Alex Kava Bundle - Alex Kava [313]
“That means Stucky has been here,” Tully said without looking up.
She kept her eyes on the windows as she walked back and forth. The lightning struck closer, igniting the sky and making the trees look like skeleton soldiers standing at attention. Suddenly she saw a reflection of someone in the hallway walking past the door. She spun around, her revolver gripped firmly, outstretched in front of her. Tully jumped to his feet and had his gun out in seconds.
“What is it, O’Dell?” He kept his eyes ahead watching the doorway. She moved slowly across the room, gun aimed, hammer cocked.
“I saw someone walk by,” she finally explained.
“Are any of the SWAT team still in the house?”
“They were finished up here,” she whispered. Her heart slammed against her chest. Her breathing was already coming too quickly. “They wouldn’t come back up and not announce themselves, right?”
“Do you smell something?” Tully was sniffing the air.
She smelled it, too, and the terror that had begun to crawl up from her stomach started to explode.
“It smells like gasoline,” Tully said.
All Maggie could think was that it smelled like gasoline and smoke. It smelled like fire. The thought grabbed hold of her, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t walk the rest of the distance to the door—her knees had locked. Her throat plugged up, threatening to strangle her.
Tully ran to the door and carefully peeked out, his gun ready.
“Holy crap,” he yelled, looking out into the hallway in both directions without stepping out. “We’ve got flames on both sides. There’s no way we’re getting out the way we came in.”
He returned his gun to his holster and hurried to the windows, trying to open one while Maggie stood paralyzed in the middle of the room. Her hands shook so badly she could barely grip her revolver. She stared at her hands as though they belonged to someone else. Her breathing was out of control, and she worried she might start to hyperventilate.
The smell alone sparked images from her childhood nightmares: flames engulfing her father and scorching her fingers every time she reached for him. She could never save him, because her fear immobilized her.
“Damn it!” She heard Tully struggling behind her.
She turned toward him, but her feet wouldn’t move. He seemed so far away, and she knew she was losing visual perception. The room began to tilt. She could feel the motion, though she knew it couldn’t possibly be real. Then she saw him again, a reflection in the window. She twisted around, but it felt as if she was moving in slow motion. Albert Stucky stood tall and dark in the doorway, dressed in a black leather jacket and pointing a gun directly at her.
She tried to raise her own gun, but it was too heavy. Her hand wouldn’t obey the command. The room had tilted to the other side, and she felt herself slipping. He was smiling at her and seemed to be oblivious to the flames shooting up behind him. Was he real? Had her panic, her terror, brought on hallucinations?
“This damn thing is stuck,” she heard Tully yell somewhere far off in the distance.
She opened her mouth to warn Tully, but nothing came out. She expected the bullet to hit her squarely in the heart. That’s where he was aiming. Everything in slow motion. Was it a dream? A nightmare? He was pulling back the hammer. She could hear wood creaking, giving way in crashes outside the room. She pulled at her arm one more time as she saw Stucky begin to squeeze the trigger.
“Tully,” she managed to yell, and just then Stucky slid his aim to the right of her and pulled the trigger. The explosion jolted her like an electrical shock. But she wasn’t hit. He hadn’t shot her. She looked down. She wasn’t bleeding anywhere. It was an effort to move her arm, but she raised it, ready to fire at the now-empty doorway. Stucky was gone. Had it all been her imagination? There was a groan behind her, and before she turned to look, she remembered Tully.
He gripped his bloody thigh with both hands and stared at it