Spencerville

that moment. He felt a line of sweat form on his forehead and run down his face.
Goddamnit.
    He was about to cross the room and turn the lamp off when he thought he heard something outside—he sound of someone running, getting closer.
     
    *  *  *
     
    Billy Marlon was less than ten feet from the bottom of the staircase and showed no inclination to veer off and join Keith under the deck. Keith had no choice now but to break cover and follow Billy Marlon up the staircase, though what they were going to do up there he didn’t know, but he figured Billy would smash the glass door with his rifle butt, and they’d wing it from there.
    Keith began moving out from under the deck as Marlon took a long stride four or five feet from the first wooden step. Keith saw too late the four wooden pegs driven into the ground at the base of the staircase. Billy’s foot came down on what looked like solid ground, but was a sheet of canvas or plastic, secured at the corners by the pegs and covered with a thin layer of earth.
    Keith watched and saw it all as if in slow motion: Billy’s surprised look as the ground beneath him gave way and Billy dropping through the earth. Keith expected him to keep falling, like the men did in Vietnam who dropped into a deep punji pit and became impaled on sharpened bamboo shafts. But Marlon stopped at knee height, his feet funneled into the narrow base of a conical hole. Keith heard a sharp metallic snap, followed by the sickening sound of something crunching, followed by Billy’s shrill, piercing scream. Keith froze where he was beneath the edge of the deck, a few feet from Billy. The glass door above him slid open.
     
    *  *  *
     
    Baxter heard the bear trap snap shut, followed by the scream, and he slid the door open, letting the screams into the living room. He yelled, “Gotcha! Gotcha!”
    The figure at the base of the stairs was thrashing in pain, screaming, but still holding tight to the rifle.
    In an instant, Baxter recognized that it wasn’t Landry, and he shouted, “Who the hell—Marlon! You little shit!” Baxter, still standing inside the doorway, aimed his rifle down at Marlon.
    Billy Marlon, still holding his rifle with one hand and writhing in agony, managed to get off a single shot from the hip, as Baxter fired simultaneously. Billy’s shot went high and tore into the wood siding above Baxter’s head. Baxter’s bullet went where it was aimed, through Billy Marlon’s heart.
    Almost simultaneously, Keith fired three quick shots up and through the wooden planks toward where he guessed Baxter was standing in the doorway.
    One shot shattered the glass door, one grazed Baxter’s forearm, and the third hit him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him and throwing him back through the open door where he sprawled on the floor.
    Annie screamed.
    Baxter struggled to his feet, still holding his rifle.
     
    *  *  *
     
    Keith heard Baxter fall on the floor, and Keith charged out from beneath the deck, grabbed the banister post, and swung around over the hole where Billy lay dead. With his pistol aimed at the door, he took the stairs in three strides, and, not seeing Baxter on the floor or anywhere in the dim light of the room, he bounded across the deck and dove through the open door, rolling to his right behind a long sofa, his pistol sweeping the room.
    He lay there, looked and listened, but saw no one and heard nothing. The single lamp still shone weakly from somewhere at the far end of the room, casting dark shadows where he lay. The sofa blocked his view of the room toward the fireplace, but he could see the stone chimney rising to the high cathedral ceiling, and noticed the gray wolf head looking across the room from thirty feet away.
    He lay on his back, motionless, the pistol still sweeping, controlling his breathing and trying to get a sense of the layout of the big room from what he could see. He was fairly certain he’d hit Baxter, but by the sound of Baxter’s heavy crash to the floor, Keith reasoned that Baxter was wearing his body armor and that the round had simply knocked him off his feet, and he’d scrambled away from the door. Baxter might be hurt, Keith thought, but a .38-caliber pistol round that had gone through a plank and hit body armor would not hurt him too badly.
    Keith couldn’t see much beyond the sofa and the other furniture, so he slid a few feet away toward the wall. His head and eyes continuously swept the room, left to right, as his