Broken Prey

was loud enough, and close enough, that she called, “What was that?”
    Before Mihovil could answer, there was another boom , and the apartment shook with the impact. She hopped out of bed and picked up her underpants and there was a third impact, and a splintering sound, from close by. Mihovil shouted, “What the hell?” and there was another impact, and Millie picked up her top and pulled it over her head and stepped to the bedroom door.
    Mihovil, naked, was standing in the front room, looking toward the outer door. Another boom , and pieces of Sheetrock buckled around the door jamb, and then boom , and the door flew open. A man came through: he was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and tan slacks and loafers, and might have been straight-enough-looking, but there was nothing straight about his eyes. They burned straight through Mihovil, and the man said, “Hello, Millie.”
    Millie shouted, “Who are you? Get out of here . . .” and the man, his face a teeth-bared mask, a lion’s face, raised a hand and a razor flashed, a razor like Mihovil’s father’s razor, and he went after Mihovil like a sword fighter, slashing with the razor hand, trying to punch or grab with the other.
    Millie started screaming, never thought of dialing 911 or locking herself in the bedroom, never thought of anything but Mihovil when blood exploded out of his shoulder and he and the stranger went twirling into the kitchen and Mihovil went down under the kitchen table.
    When he went down, the stranger turned and came after her. Then she thought of the bedroom, then she stepped back, screaming, tried to slam the bedroom door, but the stranger was right here, flailing with the razor, and then Mihovil was there, too, swinging a kitchen chair.
    The stranger saw it coming and fended it off with one arm, but then Mihovil was all over him with the chair, Mihovil himself screaming, bleeding from a terrible wound on his shoulder, not quitting . . .
    They twisted and turned around the apartment, breaking furniture and glass, dumping electronics and dishes, Mihovil now completely wild; and then the stranger broke and ran and Mihovil ran after him, stepped in a streak of blood at the corner of the kitchen’s vinyl floor, and went down. The stranger went out the door and was gone. Millie grabbed a towel and ran to Mihovil, shouting, “Stay down, stay down, you’re bleeding, you’re bleeding.”
    Mihovil, with a sickly smile, looked up and asked, “Who the fuck was that?” and took the towel and pressed it against his shoulder and said, “Call nine-one-one—we’ve got an artery here.”
    Millie snatched the phone off the kitchen counter and punched in the number and started screaming. They weren’t far from the hospital; she was still on the phone when she heard sirens . . .
     
    GRANT RAN DOWN the center stairwell, out to the parking lot, climbed in the car. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Millie’s lover had been no kid.
    Millie’s lover had eyes like he’d seen on the beach at Venice, killer eyes, eyes that had been out on the edge for a long time. The guy would have torn him apart if he’d stayed to fight.
    Grant heard sirens as he cleared the parking lot.
    Going home , he thought. Going home.

25
    LUCAS LIKED DRIVING FAST and had gotten in trouble a few times because of it; even liked driving fast in a truck, and now had the Lexus screaming in pain as they roared toward Grant’s address. The navigation system put them right into the apartment complex. The fat tires squealing around the turns, the antiroll buzzer beeping in protest, Sloan talking to Jenkins as they tore along a leafy street toward the apartments, Shrake and Jenkins a car-length back.
    They turned a corner past a cluster of lilacs and burst into a parking lot, past a swimming pool behind a chain-link fence, and Sloan said, “There!” Lucas looked that way and saw the cluster of expectant bystanders at an apartment doorway—there were always expectant bystanders for the first responding car.
    Lucas went that way—he could hear sirens coming in behind them—and he hopped out of the truck, shouted at Jenkins and Shrake, “One of you guys stay here for the city cops,” and he headed toward the door, a half step ahead of Sloan.
    A heavy woman with frizzy blond hair, a red bandana, and eyes big with fear, said, “There’s a crazy man here. He hurt a man up on two, cut him with a razor.”
    “Where’s the stairway?”
    She pointed, and Lucas said,