Using as little movement as possible, she pulled her left hand back toward her, easing the pistol’s slide back just a fraction of an inch and releasing the tension holding the cartridge in place.

The spent shell casing fell free and bounced off the floor. The sound was a pin dropping—as loud as thunder.

The significance wasn’t lost on Greg Hewitt. His gaze flicked to the piece of brass and back, quick as a snake’s. Just that much of a smile curved the very corners of his mouth.

“What do you think, Lauren?” he said quietly. “Do you think the next round chambered?”

She had no real way of knowing without pulling the trigger.

“Do you want to find out?” she asked.

Hewitt weighed his odds.

It all happened fast.

His gaze darted over her shoulder to the kitchen door behind her, widening, as if in recognition. He expected her to buy the fake. She didn’t.

He lunged toward her, grabbing the barrel of the gun and pulling upward and to the side.

Lauren pulled the trigger.

The explosion was deafening.

I win, she thought.

The bullet bore through Hewitt’s right hand and struck him in the hollow of the right shoulder.

He roared like a wounded animal, but pulled the Walther from her hands with his left and backhanded her across the face with the gun.

Lauren felt her left cheekbone shatter like an egg. The gun’s sight sliced through the flesh of her face like a knife through butter. Blood poured from the wound like a waterfall.

She staggered sideways, falling into a chair. Stars spun through her head like the bits of colored glass inside a kaleidoscope. Her knees felt like water giving way beneath her.

“You fucking bitch,” Hewitt said, almost under his breath.

On her hands and knees, Lauren held very still, waiting for the room to stop spinning. She wondered absently where Leah had gone. Had she run for the nearest neighbor? Had she run to another phone in the house to call 911?

The question had no sooner crossed her mind than she heard her daughter’s soft whimpering.

“Mommy . . .”

Lauren’s left eye had swollen nearly shut. She had to turn her head toward the kitchen door.

Roland Ballencoa stood there, tall and thin and dressed in black. The Grim Reaper. One hand clamped around the throat of her daughter.

He almost smiled. “Now, Lauren, I have something you want.”

Chapter 56

56

“She shot you,” Ballencoa said dispassionately.

Greg Hewitt looked at the ragged bleeding hole in his hand and then the hole in his shoulder as if just noticing. “I’m fine. It’s through-and-through. Just a flesh wound.”

Ballencoa had already dismissed the topic. He looked at Lauren. “Where are my journals?”