Blindside

Roosevelt’s sculpted cloak covered her, and jerked her derringer out ofits ankle holster the instant she stopped rolling. It was nearly worthless at any distance at all, that little gun, but if you got close enough, it could kill.
    Elsbeth fired, one shot, then another and another, all three of them striking the sculpture, ricocheting off, sending stone shards flying. Katie stayed down, protecting her face.
    Elsbeth yelled, “Come out of there, Katie Benedict! You deserve to die for what you did! That statue won’t help you!”
    Katie stuffed herself tighter against the sculpture. “Don’t come any closer, Elsbeth, I have a gun. Do you hear me? I don’t want to shoot you, but I will if you force me to. Give it up. Toss the gun over here. There are bodyguards here, two of them, FBI agents. They heard the shots. You don’t have a prayer, just give it up!”
    Elsbeth suddenly appeared around FDR’s huge cloak. She stopped not three feet from Katie, smiled down at her. She didn’t see the small derringer. “You’re lying to me again, Katie. You don’t have a gun. You’re expecting your precious bodyguards to ride up like the cavalry and save you. But there won’t be time for that.” And she laughed again. It made Katie’s skin crawl, that laugh.
    “You know something?” Elsbeth said, nearly choking. “I wish Reverend McCamy could see me now.”
    “I could tell he was proud of you, Elsbeth.”
    Those beautiful blue eyes lightened a moment with pleasure. Thank God, Katie thought. Maybe she’d bought herself some time. That big Beretta was pointed right at her head.
    Elsbeth McCamy blinked, looked momentarily confused, then shook her head so hard her ski cap fell off. “He was my dearest mentor, a great man who had God’s ear and made me scream with pleasure when he made love to me. And you sent him to his death.”
    As she flexed her finger around the trigger of theBeretta, Katie brought up her derringer and fired its two shots point-blank into Elsbeth’s chest.
    Elsbeth stumbled backward, but she didn’t go down. “My God, you shot me! You miserable bitch, I won’t let you kill me like you did my husband!”
    Katie threw herself at Elsbeth’s knees. She heard a gunshot close to her head. She could smell her singed hair burning as she used all her strength to shove Elsbeth down.
    The front of Elsbeth’s coat was drenched with blood now. She raised the gun and fired toward Katie again, wildly now. Katie rolled into Elsbeth, pushing hard against her legs, throwing her arms up to dislodge the Beretta. She knew that at any moment a bullet would smash through her flesh.
    There was a single shot, only one. Katie, her arms still pressing against Elsbeth’s knees, looked up and saw a frown of faint surprise on Elsbeth’s face. The frown was frozen in death. Slowly, she fell backward, landing hard. Katie jerked back and leaped to her feet. Her hip burned, and her heart was pounding.
    She looked down at Elsbeth McCamy, surely dead this time, her eyes open, staring at nothing at all. Her beautiful hair spilled around her face. She looked very young, innocent even, without any evil or madness about her, just lying there on the ground, the front of her coat soaked with blood and the back of her head ruined.
    She heard the sound of the cascading water and the wind whipping between the monuments. She heard the water running fast in the tidal basin, not fifty feet away. And her own harsh breathing, so deadened with relief that she couldn’t move.
    She heard running feet. Katie turned to see the two FBI agents, panting, their guns still drawn. “You okay, Katie?”
    “Yes, I am, Ollie. I’m very glad you came when you did. That was an excellent shot. I’m also very glad that you’re both all right. I didn’t know if she’d killed you.”

    Agent Ollie Hamish shook his head, looking embarrassed and angry at himself.
    Agent Ruth Warnecki patted his arm. She said to Katie even as she nodded over at Elsbeth, “She did something much smarter than try to kill us. She came right up to us, knocked on the window, and when Ollie here rolled it down, his hand on his gun, mind you, she told us she was your sister-in-law, that she had to speak to you about Sam, and she promised to keep a sharp eye out for anyone suspicious. We didn’t think anything of it. You’d think after all our years of being suspicious of anything that walked on two feet—but she was so believable, so young and nice-looking. We bolted