Spencerville

somehow let Keith down. There was nothing in the world more frustrating than a shot not taken, a target not engaged. He lowered the rifle, and without much thought, he began charging across the open field toward the house.
     
    *  *  *
     
    Thirty yards.
Four or five more seconds. Keith looked up and saw a light come on inside the house. He didn’t slow up or break stride, but kept going.
    Twenty yards.
A backlighted figure was suddenly at the glass door, and Keith thought he saw the door sliding open. Keith made a snap decision and veered off, running under the cantilevered deck and bringing himself to a short stop against one of the concrete-block columns that held up the house. A shot rang out. Keith put his back to the column and aimed his revolver straight up. The light from the house cast a faint illumination through the spaced deck boards. He kept the revolver pointed up, waiting for a shadow or movement on the deck above him, but he saw and heard nothing. A second later, he heard the door slide shut with a thud.
    Keith was fairly certain that it was Baxter at the door and that Baxter hadn’t seen or heard him approaching the house, or he wouldn’t have turned on the light. Baxter had just picked that bad moment to rouse his dogs with a gunshot, and the dogs hadn’t responded. Nor would they ever respond. Cliff Baxter knew he had company.
     
    *  *  *
     
    Cliff Baxter locked the glass door and took a long step away, his back to his gun rack. He stood absolutely still with Keith’s Glock 9mm automatic pointing at the door. He glanced back at the table lamp about twenty feet away. He wanted to turn it off but didn’t want to move. He listened.
    He kept telling himself that no one could have gotten all three dogs, that they weren’t dead, that the pistol shot just hadn’t woken them. But that was not possible.
Damn
it.
    He looked at his wife kneeling across the room, and their eyes met.
    Annie maintained eye contact with him, and she recognized that look she had seen on his face when she’d pointed the shotgun at him. She wanted to smile, to smirk, to say something, but she sensed that death was near, and she didn’t know whose.
    Baxter lifted the key chain around his neck and unlocked his gun rack. He took down the Sako rifle, turned on the electronic infrared scope, and flipped the safety switch to the fire position.
     
    *  *  *
     
    Keith stayed frozen against the concrete column, the revolver still pointing upward at the deck. Behind him was the open garage space where the Bronco was parked, and above the garage was the house. He listened for footsteps from the house but heard nothing.
    He glanced out to where he’d left Billy Marlon near the edge of the clearing where the dead Doberman lay. The moon had slipped behind the pines now, leaving the clearing in almost total darkness.
    Keith wondered why Billy hadn’t gotten a shot off but was glad he hadn’t. Probably it had all happened too fast for him to react, or he thought Keith was going to open fire and charge up the stairs in Billy’s line of fire. In any case, Baxter was on full alert, Billy was a hundred yards away across the clearing, and Keith was under Baxter’s feet, probably not ten feet from him. He would rather have been and should have been on the deck, but Keith was reasonably certain Baxter didn’t know he was there. All Keith had to do now was wait until Baxter decided he had to come out with his infrared scope and deal with the problem.
    Keith heard a sound and turned toward the dark clearing. It took him a few seconds to realize there was movement out there, then he saw Billy Marlon running toward the house at a high speed.
    Damn him.
Keith was furious at Billy for not following orders, but Keith never thought Billy Marlon would.
    He watched Billy covering the open space very quickly, his rifle at his hip, ready to fire, like an infantryman assaulting an enemy position.
    Keith wasn’t in a position to cover Marlon, but he tried to motion him to veer off and come under the house. But Billy was intent on his charge to the deck stairs. Billy Marlon wanted Cliff Baxter, and that’s all that was on his mind at this moment.
     
    *  *  *
     
    Cliff Baxter quickly took stock of the situation. He had no way of knowing when the dogs had been silenced, and no way of knowing who’d done it, but he had a real good suspect in mind. Without the dogs, he had no early warning and had no idea where Keith Landry was at