Extreme Denial Part 15

"Sometime." Decker kissed her neck, inhaling her fragrance. "Right now, there are better things to do."

But he couldn't stop thinking of Rome, of McKittrick, of what had happened in the courtyard. The dark nightmare haunted him. He had hoped to put everything that McKittrick represented behind him. Now, as he had two months ago, he couldn't help wondering why in G.o.d's name McKittrick had shown up in Santa Fe to watch him.

10.

"It arrived?"

"This afternoon," Decker said. "I didn't have a chance to show you." After the party, they were driving back along shadowy Camino Lindo.

"Show me now."

"You're sure you're not tired?"

"Hey, if I get tired, I can always stay at your place and use it," Beth said.

The "it" they referred to was a bed that Decker had commissioned from a local artist, John Ma.s.sey, whose specialty was working with metal. Using a forge, a hammer, and an anvil, Ma.s.sey had shaped the iron bedposts into intricate designs that resembled carved wood.

"It's wonderful," Beth said after Decker parked the Cherokee in the carport and they went inside. "Even more striking than you described." She touched the metal's smooth black finish. "And those figures cut out of the headboard-or head metal-or whatever you call it when it's made out of iron. These figures look like they're based on a Navajo design, but they also look like Egyptian hieroglyphs, their feet out one way, their hands out another. Actually, they look like they're drunk."

"John has a sense of humor. They're not based on anything. He makes them up."

"Well, I sure like them," Beth said. "They make me smile."

Decker and Beth admired it from various angles. "Certainly looks solid," Decker said.

Beth pressed a hand on the mattress. She raised her eye-brows, mischievous. "Want to try it out?"

"You bet," Decker said. "If we break it, I'll make John give me my money back."

He turned off the light. Slowly, amid lingering kisses, they undressed each other. The bedroom door was open. Moonlight streamed through the high, wide solar-gain windows in the corridor outside the bedroom. The glow on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s made Decker think of ivory. Kneeling, wors.h.i.+ping, he brought his lips down.

11.

They must have come over the back wall. That was at seven minutes after three in the morning. Decker was able to be specific about the time because he had an old-fas.h.i.+oned alarm clock with hands, and when he checked it later, he discovered that was when the hands had stopped moving.

Unable to sleep, he lay on his side, admiring Beth's face in the moonlight, imagining that she had already returned from her business trip, that their separation was over. In the distance, he heard the muted pop-pop-pop of firecrackers being set off at private parties that continued the Fiesta celebrations. There are going to be a lot of hangovers tomorrow morning, he thought. And sleepy neighbors kept up by parties next to them. The police will be busy, responding to complaints. How late is it? he wondered, and turned toward the clock.

He couldn't see its illumination. Suspecting that he had put some of Beth's clothing in front of it, he reached to remove the obstacle, but instead, he touched the clock itself. Puzzlement made him frown. Why would the clock's light be off? The pop-pop-pop of distant firecrackers persisted. But the noise wasn't intrusive enough to prevent him from hearing something else-the faint sc.r.a.pe of metal against metal.

Troubled, Decker sat up. The noise came from beyond the foot of his bed, from the solar-gain corridor outside his bedroom, from the door on the right at the end of the corridor. That door led outside to a small flower garden and patio. Faintly, metal continued to sc.r.a.pe against metal.

In a rush, he put a hand over Beth's mouth. The moonlight revealed the shock with which her eyes opened. As she struggled against his hand on her mouth, he pressed his head against her left ear, his voice a tense whisper. "Don't try to say anything. Listen to me. Someone's trying to break into the house."

The metal sc.r.a.ped.

"Get out of bed. Into the closet. Hurry."

Naked, Beth scrambled out of bed and dashed into the closet on the right side of the room. The closet was large, a walk-in, ten by twelve feet. It had no windows. Its darkness was greater than that of the bedroom.

Decker yanked open the bottom drawer of his bedside table and removed the Sig-Sauer 928 pistol that he had bought when he first arrived in Santa Fe. He crouched next to the bed, using it for cover while he grabbed the bedside telephone, but as he put the phone to his ear, he knew that there wasn't any point in pressing 911-he didn't hear a dial tone.

Abrupt silence aggravated Decker's tension. The sound of metal sc.r.a.ping against metal had stopped. Decker lunged into the walk-in closet, couldn't see Beth, and took cover next to a small dresser. As he aimed toward the corridor beyond his open bedroom door, he s.h.i.+vered from stress, his nude body feeling cold, although he was sweating. The back door on the right, which he had been intending to oil, squeaked open.

Who the h.e.l.l would be breaking in? he asked himself. A burglar? Possibly. But suspicions from his former life took possession of him. He couldn't put away the icy thought that unfinished business had caught up to him.

Immediately the intrusion detector made a rhythmic beeping sound: the brief alert the system provided before the full ear-torturing blare of the alarm. Not that the alarm would do any good-because the telephone line had been cut, the alarm's signal couldn't be transmitted to the security company. If the intrusion detector hadn't been rigged to a battery in case of a power failure, the warning beep wouldn't even be sounding now.

At once the beeps became a constant wail. Shadows rushed into the bedroom. Rapid flashes pierced the darkness, the staccato roar of automatic weapons a.s.saulting Decker's eardrums. The flashes illuminated the impact of countless bullets against the bedsheets, pillow feathers flying, mattress stuffing erupting.

Before the gunmen had a chance to realize their mistake, Decker fired, squeezing the trigger repeatedly. Two of the gunmen lurched and fell. A third man scrambled from the bedroom. Decker shot at him and missed, the bullet shattering a solar-gain window as the man disappeared into the corridor.

Decker's palms were moist, making him grateful that his pistol had a checkered nonslick grip. His bare skin exuded more sweat. Traumatized by the roar of the shots, his eardrums rang painfully. He could barely hear the security system's wail. He wouldn't be able to detect any sound the gunman made. For that matter, Decker didn't know if the three gunmen were the only intruders in the house, and he couldn't tell how seriously he had injured the two men he had shot. Would they still be capable of firing at him if he tried to leave the closet?

He waited anxiously for his night vision to return after the glare of the muzzle flashes. It worried him that he didn't know where Beth was. Somewhere in the s.p.a.cious closet, yes. But had she found cover, perhaps behind the cedar chest? He couldn't risk glancing behind him in hopes of detecting her murky shadow in the darkness. He had to keep his attention directed toward the bedroom, prepared to react if someone attacked across it. At the same time, he felt a cold spot on his spine, terribly aware that the closet had another entrance, a door behind him that led into the laundry room. If the gunman snuck around and attacked from that direction ...

I can't guard two directions at once, Decker thought. Maybe whoever else is out there ran away.

Would you have run away?

Maybe.

Like h.e.l.l.

Apprehension made him rigid. The middle of the night, the phone and the electricity cut off, no way to call for help, no way for the alarm to be transmitted to the police-all the gunman had to worry about was a neighbor being wakened by the shots or by the alarm. But could those noises be heard from outside the thick adobe house? The nearest house was several hundred yards away. The noise would be muted by the distance. The gunshots might sound like the distant firecrackers Decker had heard. The intruder might think he had a little more time.

The attack didn't come from the laundry room. Instead, an automatic weapon roared from the entrance to the bedroom, the muzzle flashes brilliant, bullets tearing up each side of the closet's doorjamb, strafing the open s.p.a.ce between them, hitting the wall beyond, shredding clothes on hangers, bursting shoe boxes and garment bags, sending chunks of fabric, wood, and cardboard flying, fragments striking Decker's bare back. The acrid stench of cordite filled the area.

As suddenly as it began, the din of the automatic weapon stopped, the only sound the blare of the security system. Decker didn't dare shoot at where the muzzle flashes had been. The gunman would likely have s.h.i.+fted position and be waiting to aim at the flash from Decker's pistol if he returned fire.

Immediately Decker became aware of movement in the closet. Beth's naked figure darted from a shadowy corner. She knew the house. She knew about the door to the laundry room. As she twisted the k.n.o.b and pushed at the door, the submachine gun roared, its bullets chasing her. Decker thought he heard her moan. There was so much noise, he couldn't tell, but as she vanished into the darkness of the laundry room, she clutched her right shoulder. Decker's urge was to rush to her, but he didn't dare give in to that suicidal impulse. The gunman was counting on him to lose control, to show himself. Instead, Decker pressed himself closer to the small dresser, ready with his pistol, hoping that the gunman himself would lose patience.

Please, Decker thought. Dear G.o.d, please. Don't let Beth be hurt.

He strained to watch the entrance to the bedroom. He wished that he could hear if the gunman was moving around out there, but his ears rang even more painfully. That could work the other way around, he realized. Since his hearing was compromised, whoever was trying to kill him probably wouldn't be hearing well, either. There might be a way to turn their mutual affliction to his advantage. Next to the dresser that s.h.i.+elded him was a waist-high metal stepladder that he used for reaching items on the top shelf. It was about the width of a man's shoulders. Grabbing a s.h.i.+rt that he had left on the dresser, Decker draped it over the low stepladder. In the darkness, the silhouette looked like someone crouching. He pushed the stepladder ahead of him, praying that the gunman's hearing was indeed compromised, that the wail of the security system would keep him from hearing the sc.r.a.ping sounds the stepladder made on the floor. With force, he shoved the stepladder from the closet, sending it skittering upright across the bedroom, toward where he had last seen the gunman.

An explosion of gunfire tore the s.h.i.+rt apart, knocking the ladder over. Simultaneously Decker fired several times at the muzzle flashes in the hallway. The flashes jerked toward the tile floor, illuminating a man who was bent over in pain, his submachine gun blasting holes in the tile floor. As the man fell, the roaring flashes stopped.

Afraid that his own flashes would have made him a target, Decker rolled. He came to a crouch on the opposite side of the closet's entrance, fired again toward the man he had just hit, then toward each of the men he had previously shot, and quickly retreated into the darkness of the laundry room.

Beth. He had to find Beth. He had to make sure Beth wasn't injured. He had to keep her from running again and revealing herself until he knew for certain there was no one else in the house. In the laundry room, the sweet smell of detergent emphasized the bitterness of cordite. Sensing movement between the hot water tank and the water softener, he inched toward it and found Beth, only to be startled by a fiery blast from a shotgun as the closed door to the laundry room blew inward, stunning him with its concussion. He and Beth dropped to the floor.

His night vision already impaired by the close flash from the shotgun, Decker was further blinded by a second flash, another shotgun blast. The bulky shadow of a man charged inside, firing a third time as Decker aimed high, shooting upward from where he lay on his stomach.

Hot liquid streamed over Decker. Blood? But the liquid wasn't just hot; it was almost scalding. And it didn't just stream; it cascaded. The water tank must have been hit, Decker thought in desperation, straining to ignore his pain from the high temperature of the liquid slos.h.i.+ng over him while he concentrated on the darkness across from him, where seconds earlier muzzle flashes had revealed the man with the shotgun. He felt Beth's panicked breathing next to him. He smelled blood, its coppery odor unmistakable. A strong odor. But not just from the direction of the man with the shotgun. It also seemed to come from next to him. The terrible thought kept insisting: Had Beth been hit?

As his night vision improved after the a.s.sault of the muzzle flashes, he detected the murky outline of a body on the floor at the entrance to the laundry room. Beth trembled beside him. Feeling the spasms of her terror, Decker calculated how many times he had fired and struggled against a terror of his own when he realized that he had only one round left.

Drenched by the painfully hot water, he pressed a finger to Beth's lips, silently urging her to be quiet. Then he squirmed across the laundry room's wet floor toward the entrance. Moonlight through the hallway's skylight helped him to see the shotgun that had fallen beside the corpse.

Or at least Decker hoped it was a corpse. Prepared to fire his last bullet, he checked for a pulse. Finding none, he relaxed only slightly as he searched beneath the corpse's windbreaker, his left hand touching a revolver. Immediately he shoved the shotgun into the laundry room, returned to Beth in the darkness, felt for and raised the trapdoor to the crawl s.p.a.ce that led under the house, and guided Beth toward it. Most homes in Santa Fe were built on concrete slabs and didn't have bas.e.m.e.nts; a few, like Decker's, had a four-foot-high service tunnel under the floor.

Rigid, Beth resisted descending the wooden stairs. An odor of dust rose from the gloom. Then she seemed to accept the crawl s.p.a.ce as a sanctuary, trembling, hurriedly descending, hot water pouring down with her. Decker squeezed her right arm in what he hoped she accepted as a gesture of rea.s.surance, then closed the hatch.

The blare from the security system continued to unnerve him as he crept toward the darkness of the far corner, positioning himself beside the furnace. From there, he had a line of fire toward each entrance to the laundry room. He had the gunman's revolver in his left hand, his own pistol in his right, and, as a last resort, the gunman's shotgun, which he had pulled next to him, hoping that the gunman had not used all its ammunition.

But something else unnerved him, giving him a terrible sense of urgency. He knew that patience was the key to survival. If he tried to investigate the house, he might show himself to anyone who was hiding out there. The prudent thing to do was to stay in place and let someone else show himself. But Decker couldn't restrain his need to hurry things. He imagined Beth's growing sense of claustrophobia as she hunkered naked in the musty darkness of the crawl s.p.a.ce. He imagined her increasing pain. When he had touched her right arm to try to give her rea.s.surance, his fingers had come away smeared with a liquid that was thicker than water. The liquid was warm and smelled of blood. Beth had been hit.

I need to get her to a doctor, Decker thought. I can't wait any longer. He crept from behind the furnace, approached the entrance to the hallway, prepared to rush out, to aim one way and then the other; instead, he froze as a flashlight beam settled on the corpse before him.

He pressed himself against the inside wall. Sweat mixed with the water that slicked him as he concentrated on that exit from the laundry room, then glanced nervously across to the door that led into the closet. Why would they use a flashlight? It didn't make sense to reveal themselves. The flashlight must be a trick, he thought, an attempt to distract me while someone comes from the opposite direction, from the darkness of the closet.

Surprising him, the flashlight moved away, heading back toward the front door. That didn't make sense, either. Unless ... Did he dare trust what he was thinking? A neighbor might have decided that the m.u.f.fled staccato blasts he was hearing definitely didn't come from firecrackers. The neighbor might have called 911. The flashlight might belong to a policeman. That was how a lone policeman would behave-as soon as he saw the body, not knowing what he was involved in, possibly a gunfight, he would retreat and radio for help.

Decker's already sickeningly rapid heartbeat pounded even faster. Under other circ.u.mstances, he wouldn't have dared to take the risk of revealing his position. But Beth had been shot. G.o.d alone knew how serious the wound was. If he hesitated any longer, she might bleed to death in the crawl s.p.a.ce. He had to do something.

"Wait!" Decker shouted. "I'm in the laundry room! I need help!"

The flashlight beam stopped going away, glared back along the hallway, and focused on the entrance to the laundry room. Decker immediately realized the further risk he had taken. His ears were ringing so painfully that he couldn't tell if anyone shouted back to him. If he didn't answer or if what he shouted didn't logically connect with what the policeman shouted (a.s.suming this in fact was a policeman), he would make the policeman suspicious.

"I live here!" Decker shouted. "Some men broke in! I don't know who you are! I'm afraid to come out!"

The flashlight beam s.h.i.+fted position, as if whoever held it was finding cover in a doorway.

"I can't hear you! There was shooting! My eardrums are messed up!" Decker shouted. "If you're a policeman, slide your badge down the hall so I can see it from this doorway!" Decker waited, glancing nervously from the doorway to the opposite door that led into the closet, apprehensive that he was leaving himself open to an attack. He had to take the chance. Beth, he kept thinking. I have to help Beth.

"Please!" Decker shouted. "If you're a policeman, slide your badge down!"

Because he couldn't hear it skittering, he was surprised by the sudden appearance of the badge on the brick floor of the corridor. The badge was stopped by the body of the gunman.

"Okay!" Decker's throat was sore. He swallowed with difficulty. "I'm sure you're trying to figure out what happened! You're as nervous as I am! When I come out, I'll have my hands up! I'll show them first!"

He set the handguns onto a laundry counter to his right, where he could scramble back and grab them if he had misjudged the situation. "I'm coming out now! Slowly! I'll show my hands first!" The moment he stepped free of the doorway, his hands high over his head, the flashlight beam s.h.i.+fted swiftly toward his eyes, nearly blinding him, making him feel more helpless.

It seemed as if time was suspended. The flashlight beam kept glaring at him. The policeman, if that was who this was (and despite the badge on the floor, Decker was suddenly having powerful doubts), didn't move, just kept studying him.

Or was it a gunman aiming at him?

Decker's eyes felt stabbed by the flashlight beam fixed on them, and he wanted to lower a hand to s.h.i.+eld his vision, but he didn't dare move, didn't dare unnerve whoever was studying him. The flashlight beam dropped down to his nakedness, then returned to his eyes.

At once time began again.

The flashlight beam moved, approaching. Decker's mouth was terribly dry, his vision so impaired that he couldn't see the looming dark figure, couldn't see how the man was dressed, couldn't identify him.

Then the flashlight and the figure were close, but Decker still couldn't tell who confronted him. His raised hands felt numb. He had the sense that the figure was talking to him, but he couldn't hear.

Unexpectedly the figure leaned close, and Decker was able to make out dimly what the figure shouted.

"You can't hear?"

The peripheral glow of the flashlight showed that the figure, a stocky Hispanic man, wore a uniform.

"I'm almost deaf!" The din of the alarm and the ringing in his ears were excruciating.

"... are you?"

"What?" Decker's voice seemed to come from far outside himself.

"Who are you?"

"Stephen Decker! I own this house! Can I put my hands down?"

"Yes. Where are your clothes?"

"I was sleeping when they broke in! I don't have time to explain! My friend's in the crawl s.p.a.ce!"

"What?" The policeman's tone expressed less confusion than astonishment.

"The crawl s.p.a.ce! I have to get her out of there!" Decker swung toward the laundry room, the flashlight beam swinging with him. His hands trembled as he grabbed the metal ring recessed into the trapdoor. He pulled the hatch fiercely upward and groped down the wooden steps into the darkness, smelling earth and dampness and the disconcerting odor of blood.

"Beth!"

He couldn't see her.

"Beth!"

From above him, the flashlight beam filled the pit, and he saw Beth huddled there, trembling, in a corner. He rushed to her, almost out of the flashlight's range but not so far that he didn't notice how pale her face was. Her right shoulder and breast were smeared with blood.

"Beth!"

He knelt, holding her, ignoring the dirt and cobwebs that clung to him. He felt her sobbing.

"It's all right. You're safe."

If she responded, he didn't know. He couldn't hear, and he was too busy guiding her toward the steps from the crawl s.p.a.ce and up toward the flashlight, the policeman helping her up, startled by her nakedness. Decker covered her with a dirty s.h.i.+rt from a hamper in the laundry room. She stumbled weakly, and he had to hold her up as they made their way along the corridor toward the front door.

Decker had the sense that the policeman was shouting to him, but he still couldn't hear. "The alarm pad's near the front door! Let me turn it off!"