Elsewhere

She got to her feet and took two cans of pears from a shelf, intending to throw them at whoever opened the door.

85

According to this Ed Harkenbach, who seemed to have more street smarts and be somewhat more balanced than the Ed who had entrusted Jeffy with his key to everything, the security alarm was nothing to worry about.

“A lot of things change from timeline to timeline,” he said as he led Jeffy along the hallway to Duke Pellafino’s study, “but in those that are at all similar to this world, one of the things you can rely on is that the police will take at least twenty minutes to respond to a security alarm in a private home. We’ll have our guns long before then.”

“How can you be certain Duke has guns?”

Raising his voice above the wailing alarm, Ed said, “How can I be certain the sun will rise in the east and set in the west? He said he was a detective in the Gang Activities Section of the LAPD.”

“He told me, too,” Jeffy said. “But he retired from that.”

“When you spend years putting hard-core sociopaths in prison, many of them MS-13 lunatics from Mexico and points south, psychos who like to behead people and hang others from streetlamps before eviscerating them, who butcher babies for pleasure, you have to figure if one of them gets out of prison, he might come looking for you. To a guy like Duke, retirement doesn’t mean the same thing as it does to your average accountant.”

In Pellafino’s study, as the house alarm continued to shrill, they found a handsome mahogany gun cabinet. The doors were locked, and the glass in them proved to be armored when Ed tried to shatter it with the butt of his pistol.

“Stand back,” the physicist ordered, and with two shots he blew out the lock on the cabinet.

The crash of the shots temporarily half deafened Jeffy, and the screaming alarm seemed to quiet to a mournful wail.

Yanking open drawers in the base of the cabinet, Ed found two handguns, spare magazines, and boxes of ammunition. “A Sig Pro by Sig Sauer. Chambered for forty-caliber Smith and Wesson rounds. Ten-round magazine. Polymer frame but the slide rails are solid pieces of machined steel. Think you can handle it?”

“I’ve practiced a lot with my pistol.”

“This one’s more powerful than yours. Expect some recoil, aim low,” Ed advised as he loaded a magazine and snapped it into the pistol.

Jeffy took the offered Sig Pro. He didn’t want to kill anyone or wound anyone or even point a gun at anyone, but if Falkirk and his goons laid a hand on Amity or Michelle, then he’d do what he had to do. Taking a life in self-defense or to protect the innocent was killing, but it wasn’t murder. If he had to kill people in this world, maybe there would be worlds in which ultimate violence was never required of him.

Ed loaded two spare magazines and passed them to Jeffy. Then from the rack of long guns above the drawers, he chose for himself a 12-gauge pistol-grip pump-action shotgun. He clicked a round into the breach, inserted three more in the magazine tube, and loaded his pockets with shells.

“How,” Jeffy wondered, “does a renowned physicist and bow-tied academic turn himself into a kick-ass gunman?”

“Necessity.”

Ed led the way out of the study and turned left in the hall, heading toward the front of the house.

“Where are we going?” Jeffy asked as he followed.

“Upstairs. When we port back to your timeline, we don’t want to pop into the kitchen if Falkirk is there with ten of his goons.”

Jeffy’s hearing was coming back. The alarm swelled louder.

He said, “What if the house is still full of gas?”

“Then we’ll port out before taking a breath, try again in a couple minutes. But there won’t be gas. The place will be clear. Falkirk meant to hit hard and wrap up the attack fast.”

Ed seemed certain that the assault had involved an aerosol sedative, not a lethal gas, and Jeffy wanted to believe that was the case. After all, he’d breathed it in and survived. But what if he’d inhaled twice instead of once?

The thought of Amity and Michelle dead in that kitchen sent waves of nausea slithering around his stomach again, but it also inspired rage. His spine stiffened and his jaws clenched. The pistol in his right hand felt as if it were a part of him, an extension of his body through which vengeance, if vengeance was justified, would be delivered without hesitation.

As they entered the foyer, Jeffy saw two police officers through the panes of glass in the front door. They were coming up the steps onto the porch. Evidently an ex-cop and friend of the force like Duke warranted a faster response than other citizens.

The cops saw Jeffy and Ed, and the physicist said, “Quick! Up the stairs.”

86

Falkirk and his two subordinates entered the house through the garage, where Lucas Blackridge waited for them. The SWAT specialist had already employed the lock-release gun to disengage the deadbolt in the connecting door.