooking in his heart. There was a very good chance that Davenport would kill him. The cop was on his home ground; he was well trained; and Shadow Love felt his luck had broken when he’d failed with the New York woman.
Still he had to try. The black spot grew, calling him in, and the anger rode into his veins like fire.
Je
“What are we doing?” she cried. “What are we doing?”
“The St. Paul cops should be coming in. We’ve only got to hold out a few minutes,” Lucas said. “He’ll have to make a move or get out. You stay put.”
Lucas scrambled crabwise across the basement to his gun safe and spun the combination dial. He missed the second number, cursed and started over.
Upstairs, Shadow Love was torn between attack and retreat. He wouldn’t stay free on the streets for long. He had no place to hide, his picture was everywhere. If he was careful, very careful, he might grab a car somewhere and make it out into the countryside. But with Clay’s killing, the hunt would be remorseless. He would never have another chance at Davenport. Never have another chance to avenge his fathers. On the other hand, the hunter cop was armed and waiting in a house he knew intimately. An attack straight down the stairs would be suicide.
He held his breath, listening. No sirens. With the cool nights of October, windows were closed and furnaces were ru
Squatting just outside the garage door, the M-15 pointed diagonally through the door at the stairwell, he noticed a telephone on the wall.
Shit. An extension in the basement?
Shadow Love crouched in a sprinter’s position, listened for a second, then sprang through the open door into the kitchen, rolling when he hit the floor, coming up with the gun pointed at the stairwell. Nothing. He was inside.
With the gun leveled at the stairway door, he took a step backward, picked up the phone with his free hand. Just a dial tone. Okay. He let the phone dangle off the hook and eased back to the doorway, silent in his sneakers.
He needed a way to blow them out. Chancing a look down the stairwell, he stepped forward, feeling the vinyl kitchen floor creak below his weight. The floor. The floor would never stop a slug from an M-15 . . . .
Moving in a gunman’s crouch, he crossed quickly in front of the open stairway door into the living room, listened again, then took a half-dozen strides farther into the house. A picture window looked out toward the street. Nobody. Shadow Love pointed the rifle at the floor and pulled the trigger a half-dozen times.
Lucas pulled open the safe door as Shadow Love opened fire. The barrage came as a shock. Splinters exploded through the basement and shrapnel from the .223 slugs filled the air like hundreds of tiny bees. Je
“The baby,” she screamed. “The baby,” and she plucked at the baby’s back.
“Over here,” Lucas shouted as the firing stopped. Changing magazines? “Jen, Jen, over here . . .”
Je
“Into the safe, into the safe . . .”
Lucas dragged her and the screaming Sarah to the turn-of-the-century safe, threw the guns out on the floor and unceremoniously shoved them both inside.
“The baby,” Je
“Don’t touch them,” he shouted. He and Je
“Hold the door open an inch. An inch. An inch. You understand? You’ll be okay,” Lucas shouted. “Do you understand me?”
“Yes, yes . . .” Je
Lucas left them.
He owned twelve guns; he carried four away from the safe, along with three boxes of ammunition. He crawled into the space under the workbench where Je