Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [4]
But he wasn’t going to.
He took a step toward the open door of the den, and damned if he didn’t ram his left leg into the little telephone table that stood there, with a cordless phone on it that he owned now, instead of the black rotary dial phone he’d rented from the phone company for all those years. Running into furniture in his own house. How stupid was that?
Pretty stupid, Pete realized, because it warned the guys in the den that he was out here. He heard the swift whisper, couldn’t make out the words, but knew there had to be at least two of them.
The element of surprise was lost. Might as well get in there.
He stepped into the doorway and hit the light switch with his left hand as he used his right to thrust the Colt out in front of him.
“Hold it!” he shouted.
The problem was, the sudden burst of light blinded him just as much as it did the intruders. Wincing from the glare, holding his hand up to shade his eyes, Pete tried to take in the scene as quickly as he could so he would know what he was facing.
Two men stood over by his gun cabinets. He could see the shapes of their bodies, even though he couldn’t make out many details. He jabbed the gun toward them and said, “Don’t move! I’ve got a gun!”
Well, they could see that, of course. And now he could see the guns in their hands, too, big, ugly things with extended magazines for a lot of firepower.
Pete suddenly knew that he was about to get the shit blown out of him.
Unless he blew the shit out of the burglars first. And that was the funny thing. All the fear and the other distractions cleared out of his mind. He didn’t feel anything except a certain sense of urgency, didn’t see anything except what was right in front of him. The annoying little tremor that cropped up in his hands more and more often these days went away. His grip was rock steady as he leveled the.45.
He fired two shots fast, a quick one-two, at the man on the left. He was aiming at the body, the biggest target, and both bullets struck the man in the chest with enough force to knock him back against the cabinet behind him. He threw his arms out to the sides, and as he did, his finger must have jerked the trigger of the gun he held, because it erupted with flame from the muzzle and the most god-awful racket Pete had ever heard. The slugs hammered against the wall of the den in a ragged line from the door to the corner of the room, punching easily through the sheetrock on both sides of the wall.
Pete was half-stunned. Between the double blast from the Colt and the intruder’s gun going off, he was deaf. But even though he couldn’t hear anything, he could see and knew the second man was still a threat. Pete grabbed his right wrist with his left hand to steady it and pivoted.
Three, maybe four seconds had gone by since he’d stepped into the room and flicked on the lights. It seemed longer than that. The second man had had time to lift his gun and point it at Pete. The only reason he hadn’t fired yet was because he was looking at his buddy, who stood there braced against one of the gun cabinets, bloody froth already bubbling from the holes in his chest as he tried to breathe with bullet-torn lungs.
Then his eyes flicked back to Pete, and the two men locked gazes for a heartbeat.
Pete saw a stocky man about five-nine, with dark, curly hair, a mustache, and a heavy jaw. He wore a short-sleeved shirt, and his arms were covered with tattoos. His dark eyes were wide with surprise.
Pete knew what the man and his companion must have thought. Nobody here but a harmless old couple. Wouldn’t be any trouble to break in and steal whatever they wanted. They didn’t have to worry about the people who lived here.
Now the first guy knew different, and so did the second one, because he jerked his gun toward Pete as his finger tightened on the trigger.
Pete was just a hair faster. The Colt roared