“Not if you’re not shooting at them, it ain’t. Listen, I got no problem at all taking the first shot, and if I do I’m planning to hit something, like somebody’s head.”

“Ed,” Stone said, “I think we’ve got to get a positive ID on them before we start shooting people in the head. I’d hate to find out later that we murdered a couple of fishermen, returning home late.”

“Picky, picky, picky,” Rawls said. “All right, both of you know these boys on sight, do you not?”

“We do,” Stone said.

“Then I’m going to rely on you to identify them. I won’t fire until the two of you agree it’s the Stone twins. Will that do it for you?”

“I think I can defend that position in court,” Stone said.

“What court?” Ed asked. “Nobody’s going to be alive to testify against us.”

“We’ve still got to convince Sergeant Tom Young that we were in the right.”

“All right,” Ed said. “What’s our story? It’s better we’re agreed on that instead of making it up later, in separate rooms with separate cops.”

“You came over to the house and reported the twins leaving their dock and turning south. We speculated on their destination, and all three of us voted for right here. Okay so far?”

“That works for me,” Dino said.

“We thought they might be coming to shoot up my house and my guests, so we hunkered down here to ascertain their intentions—before doing any shooting.”

“Now comes the good part, I hope,” Ed said.

“They approached my dock and, using my night binoculars . . . Hang on.” He rummaged around in the cockpit before coming up with them. “In good working order. And using these, I was able to identify the two people aboard as Eben and Enos Stone—though I wasn’t sure which was which. I handed Dino the glasses.” He did so. “And Dino confirmed my judgment.”

“Have they killed us yet?” Dino asked. “They’ve certainly had the time.”

“Then they began firing. We ducked, in the hope they would stop, but they didn’t, so we returned fire. That is, you returned fire, Ed. You’re the one with the nightscope.”

“Good by me. Now shut up and listen.”

They listened and heard engine noises in the distance.

“Running fast,” Ed said.

“Too fast for in the dark,” Dino agreed.

As if they had taken Dino’s advice, the power out there was reduced, and they came into the harbor more slowly.

“You just let me know when you’ve got a positive ID,” Ed said. “I’ll take it from there.”

Everybody rammed in magazines and worked their slides.

“I hope they didn’t hear that,” Ed said. “That was not an inviting sound.”

“Good,” Stone said. “We had hoped it would warn them off, but it didn’t work.”