Four Blind Mice

tell you that enough, and when I do, it isn’t with the passion I feel.”
    “That’s nice to hear,” she said. “You can be so sweet sometimes. I love you too, and I always say it with the passion that I feel.”
    “You feeling all right?” I asked.
    “Today’s good. Tomorrow, who knows?” She shrugged. “I’m making some lunch. Don’t ask if you can help. I’m fine. Still on the right side of the grass.”
    After lunch I went upstairs to my office in the attic to think about what my next steps should be. There was a fax waiting. I wagged my finger at it.
“Unh-uh.”
    It was a copy of a news story in the
Miami Herald
. I read about the execution the night before of a man named Tichter at the Florida State Prison in Starke. Abraham Tichter had been in Vietnam. Special Forces.
    Scrawled at the bottom of the fax was the following:

    Innocent of these murders in Florida. Wrongfully accused, convicted, and executed. Abraham Tichter makes six. In case you aren’t keeping count.
    Foot Soldier

    I was keeping count.

Chapter 90
    EVER SINCE NANA had been under the weather I’d been doing the grocery shopping and most of the household chores. Usually I took Little Alex with me to the small Safeway on Fourth Street. That’s what I did early in the afternoon.
    I carried him high on my shoulders, out the kitchen door and down the driveway to my car.
    Alex was giggling and yapping as he always is. The boy never shuts up or sits still. He’s a bouncing ball of pure energy, and I can’t get enough of him.
    I was absently thinking about the last message from Foot Soldier, so I don’t even know why I happened to notice the black Jeep traveling down Fifth.
    It was moving at around thirty, right about the speed limit.
    I don’t know why I paid it much attention, but I did. My eyes never left it as it came toward Little Alex and me.
    Suddenly, the barrel of a black Tec protruded through the side window of the Jeep. I pulled down the baby, then dropped to the ground, whipping my body sideways, to avoid landing on Alex.
    The shooting started.
    Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
    I bellied across the lawn, shielding my baby under my left arm, and then dragged him behind a shade tree. I needed cover between us and the gunman.
    I didn’t get a good look inside the Jeep, but I did see that the driver and the shooter were white. Two of them — not three.
    I couldn’t tell if they were the men from Rocky Mount. Who else could it be, though? The shooters from West Point? Were they the same? What was happening now on Fifth Street? Who had ordered it?
    Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
    Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
    Bullets cracked into the walls of the house, and a front window shattered. I had to stop the attack somehow.
But how?
I crawled to the porch, and made it just before another round of fire.
    Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
    Unbelievable, even for Southeast.
    I pushed Alex down behind the porch. He was screaming bloody murder now. Poor frightened little boy. I kept him down on the ground. Then lifted my head and got a quick peek at the Jeep stopped in front of my house.
    Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop-pop.
    I returned fire. Three carefully aimed shots, so as not to hit someone in the neighborhood. Then two more shots.
Yes!
I knew that I got the shooter. Possibly in the chest, but maybe the throat. I saw him jerk back hard and then slump over the seat. No more shots came.
    Suddenly the Jeep took off, tires screeching, shimmying as it skidded around the nearest corner.
    I carried Alex inside and herded Nana and the baby into her room. I made them stay down on the floor. Then I called Sampson, and he was at the house in minutes. I was just about past being shocked and afraid for my family when I became as angry as I’d ever been. My body shook with rage and the need for retaliation.
    “Lot of broken windows, some bullet holes in the walls. Nobody hurt,” Sampson said after a quick walk around the house.
    “It was a warning. Otherwise, I think they would have killed me. They came to the house to deliver a message. Just like when we went to Starkey’s house in Rocky Mount.”

Chapter 91
    IT WAS JUST past four in the morning when Thomas Starkey waltzed out the kitchen door of his home. He walked across a dewy patch of lawn, then climbed into his blue Suburban. It started right up. Starkey always kept it in perfect condition, even serviced it himself.
    “I’d like to take a few potshots at the fucker right now,” Sampson said at my side. We were parked in deep