No Second Chance

The thought process took—and this is just a rough estimate—less than a tenth of a second. I had my foot on the accelerator. The tires shrieked. I thought about my house, the familiar setup of it, the direction the bullets had come from. Yes, I know how that sounds. Maybe panic speeds up those brain functions, I don’t know, but I realized that if I were the one doing the shooting, if I had been lying in wait for this car to approach, I’d have hidden behind the three shrubs that divide my property from the Christies’ next door. The shrubs were big and bushy and right on our driveway. If I had pulled all the way in, bam, you could have blown us away from the passenger side. When I hesitated, when the shooter had seen that we might back away, he was still in position, though not as good, to take us from the front.

So I looked up, turned the wheel, and aimed the car for those bushes.

A third bullet rang out. It hit something metal, probably the front grill, with aka-ping . I sneaked a glance at Rachel long enough to take a visual snapshot: her head was down, her hand pressed against the side of her head, blood seeping through the fingers. My stomach fell, but my foot stayed on the pedal. I moved my head back and forth, as if that might throw off the shooter’s aim.

My headlights illuminated the bushes.

I saw flannel.

Something happened to me. I talked before about sanity being a thin string and that mine had snapped. In that case, I went quiet. This time, a mix of rage and dread roared through my body. I pressed the pedal harder, almost through the floor. I heard a yell of surprise. The man in the flannel shirt tried to leap to the right.

But I was ready.

I turned the steering wheel toward him like we were playing bumper cars. There was a crash, a dull thud. I heard a scream. The bushes were caught up in the bumper. I looked for the man in the flannel. Nothing. I had my hand on the door handle, about to open it and go after him, when Rachel said, “No!”

I stopped. She was alive!

Her hand reached up and shifted the car into reverse. “Go back!”

I listened. I don’t know what I’d been thinking. The man was armed. I wasn’t. Despite the impact, I didn’t know if he was dead or injured or what.

I started back. I noticed that my dark suburban street was lit up now. Shots and shrieking tires are not common noises here on Darby Terrace. People had woken up and turned on the lights. They’d be dialing 911.

Rachel sat up. Relief flooded me. She had a gun in one hand. The other was still over her wound. “It’s my ear,” she said, and again, the mind working in funny ways, I had already started thinking about what procedure I would use to repair the damage.

“There!” she shouted.

I turned. The man in the flannel was hobbling down the driveway. I turned the wheel and aimed the car lights in his direction. He disappeared around back. I looked over at Rachel.

“Back up,” she said. “I’m not sure he’s alone.”

I did. “Now what?”

Rachel had her gun out, her free hand on the door handle. “You stay.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“You keep revving the engine and moving a little. Let them think we’re still in the car. I’ll sneak up on them.”

Before I could protest any further, she rolled out. With blood still flowing down her side, she darted away. I, per her instructions, revving the engine and feeling like a total dweeb, shifted the car into drive, moved forward, shifted the car into reverse, went back.

A few seconds later, I lost sight of Rachel.

A few seconds after that, I heard two more shots.

Lydia had watched it all from her spot in the backyard.

Pavel had shot too early. It was a mistake on his part. From her vantage point behind a wall of firewood, Lydia could not see who was in the car. But she’d been impressed. The driver had not only flushed Pavel out but wounded him as well.

Pavel limped into view. Lydia’s eyes adjusted enough to see the blood on his face. She raised her arm and waved him toward her. Pavel fell and then started crawling. Lydia kept her eyes on the routes to the backyard. They would have to come from the front. There was a fence behind her. She was near the back neighbor’s gate in case she needed to escape.

Pavel kept crawling. Lydia urged him on while keeping watch. She wondered how this ex-fed would play it. The neighbors were awake now. Lights were going on. The cops would be on their way.

Lydia would have to hurry.

Pavel made it to the pile of firewood and rolled next to her. For a moment, he stayed on his back. His breathing was wheezy and wet. Then he forced himself up. He knelt next to Lydia and looked out into the yard. He winced and said, “Leg broken.”

“We’ll take care of it,” she said. “Where’s your gun?”

“Dropped.”

Untraceable, she thought. Not a problem. “I have another weapon you can use,” she told him. “Keep a lookout.”

Pavel nodded. He squinted into the dark.

“What?” Lydia said. She moved a little closer to him.

“Not sure.”

As Pavel stared out, Lydia pressed the barrel of her gun against the hollow spot behind his left ear. She squeezed the trigger, firing two shots into his head. Pavel dropped to the ground like a marionette with his strings cut.

Lydia looked down at him. In the end, this might be best. Plan B was probably better than Plan A anyway. Had Pavel killed the woman—an ex–FBI agent—that would not have ended it. They’d probably search even harder for the mysterious man in flannel. The investigation would have continued. There wouldn’t be closure. This way, with Pavel dead—dead by the gun used at the original Seidman crime scene—the police would conclude that either Seidman or this Rachel (or both) was behind it. They’d be arrested. The charges might not stick, but no matter. The police would stop looking for anyone else. They could disappear with the money now.

Case closed.

Lydia suddenly heard the shriek of tire wheels. She tossed the weapon into the neighbor’s yard. She didn’t want it in plain sight. That would be too obvious. She quickly checked Pavel’s pockets. There was money, of course, the wad of bills she’d just given him. She’d let him keep that. One more thing to tie it all up nice and neat.

There was nothing else in his pockets—no wallet, no slip of paper, no identification or anything that could trace back to anything. Pavel had been good about that. More lights in windows now. Not much time. Lydia rose.

“Federal agent! Drop your weapon!”

Damn! A woman’s voice. Lydia fired toward where she thought the voice had originated from and ducked back behind the firewood. Shots came back in her direction. She was pinned down. What now? Still behind the firewood, Lydia stretched up behind her and released the gate hatch.