Praying for Sleep

while Lis reached into the police car, grabbing the beefy deputy by the shoulders. With a huge effort Lis pulled him out of the car and dropped him irreverently into the mud then reached inside and started the engine. She snatched the Colt away from Portia, who started to back away. Lis closed her tough hands on her sister’s arms and shoved her into the front seat. Easing into the pool of blood, Portia cringed as if the liquid seared her thighs. She was sobbing, quaking. Lis slammed the door. “Go.”
    “I . . . Get his legs . . . Get his legs out!” Portia wailed, gesturing down at the deputy, whose knees were directly in front of the rear tires.
    “Go!” Lis shouted and reached through the window, pulling on the headlights and dropping the gearshift into drive. As the car jerked forward, the side mirror knocked into Lis. She slipped on a layer of wet pulverized leaves and fell to the swampy ground. Slowly the police car drove over the deputy and into the driveway. Portia gunned the engine. With a panicked spray of mud and marble chips the car sped forward. It vanished, sashaying down the long driveway, sending up plumes of dark water in its wake.
    Lis clambered to her feet, blinded for a moment—the rear tires of the squad car had sprayed her with mud. She leaned back, letting the downpour clean her face, flushing her eyes. When she could see once more, she noticed that Michael Hrubek was wading toward her again, cautiously, churning through the water, already halfway across the yard.
     
    Lis slapped her side. The gun was gone. When she’d fallen, it had slipped out of her torn pocket. She dropped to her knees and patted the sticky ooze around her but couldn’t find the pistol. “Where?” she cried. “Where?” Hrubek was just thirty feet away, advancing slowly through the waist-high flood surrounding the garage. Finally she could wait no longer and fled into the house, slamming the door behind her.
    She double-locked it and from a wooden block took a long carving knife. She turned to face the door.
    But he was gone.
    Stepping cautiously to the window she surveyed the backyard carefully. She couldn’t see him anywhere. She stepped away from the glass, fearing that he might suddenly pop into view.
    Where? Where?
    His absence was almost as frightening as watching him stalk toward her.
    Hurrying from the kitchen into the living room, she knelt and checked on Trenton Heck. He was still unconscious but his breathing was steady. Lis stood and gazed around the room, her eyes looking at but not really seeing her family’s pictures, the porcelain-bird collection, the Quixote memorabilia her father had brought back from Iberia, the chintz furniture, the overwrought paintings.
    A crash outside. Breaking glass. Hrubek was circling the house. A shadow fell across a living-room window then vanished. A moment later his silhouette darkened another curtain and moved on. An unbearable minute of silence. Suddenly a huge kick shook the front door. She gasped. Another kick slammed into the wood. A panel broke with a resounding crack. He kicked it again but the wood held. She saw Hrubek’s bulk move past the narrow door-side window.
    Her head swiveled slowly, following his circuit of the house. She heard him rip open the toolshed door then slam it shut.
    Silence.
    A fist rapped on a bottle-glass window in the far guest room. The pane broke but she heard nothing else and guessed the windows were too high and the lattice too solid for Hrubek to climb through.
    Silence again.
    Then he howled and pounded on a wall, ripping cedar shakes from the side of the house.
    As she scanned the rooms, her eyes fell on the basement door. My God, she thought suddenly. Owen’s guns. His collection was downstairs. She’d get one of his shotguns.
    Yet as she took a step toward the basement she heard a crash from outside. Then more—powerful blows that seemed to shake the foundation of the house. Wood splintered. And with a huge bellow Hrubek kicked his way through the outside basement entrance. The padlock on the door had stopped him for all of thirty seconds. His feet scraped on the concrete floor. A moment later the stairs began to creak, the stairs leading up to the hallway in which she stood.
    Oh, Christ . . .
    The door to the basement was dead-bolted but the fixture was thin brass, more cosmetic than substantial. She looked for something with which to wedge the door closed. Just as the knob started to turn, she lifted a heavy oak