Excerpt from "Firefly"

She screamed as something large crashed through the dining room window, landed on the table and knocked her computer monitor right onto the floor, where its glass face exploded in a puff of arcing white smoke. Still frozen to her chair, she stared at the billowing curtains, stunned to see a face, a horrible face, pop up into view for a split second and then disappear. She heard Cat yell, Hey! and then he was running into the kitchen, trying to snag his gun out of his hip holster. She willed herself to get up, to get out of that room, trying not to step on all the glass or breathe the noxious cloud of phosphorous smoke hovering above the ruined monitor. That face – something about it. It had been all eyes and teeth, as if illuminated from below. How was that possible? She heard the back screen door open and then bang shut. And then came a strange, strangling noise and then a huge thump as something – Cat? – went down in a heap on the back steps.

She snatched up the phone and dialed 911 as she backed into the living room, feeling almost naked in the light, those curtains blowing in and that ominous silence outside. The phone rang and rang and rang, but no operator picked up. Goddamned District of Columbia! She hung it up and redialed, this time getting a busy signal. She swore out loud and redialed one more time, the cord stretched all the way out now. Ringing. Then she heard footsteps coming towards the back of the house. Cat? Or that face? She was terrified to go out there, but then remembered the derringer in her pocket. The operator came on just as she pulled the heavy little gun out of her jeans, nearly dropping the phone.

“Nine-one-one. What is your emergency?”

She froze again. What was her emergency? The footsteps were still coming, and they didn’t sound like Cat.

“Murder!” she said, blurting out the one word that ought to move their asses right along. “Help me, please.” And then she dropped the phone and backed into the living room, where the lights were off, as the footsteps came up onto the back porch and she heard the screen door open slowly, then bump closed. She could just hear the 911 operator saying hello several times from the handset down on the floor. They would have caller-ID, and that would give them the address. But right now she had bigger problems, as she saw the lights in the kitchen switch off, followed by those in the dining room. Definitely not Cat.

She shuffled as quietly as she could backwards across the living room carpet until she felt the couch behind her legs. Realizing she was silhouetted against the dim streetlight coming in through the front window drapes, she slipped behind an upholstered chair and squatted down. The house was silent except for the noises of the wind moving the front bushes around. She held the Derringer in both hands, then remembered it wasn’t cocked. The two diminutive side by side hammers were still down on the receiver. She heard a sound in the dining room, then another.

He was coming.

His shoes were crunching through the bits of glass from the monitor. And where the hell was Cat? She folded the Derringer into her belly to mask the sound and thumbed back the two hammers. She sat fully down on the floor, her back against the wall radiator, and brought the gun up. She froze, barely breathing. Let him find me. Cat had told her the effective range of the Derringer was arm’s length. Okay, that’s where I’ve got it.

She heard a small noise and what sounded like a grunt of effort, and then one of the table lamps came flying over the chair and into the front window, breaking out the glass and dropping heavily on her right shoulder. She nearly dropped the gun and had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. Where were the fucking cops, she wondered. Where was Cat? And then the man was right there, pulling the chair away, towering over her, that same face, a familiar face, with something in his hand, a hammer coming down in a wicked strike at her head.

She rolled to the left, towards the hallway, aimed upwards, and pulled both triggers on the Derringer. Two rapid-fire blasts banged the palm of her hand and she heard him yell and stumble backwards, colliding with some piece of furniture. She didn’t hesitate. She scrambled away from the overturned chair, rolled into the front hall, got up and ran as fast as she could straight out the back door and promptly tripped over the inert form of Cat Ballard, who groaned when she hit him. Her arms windmilling, she whacked her shoulder as she hit the back porch railing and slipped in something wet. She sat down abruptly on the top step, then went bumping right down the steps on her backside and onto the cold concrete of the sidewalk on all fours, her hands covered in – blood?

Cat’s blood?

She heard footsteps again, this time from inside the house, thumping heavily down the front hall towards the kitchen, sounding like a drunk trying to run. She saw Cat’s gun lying at the bottom of the steps and reached forward to grab it as a form filled the kitchen doorway, just inside the screen.

She raised the gun and tried to pull the trigger but her bloody, trembling hands slipped on the butt and she dropped it instead. As she lunged to retrieve it, she heard the man laugh and then the screen door was opening and he was silhouetted in the kitchen light, shooting at her, stars of red flame blossoming in the doorway as steel hornets slashed the air by her cheeks. She screamed and began rolling across the yard, barely conscious of bullets hammering the concrete and tearing up chunks of dead grass all around her as she kept rolling, rolling, and then she was into the cedars, Cat’s bloody gun still clutched in her hand. She tumbled through the dense green branches, got up, and ran straight down the hill, bushes and branches whipping her face, falling forward as much as she was running, caroming off small tree trunks in the darkness, until she twisted an ankle when she finally reached flat ground. She went down with a yelp, then stopped to listen.

She got up, hopping on one leg, rubbing the throbbing ankle, trying to hush her screaming lungs, her heart pounding so hard in her ears that he had to be able to hear it. She listened for signs of somebody coming down the hill after her, and then she could hear sirens, so she slumped back against a tree and tried not to cry. The creek was right below her, and, even in the cold, she thought about sliding down the huge boulders into that black water, if only to get that sticky mess off her hands.

He lunged out of the darkness and tackled her, sweeping her sideways and down, grabbing for her mouth with one hand while she fought and twisted and bit and tried to shout, but he was too strong, one iron arm encircling her chest and squeezing the breath right out of her. She thought she felt Cat’s gun under her knee but couldn’t reach it, but then he lost his balance for an instant and came over the top of her, giving her one glorious free shot at his crotch which she took, kicking out with every ounce of her strength and he was off of her, curling into a retching ball that went sliding down the stone banks of the creek and into the water. She patted the ground for Cat’s gun, found it, and crawled to the edge of the rocks, looking down, determined now, waiting for him to surface, ready to kill him, ready to empty that thing at him in the water. But he didn’t surface. There was only the sound of the creek, running high in winter, rushing over all the rocks, Rock Creek, that’s why they called it that, she thought, as her adrenaline began to crash and she slowly lowered the gun.

Above her on the bluff she heard voices shouting and saw blue lights flickering through the cedars. Walking backwards up the hill, keeping the gun pointing down the slope, waiting for him to show himself again, she trudged back up the slope the way she’d come, step by step, the backs of her shoes filling with bits of soft dirt and mud. When she neared the top she stopped, out of breath, her ankle pounding, her ribs sore from grappling with her attacker, she could hear men shouting, doors banging, other vehicles arriving. Then she heard an authoritative voice shouting, what’ve we got, Larry? And another man, Larry, she guessed, answering in an excited voice: You’re not gonna believe this, Cap, but it looks like Cat’s punch cut his throat and then shagged ass. That’s his car, and that’s her car. We need some fucking dogs back here.

She froze in the cedars. Cut his throat? Sweet Jesus! And they thought she did it? She started to push forward, out of the cedars, determined to clear that shit right up, and then stopped in her tracks. She didn’t recognize any of those voices, and she knew most of the guys on the District homicide squad. Could she clear this up? She felt the sticky mess on her hands, Cat’s blood. She hefted Cat’s gun. What would that look like to a bunch of cops who were cranking up a cop-killer frenzy out there? And the guy who’d busted into her house? Where was he?

Instinctively, she backed down the hill again, watching the bluffs this time, waiting to see if someone would come through the trees. Or turn loose a pack of tracking dogs. Surely the evidence in the house would reveal – what, exactly? Two broken windows. Overturned furniture. A struggle in the living room. She thought she had hit him with the .45, but then he’d come right back after her. So there’d be bullet holes in the ceiling, right? Proof that she had - what? Tried to shoot – whom? They’d had a lovers’ quarrel, which had escalated into a shooting? The Derringer was still up there, with her prints all over it.

God! She needed time to think, and also time for them to go through the house, see the evidence, put it together. She knew cops. In this situation, if one of them spotted her right now, he’d probably start shooting.

And Cat: the bastard had cut his throat? Shit, shit, shit! Poor Cat. And now their private thing would erupt into public view. Lynn and the kids would be dragged into a media circus when the truth came out. What had that cop, Larry, just called her: Cat’s punch? These were strangers, and they knew?

She reached the bottom again, backed into a tree, and stopped, aware now that she was back in Injun country. Had that bastard climbed back out of the creek? Was he out there in the woods now, ahead of her, waiting for her again? She shivered, both from the cold and the memory of how he’d come out of the bushes like some blood-crazed bear. She tried to remember his face, but there hadn’t really been one. She began to make her way slowly north, paralleling the creek as she went upstream as quietly as she could, keeping just out of sight of the water, conscious of the rising commotion up on the bluffs. More cars. More lights. Radios on external vehicle speakers.

She needed time to think. Which meant she had to get away, at least for tonight. But she had no car, no purse, no I.D, no money, and no fucking coat. And it wasn’t like she could go back to the house just now, not with dogs coming. She was reasonably at home in the woods, but had always been afraid of dogs. Especially in packs. She squeezed her sticky fingers together. Dogs would find her, too, no sweat.

The evergreen undergrowth closed around her in the darkness, but she kept going, pushing pungent pine branches out of her face while trying to make no noise, half expecting to see that lunging form again each time she pushed a branch aside. She held Cat’s gun in her right hand, and the butt was sticking to her palm now. Ahead she saw a flare of headlights through the underbrush as a car came down Tilden Road and rumbled across the stone bridge at the base of the hill before disappearing into the park.

She needed to get the hell out of here. She had to go to ground somewhere, somehow. No: she had to get a car.

Think, she told herself again, as she arrived at the edge of Tilden Road. There were no streetlights down here at the bottom of the hill, and the water rushing under the old bridge was shiny black in the moonlight. Right or left, she wondered, as she caught her breath. She had no goddamn idea of what to do next, but she was out of the underbrush now, so she’d see him if he came at her again. She checked the gun, a stainless steel Taurus Millenium Special .45. She peeled back the slide to verify that there was one up the spout. Her older brother had taught her about guns a long time ago, and Cat had done the same thing when they had first been dating, taking handguns along when they went together on one of her photography expeditions. If that lunatic came out of the bushes, it wouldn’t be hand-to-gland anymore. Unless of course he used his own gun, she thought, and then shook her head. She went down on one knee by the side of the creek and washed her hands, keeping an eye on the edge of the woods. More headlights at the top of the hill. Maybe she ought to just wait there until the first patrol car came blasting down, give herself up. Had to be warmer than this. She washed the gun butt and dried her hands on her jeans. The lights grew brighter, so she moved closer to the road.