“Good, let’s finish eating, so we can close up down here and…”
Alex’s sentence was interrupted by a hard knock on the mudroom door. “Everyone upstairs immediately. Let’s go,” he barked as he slammed down the half empty pint glass.
Alex shot up from the table and moved over toward the refrigerator, ensuring his pistol was in his hip holster and grabbing the M-4 assault rifle leaned up against the kitchen desk. He pulled the bolt handle back and let it slap forward, chambering a round. After checking the safety, he slung the deadly weapon over his back, edging over to the doorway and peeking through the mudroom at the door. He met Manson’s lifeless eyes.
“I thought we were done here,” Alex yelled.
“You gonna open the door and talk to me civilized?” the man said, again never blinking.
“No. You need to move along,” Alex said, as a powerful burst of wind filled the mudroom stoop and buffeted Manson.
“There hasn’t been a lot of help for us around here. Fucking rude ass people mostly…”
“I hear it’s a lot friendlier up north.” He stepped into full view of the man.
Alex noticed a slight change in the man’s eyes as he registered both the hip holster and the rifle.
“Who is it, Alex?” Kate yelled from the kitchen.
“Nobody we know. Just some drifters,” he said firmly.
He felt composed and in control of the situation. Openly carrying these two weapons reminded him of an era filled with supreme confidence. Only body armor, a helmet and immediate access to a dozen similarly equipped Marines could boost him up higher.
“Don’t you think that’s a little overkill?” the man yelled, nodding at Alex’s gear.
“Not in my experience,” he replied.
The man momentarily laughed under his breath. “And what experience might that be?” he demanded.
“Enough to know that your arrival here is bad news. You guys aren’t planning on shooting out all of the streetlights, are you?”
The man snickered at the comment. “Look, I know you’re holding out on me. Your good friend Todd told us you have a ton of food stored away and that you’ve been handing it out to some of the neighbors.”
He glanced over his shoulder at another man who suddenly appeared on the sidewalk in front of Alex’s house, near the driveway.
“We just want our cut of this charity, and we won’t bother you after that. We’ve got two families, so we’ll need at least…”
Alex’s glance drifted to the man near the street. Same type of clothes, hats, shoes, but it’s not the same guy from before. No long hair. There might be another guy out there.
Suddenly he didn’t feel very secure. Behind the door, he couldn’t see below Manson’s mid-stomach, or below his elbows. For all he knew, Manson was holding a sawed-off shotgun down low. If this were the case, I’d never be able to react in time. His mind flickered to Emily, Ryan and Kate, his innocent family depended on him now more than ever.
His eyes darted out beyond Manson and the man on the sidewalk, to the numerous bushes and evergreen trees within view across the street, knowing the third man could be sighting him.
Glancing back over his shoulder into the library, Alex suddenly realized his back had been to the library window the entire time. An accomplice could easily hop up on the bulkhead door under the window and blast his head off. A queasiness hit him, but he maintained his posture and focus. Reaching back without looking, he closed the library door. Just as he began to feel more secure, he again realized his vulnerability. From where he stood in the kitchen, someone could easily see him through the family room windows.
They could blast me through one of the side family room windows from here.
All of his attention was focused on the front door. Alex couldn’t believe he had made such an elementary tactical mistake. He stepped forward into the mudroom, eliminating the family room windows as an opportunity to take him down, and refocused on responding.
“I gave away all I had to spare. That’s it. I need you to get the fuck out of here. Now!” he shouted.
“That’s bullshit! You got plenty hidden in there…” the man started, with his right hand pointed accusingly at Alex.
“Someone’s in the backyard!” a panicked voice screamed from deep inside the house.
He instinctively slung the rifle around with his left hand, twisting his body slightly to the right. The AR-15 rifle pointed high on the man’s chest within the barely discernable flash of a second, and he disengaged the safety before the barrel settled. The man grinned, showing his brown-stained teeth. Alex could see what looked like blackened decay on one of his incisors.
“Get him around front where I can see him, or I’ll kill you where you stand!” Alex hissed. “Ten seconds! Ten…nine…eight…”
The man raised his hands to his mouth, and Alex almost pulled the trigger. He took a few shallow, controlled breaths, and eased all pressure off the trigger, shocked at how far he had involuntarily pulled it. The man whistled three times, three short, sharp whistles.
“…seven…six…five…”
“He’s running around front!” Kate yelled from somewhere near the top of the stairs.
Alex kept his own focus just to the side of the scope. At this range, he wouldn’t miss, even without sighting in. The man stared at him impassively.
“…four…three…”
Before Alex reached “two,” Manson barked something toward the driveway, and the third man suddenly appeared. Manson yelled for him to join “Rick,” and Alex watched as the third man walked over to “Rick” near the top of the driveway. The man tried hard to conceal a weapon on the right side by his body. Alex couldn’t determine the weapon type, but guessed it to be a modified shotgun, with either a shortened barrel or no shoulder stock.
The phone rang and he ignored it. He needed to focus on the man standing on his mudroom stoop.
“Charlie Thornton’s calling!” he heard from upstairs.
“See what he wants!” he yelled back, shifting his gaze from the man on his porch to the two men standing on his sidewalk.
“He says the man that just ran out has a shotgun!”
The man on the porch didn’t appear to have heard her and continued to stare at Alex.
“You gonna quit pointing that thing at me?” Manson grunted.
Alex lowered the barrel a few inches, but kept it aligned with the vertical center of the man’s body. “Not until you’re out of my sight. Come back again, and I’ll kill you. If I see you approach this house with that shotgun your friend is carrying, or any other weapon, I’ll kill you.”
“Don’t worry, Alex…you won’t see us next time,” Manson warned, turning to leave.
Alex considered shooting him in the head, and then gunning down the other two. He’d probably get one of the others right away, hopefully the guy with the shotgun, then pop out of the mudroom door and tag the other one. It would all be over in a matter of seconds, but something stopped him. The pressure eased off the trigger, and he was once again surprised by how close he had come to killing the man.
Manson walked straight across the landscaped bed, pushing through tightly spaced, waist-high evergreen bushes and trampling the remnants of a large, decayed perennial. The gunman no longer made any attempt to conceal the short-barreled shotgun and brazenly slung it over his shoulder.
“Charlie thinks you should start blasting away. He’ll back you up!” Kate said from what sounded like halfway down the stairs.
Alex knew she was right. If he opened up on them while they stood in a tight group like this, he would most likely hit them all right away.
“Get back up with the kids and keep them away from the windows. All shades shut. I’m not starting a gun battle in the middle of the street. I’ll end up sending bullets through Derek’s house,” Alex yelled.
“I’ll call Derek and tell them to get in the basement if that’s what’s really stopping you. He was sneaking up on us with a shotgun, Ale
x. Charlie has the guy with the gun sighted in,” she yelled back.
He ran through the kitchen to the foyer, yelling at her as he moved to the formal dining room for a full view of the street.
“Tell Charlie to cool it! They got the message!”
He knelt down a few feet back from the window ledge and aimed his rifle at the group standing on the street in front of his driveway. The tip of the rifle’s barrel scraped the glass and Alex slid back a couple of inches along the hardwood floor, taking in the view of the street. This new position would allow him to watch the group walk all the way around the bend near Charlie’s house, assuming that they headed back toward their newly acquired residence. Charlie could visually escort them the rest of the way.
“Tell him yourself,” she said and walked down the stairs to hand him the phone.
“Goddamn it, hon, I don’t…” he protested as the phone was forced into his trigger hand. “Can you get me the binoculars and then get upstairs? I don’t want the kids near any of the front windows,” he said, annoyed.
“Sorry about that, Charlie…” he started, focusing his attention on the phone.
“The kids are on the third floor. They’re fine,” she interrupted.
“Just check, and get me the binoculars from the kitchen and a pad of paper. Pen, too,” he snapped and nervously glanced at the Mansons out front.
The trio began walking northeast down the middle of the road in the direction of the Murrays’ house. Manson looked back at the house, pointed his finger, and grinned wickedly.
“They’re on the move,” Charlie whispered excitedly into the phone. “This is our chance, Alex. We may not get another.”
“We can’t just start ambushing people walking down our block.”
“They just tried to sneak up on your house at sundown with a shotgun. That’s it in my book. What else do you need?” he asked, emphasizing the last part of his statement.
“They’re heading back. Keep an eye on them, and call me if they don’t park it back at their new digs. The storm’s gonna cool them off. Looks like it’s gonna hit late tonight and continue through most of the day. They won’t be playing outside for a while.”
Kate set the binoculars on the windowsill, the pad and pen on the dining room table.
“I’m going to check on the kids,” she said.
“Thank you, honey,” he said with a thin smile.
“Charlie, I need to take some notes here. Keep an eye on them,” Alex said and hung up.
He set the rifle against the white trim of the windowsill and grabbed the binoculars, sighting in on the three men walking away and wishing they were facing him, so he could take in more of their details. He’d made an easy, but nearly fatal error earlier that he didn’t intend to make again.
To a casual observer, the man standing on the sidewalk looked like the sidekick Alex had seen earlier in the day: same type of clothing, same rough look. Pretty much everything was the same except for the hair. He should have noticed the change immediately.
No longer satisfied to be a casual observer with this crew, he grabbed the paper and pen from the table and started to write as he talked out loud.
“All right, we have three guys. Let’s name them Manson, Daryll and Rick. Manson wears a brown-patterned hunting baseball cap and has brown shoulder-length hair, brown leather jacket. No facial hair, blue eyes, brown work shoes. Daryll also has long hair, but it’s distinctly lighter, almost blond. Red and blue Patriot’s winter hat, jeans, leather boots, green camouflage patterned field jacket. Goatee. Didn’t notice that when he was sneaking around the houses. That leaves Rick. Faded OD green Vietnam-era field jacket, black watch cap pulled tight, no hair showing under hat, faded black jeans, black high top sneakers. Huskier than the other two and taller.”
He picked up the binoculars again and focused in on the shotgun.
“Let’s see, pump action, barrel shortened all the way to the feed cylinder. Looks like a full stock—”
“The kids are fine up on the third floor. I told them to stay clear of the windows,” Kate suddenly announced from the staircase. She sat on the stairs, just below the first floor ceiling level.
“Thank you for checking on them,” he said, putting the binoculars back on the sill, “and I’m sorry for barking at you. I was just a little frazzled…a lot frazzled.”
“I’m not mad either really. I just…” she paused.
“Wanted me to kill them in the middle of the street? Three bodies riddled with bullets in front of the house? The next visit from the police wouldn’t be a cordial chat. I can’t risk losing these guns, Kate. Nor can we risk having me arrested and taken away. These three could be just the beginning of what we face. I need to be here, protecting our family. Not locked up in a jail cell waiting for a trial that won’t happen for months.’”
“But at least they’d be dead,” she stated.
“Then what? The police confiscate our guns and haul me away leaving you and the kids on your own?”
“You know what they tried, right?” she asked softly.
“Yeah. Exactly what I predicted. He kept me pretty distracted in the mudroom. If you hadn’t seen the other guy, we might not be having this conversation,” he said, keeping an eye on the group meandering down the street.
“Lucky I chose to close Ryan’s shades first. I just barely saw him darting through the trees,” she said.
“But you saw him, and that’s all that counts. Help me shut all of these shades. We’ll get the lights on and hunker down for the night. Storm’s gonna hit a few hours past midnight. I highly doubt we’ll hear from them again tonight, but we’ll be ready just in case.”
He picked up the assault rifle and engaged the safety, removed the thirty-round magazine, and slid back the bolt handle, which ejected the .223 caliber bullet onto the hardwood floor. The bullet made a loud metallic clattering sound against the gleaming floor reminding him of how crazy things had become. Checking on the Manson’s one more time, he saw them disappear around the block. The branches on an evergreen tree in Charlie Thornton’s yard swayed in response to a powerful gust of wind. It would be a long, cold, stormy night.
Chapter 35
Alex shifted on the great room couch and drifted out of a shallow sleep. He remained motionless and listened intently, feeling certain that something woke him, but he couldn’t be sure. For the past two hours, he’d drifted in and out of sleep on the couch since the freezing rain started pounding just after midnight. He checked his watch and put his hand on the pistol grip of the assault rifle lying across his chest.
Something’s different.
He stayed in place under the wool blanket for a few more moments, scanning the house for sounds.
Nothing.
Before lying down on the couch, he had checked on Kate and the kids in the master bedroom. Kate and Emily were snuggled together in bed, and Ryan was in his sleeping bag on the floor next to Kate’s side of the bed.
After checking the family, he proceeded to check the sound traps he had set earlier in the evening. The traps were basic. He placed stools from the kitchen in front of the doors to the mudroom porch, garage, front stoop and basement. On top of each stool, he balanced a short two by four plank from his remnant pile in the garage, pushing one end of the plank up against the door. On the planks, he arranged several empty vegetable cans, which would hopefully tumble to the hardwood floor if the plank moved. Given his shallow sleep tonight, Alex was confident that none of the traps had been triggered.
In the dark great room, he sat up and squinted waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness.
It’s really dark in here.
Another wave of freezing rain pummel the great room windows, highlighting the frequent, unpredictable gusts of wind and rain which had prevented any semblance of restful sleep.
Something else woke me up this time.
Rising from the couch, he let the blanket slide to the floor between the couch and the coffee table, glaring at the empty cof
fee mug on the table.
A lot of good that did me.
Alex labored to figure out what had put him on alert, fighting the urge to whisper his thoughts aloud.
The outside lights are out.
Alex turned his head toward the front and back of the house.
Jesus! How did I miss that? Brilliant.
The last time he remembered being awake, the outdoor floodlights cast thin beams of light through the minute openings along the sides of the shades, creating a brilliant lattice work high on the walls and the ceiling. Now there was nothing. Alex’s mind ran through several possibilities in a matter of seconds, starting with the worst and most unlikely scenario.
Doubtful in this storm—and they’d have to pull two plugs. One by the mudroom door and one on the side of the great room. Simultaneously.
He stopped the mental process and looked at the flat-screen TV and home theatre system. The power is out. There were no lights on the system that would indicate energy flowing to the electronics. No green clock on the cable box, no red “off” indicator buttons on any of the electronics. In the kitchen the lights on the microwave and stove were similarly dead, casting the house into an eerie silence punctuated by the dangerous gusts slamming their home.
Very unlikely that they cut the power to the house.
He crept into the kitchen and glanced at the basement door; the plywood and cans remain balanced on the stool. Continuing past the basement door to the hallway leading to the foyer, his heart pumped faster.
Alex stared down the hallway toward the front door. His eyes had adjusted enough for him to determine that the trap was intact.
Two more to go.
Moving silently across the kitchen, Alex approached the entrance to the mudroom. He could already see from the kitchen that the cans were still propped up on the plank set against the garage entrance. Moving his head around the entrance corner, he spied the contraption set against the front mudroom door.
Intact.
THE ALEX FLETCHER BOXSET: Books 1-5 Page 28
