Its driver’s side door swung open and a deputy got out. He rounded Danica’s car and started up the driveway toward the house, keying the walkie-talkie clipped to his shoulder. He was passing her front bumper when a fast series of loud cracks came from somewhere along the side of the yard—pop-pop-pop-pop. Danica had just enough time to register that this was the sound of real-life gunshots—more subdued than the movie kind, and more terrifying—and then the deputy made a kind of shrug with his whole body and dropped to the concrete, right in front of her car. There was blood coming out of his head.

CHAPTER SIX

Behind her, Carl was already moving. He grabbed her by the arm and dragged her away from the window. The last thing she saw, before he pulled her clear, was a bald man in a black sweatshirt running in from the edge of the yard, toward the fallen deputy. The bald man had a gun in his hand.

Then Carl was hauling her across the room, stopping only long enough to duck into the closet again. He came back out with the handgun and all three magazines. He pocketed two, then shoved the third into the gun. He worked the slide on top, heading toward the hallway as he did, nodding for her to follow.

“Come on.”

She noticed only then that he had the thick yellow envelope tucked under one arm. He stepped fast out of the room, the gun raised, finger on the trigger.

Danica could hear neighbors yelling outside. A little girl screaming high and shrill, then a woman shouting at her to get inside.

Carl advanced along the hall, back into the living room. He swung the gun toward the big sliding door, covering it for a moment—nothing there—and then moving on, heading toward the front entry hall. Danica had taken only a step into the living room, following Carl, when a sound rattled across the house from the unseen front door: somebody trying the knob.

Carl halted in place, the gun still leveled.

The rattling at the front entry stopped; the door was locked. There was a second of silence, and then somebody kicked the door, hard.

By then Carl was pulling her back toward the slider, which faced the rear yard. They had taken only a step in that direction when a man bounded onto the patio. Not the bald man. This man had thick blond hair down to his collar. He crossed the patio in two strides, raised a gun and fired three times, low into the glass. Danica saw the bullets punch into the carpet in front of her. Felt the impacts reverberate through the floor. The glass pane shattered and rained out of its frame.

Carl swung his pistol toward the opening. The blond man saw it, flinched and threw himself sideways.

Carl fired. Two shots—deafening, like firecrackers going off against Danica’s eardrums.