Spencerville

He lay there, looked and listened, but saw no one and heard nothing. The single lamp still shone weakly from somewhere at the far end of the room, casting dark shadows where he lay. The sofa blocked his view of the room toward the fireplace, but he could see the stone chimney rising to the high cathedral ceiling, and noticed the gray wolf head looking across the room from thirty feet away.

He lay on his back, motionless, the pistol still sweeping, controlling his breathing and trying to get a sense of the layout of the big room from what he could see. He was fairly certain he'd hit Baxter, but by the sound of Baxter's heavy crash to the floor, Keith reasoned that Baxter was wearing his body armor and that the round had simply knocked him off his feet, and he'd scrambled away from the door. Baxter might be hurt, Keith thought, but a.38-caliber pistol round that had gone through a plank and hit body armor would not hurt him too badly.

Keith couldn't see much beyond the sofa and the other furniture, so he slid a few feet away toward the wall. His head and eyes continuously swept the room, left to right, as his pistol swept right to left, trusting his peripheral vision and his hearing to cover what was momentarily not in his direct line of sight, and trusting his instinct to snap fire at anything that moved.

Keith didn't know who was going to make the first move, but he was fairly certain that there weren't many moves left on the board now.

Images of Billy Marlon flashed in front of him — Billy at the bar in John's Place, Billy asking Keith if he could come along, Billy in the pickup truck on the way up here, Billy sitting with Keith in the dark woods... Billy writhing in agony in that hole. Billy dead.

Keith thought, too, of Annie. He knew she was here, not far away, and she knew he was here in this room.

Keith decided to make the first move, not based on rage or ego, but on the assumption that Baxter knew someone was in the room and that Baxter also knew approximately where that person was, while Keith didn't have a clue as to where Baxter was.

Keith began to rise to one knee, then heard a woman's voice from the direction of the fireplace say, "He's in the far right corner, crouched with a pistol."

Before she even finished, Keith sprang up on one knee, aimed over the back of the sofa, and fired two rounds at Baxter, who had taken cover behind a wooden chest in the corner. Keith fell back behind the sofa and rolled to the right, toward the wall, as two answering rounds ripped through the sofa.

Keith lay still behind an upholstered chair.

In the two seconds it had taken him to fire, he'd caught a glimpse of Annie to his left, kneeling on the floor near the fireplace, naked. He was sure she'd seen him.

Keith was certain that at least one of his rounds had hit Baxter, but again the body armor had saved him. Keith wasn't too happy with the six-shot Smith & Wesson Police Model 10 that Baxter's men used, especially not in this situation where, with one bullet left, he couldn't take a chance and open the cylinder, extract the used casings, and reload chamber by chamber.

He wondered if Baxter was using the Glock, which had a seventeen-round, quick reload magazine. It didn't matter anyway, because, as Keith suspected, now that Baxter knew for sure it was Landry, the round-counting game was about to be cut short.

As if Baxter had read Keith's mind, Baxter called out, "Don't shoot, Landry. I'm standing right behind her. I got a gun to her head. So you just stand up where I can see you, hands high."

Keith figured that was coming, because he knew Baxter. He noticed that Baxter's voice was steady, but not altogether calm, even though he had everything going for him.

"I want to see empty hands first."

Keith had only one option left, and Baxter had given it to him by firing. Keith played dead.

A few seconds went by, and Baxter called out, "Hey, asshole. You want her to die? Stand up like a man, or I blow her fucking head off. I kid you not."

Keith heard Annie's voice say, "Don't do it, Keith..." followed by a loud slap and a cry of pain.

Baxter yelled out again, "Hey, hero, you got five seconds, then she's dead. One!"

Keith didn't think Baxter was going to kill her, and there were a lot of reasons for that, not the least of which was that Baxter didn't want to lose his human shield.

"Two!"

Keith knew if he stood, he couldn't expect a quick death. He held the revolver close to his body to muffle the sound, opened the cylinder, and extracted the five spent casings.

"Three!"

Keith began quietly slipping rounds into the empty chambers.

"Four! I swear to God, Landry, you stand up, or she's dead."

Annie called out, "No! Don't..."

Another slap and another cry of pain, during which Keith snapped the cylinder quickly back into the frame.

"Five! Okay, she gets it."

Keith held his breath and steadied himself. He wanted to stand, to shout, to shoot, to let Baxter take him, to do anything in that split second except what he knew he had to do, which was nothing.