Lightning

visibly at the word
betray
.
    Earlier she'd sent Chris upstairs to get one each of Brenkshaw's shirts, sweaters, jackets, slacks, a pair of his socks, and shoes. The physician was not as muscular and trim as her guardian, but they were approximately the same size.
    At the moment the wounded man was wearing only his bloodstained pants, but Laura knew there would not be time to put all the clothes on him. "Just help me get him into the jacket, Doctor. I'll take the rest and dress him later. The jacket will be enough to protect him from the cold."
    Reluctantly lifting the unconscious man into a sitting position on the examination table, the doctor said, "He shouldn't be moved."
    Ignoring Brenkshaw, struggling to pull the wounded man's right arm through the sleeve of the warmly lined corduroy jacket, Laura said, "Chris, go to the waiting room at the front of the house. It's dark in there. Don't turn on the lights. Go to the windows and give the street a good looking over, and for God's sake don't let yourself be seen."
    "You think they're here?" the boy asked fearfully.
    "If not now, they will be soon," she said, working her guardian's left arm through the other jacket sleeve.
    "What're you talking about?" Brenkshaw asked, as Chris dashed into the adjoining office and on into the dark waiting room.
    Laura didn't answer. "Come on, let's get him in the wheelchair."
    Together, they lifted the wounded man off the examination table, into the chair, and buckled a restraining strap around his waist.
    As Laura was gathering up the other clothes and the two quart-sized jars of drugs, making a bundle, padding the clothes around the jars and tying it all together in the shirt, Chris raced back from the waiting room. "Mom, they're just pulling up outside, it must be them, two cars full of men across the street, six or eight of 'em, anyway. What're we going to do?"
    "Damn," she said, "we can't get to the Jeep now. And we can't go out the side door because they might see us from the front."
    Brenkshaw headed toward his office. "I'll call the police—" 
     "No!" She put the bundle of clothes and drugs on the wheelchair between her guardian's legs, put her purse there, too, and snatched up the Uzi and .38 Chief's Special. "There's no time, damn you. They'll be in here in a couple of minutes, and they'll kill us. You've got to help me get the wheelchair out the back, down the rear porch steps."
    Apparently her terror was at last conveyed to the physician, for he did not hesitate or continue to work at cross purposes to her. He grabbed the chair and wheeled it swiftly through a door that connected the examination room to the downstairs hall. Laura and Chris followed him along the gloomy corridor, then across a kitchen lit only by the illuminated digital clocks on the oven and microwave oven. The chair thumped over the sill between the kitchen and the back porch, badly jarring the wounded man, but he had been through worse.
    Slinging the Uzi over her shoulder and jamming the revolver into her waistband, Laura hurried around Brenkshaw to the bottom of the porch steps. She took hold of the wheelchair from the front, helping him trundle it to the concrete walk below.
    She glanced at the areaway between the house and garage, half expecting to see an armed man coming through there already, and she whispered to Brenkshaw, "You'll have to go with us. They'll kill you if you stay here, I'm sure they will."
    Again he offered no argument but followed Chris, as the boy led the way down the walk that struck across the rear lawn to the gate in the redwood fence at the back of the long property. Having unslung the Uzi from her shoulder, Laura came last, ready to turn and open fire if she heard a noise from the house behind them.
    As Chris reached the gate, it opened in front of him, and a man dressed in black stepped through from the alley, darker than the night around them except for his moon-pale face and white hands, every bit as surprised by them as they were by him. He'd come along the street beside the house and into the alley to cover the place from the back. In his left hand, gleaming darkly, was a submachine gun, not at the ready, but he started to bring it up—Laura could not blow him away, not without cutting her son down as well—but Chris reacted as Henry Takahami had spent months teaching him to react. The boy spun and kicked the assassin's right arm, knocking the gun out of his grasp—it hit the lawn with a thump and soft