She looked back at the bathtub, unable to see Jacob without standing all the way up. This was how it would feel to be ripped in half. Go. Stay.
No. She couldn’t crouch helpless in the bathroom while a wounded man in his sixties died to defend her.
Still bent over, she ran for the master bedroom.
A sudden, furious barrage of gunfire deafened her. Crying out, she dropped to the carpeted floor. That sounded like half a dozen guns. Richard hadn’t come alone this time.
In the sudden silence, she crawled the rest of the way into the closet, twirled the dial with a shaking hand and took out the pistol she recognized right away as a revolver.
She pushed herself to her feet and hurried to the doorway, setting her back to the door as she’d seen actors do in action shows on TV, edging over to see the hall.
Michael hadn’t moved. The wallboard and ceiling above him were shredded, but from the back he appeared unhurt and alert. With a moan, Robin got down and crawled fast toward him and her terrified son.
* * *
HALF A MILE. Quarter of a mile. Seth’s truck rocked and swerved as he made the turn into the driveway. He swore at the sudden realization that he wasn’t wearing his vest.
God, had Dad been wearing the one Seth had borrowed for him?
That’s when he heard a volley of gunfire. So many shots, it was like approaching an outdoor gun range.
He wouldn’t accept that he was too late.
Sunlight glinted off windows that appeared unbroken across the front of the house. Hoping to draw the gunman or gunmen out of the house, he skidded to a stop in his usual parking place. At a fleeting glance, he saw neither movement nor any damage here, either.
Even as he shut down the engine, Seth bent over to get out, intent on shielding behind the door he’d just opened. He hadn’t quite made it when the windows in the truck exploded simultaneously and he fell the rest of the way to the packed gravel.
Teeth clenched, he scrambled behind the rear bumper, forcing himself to regroup. It had been a while since he’d heard or seen what a semiautomatic assault rifle could do.
Crouching behind the truck, he lifted the hatch and grabbed his Kevlar vest.
In the act of reaching for a tab on the vest, he saw something that made him pause. Dark splotches on the gravel. Oh, hell. Blood soaked his shirtsleeve and dripped from his hand. One of those bullets had found him, and he hadn’t even felt it. Still didn’t feel it. He wiped blood off his hand on his jeans and finished closing the Velcro.
Judging from the earlier blast, Winstead had shot his way into the house. Did he already have Jacob? Seth shook his head. The only possible way that bastard could have gotten his hands on the boy they all loved was by killing the two adults in the house. They’d made it upstairs, he knew that. He wouldn’t believe they were dead.
He knew from experience that the pain would hit suddenly. He hoped it held off and didn’t blindside him. His Glock held in firing position, he crept along the passenger side of his truck, careful not to give away his position with a crunch of gravel. Being up against an assault rifle didn’t intimidate him. He needed only one shot—the right shot.
* * *
ROBIN HAD REACHED Michael and the bathroom door when a second explosion of gunfire began. She dropped to the floor again, and saw Michael try to pancake himself. Since shreds of wallboard didn’t fly, she worked out that the shots weren’t here in the house.
“Damn it,” Michael ground out. “I’ll bet Seth just got here.”
Suddenly sick, she felt sure Seth had driven up openly in an attempt to draw Richard’s attention. If he’d died in the hail of bullets—
Robin wiped a wet cheek. “It sounds like Richard brought an army. Why would he do that?”
Michael took his gaze off the head of the stairs for a fleeting instant. “I don’t think he did. Sounds like an assault rifle to me.”
Feeling even sicker, Robin could only think, Of course. After reading about school shootings where teenagers had gotten their hands on an AR-15 or the like, Robin had been horrified when she first saw the two Richard owned. She asked why he had them and he’d said, Because I can. Imagine what the members of the Seattle city council would think if they knew he owned guns at all, far less the most lethal of them. That was Richard in a nutshell: the facade of being a compassionate man, an activist, that he wore like the too-thin crust of cooling lava over the deadly red-hot flow beneath.