The Night Crew

breath, waiting for a blow, the wait unbearable . . .
    ‘‘Here I am, Anna.’’ He was right there, on his hands and knees, only six feet away. She could see his face in a fuzzy way, the blond hair, the square chin, the eyes a little too close together.
    He had the pistol in one hand, the muzzle pointing roughly toward her face. The butt of the rifle was on the floor, and he was leaning on it. ‘‘We’re gonna have some fun. We could have had some fun for a long time, if you’d come away from your bodyguard in that parking lot, but you had to do this.’’
    The tip of the barrel touched one cheek, which seemed to be turning black.
    ‘‘Do what?’’ she whimpered.
    ‘‘Fuckin’ bite me,’’ he said. He moved closer, his hand still at the cheek. ‘‘So it’s payback time, Anna. Steve is gonna have lots of fun . . .’’
    Close enough: ‘‘Have fun with this,’’ Anna said. And the way she said it startled him. She could see well enough to identify the flinch, the sudden clutching fear, and then she opened her knees.
    The pistol was there, of course, between her thighs, and pointing at the middle of his throat.
    He had just enough time to say, ‘‘Don’t.’’
    Anna shot him. And sat for three full seconds in dazed, blinded silence, Steve Judge slumped in front of her. He hadn’t jerked back, or been thrown back: he’d simply gone straight down. She fumbled her glasses out of her pocket, pushed them back on her nose, tried to stand up.
    ‘‘Jake?’’ she called weakly.
    ‘‘Anna?’’ He was close. She took the flash from her pocket and shined it back toward the bathroom. Harper was propped in the doorway, the rifle in his hand, a long trail of blood behind him, his face as pale as parchment.
    ‘‘I killed him,’’ Anna said.
    At that moment, Judge stood up.
    His eyes were crazy and half of his neck seemed to be missing. But he had one hand clasped to the wound and he pushed up and pivoted toward her, his eyes crazy, his mouth open, the white teeth straining at her.
    Anna stepped back, thrust the pistol out, and fired into his chest from six inches: one, two, three, and Judge went down again. Harper, behind her, was shouting, ‘‘No more, Anna,’’ but Anna stepped over Judge and fired two more shots into his head.
    This time he didn’t move.
    ‘‘Asshole,’’ Anna snarled. She was still pulling the trigger, the clicks echoing in the suddenly silent shambles. Anna carried Pam to Harper’s car, brushed glass fragments off the seat and put her down. Harper was too heavy: he crawled, dazed, to the porch, and Anna turned the halfwrecked vehicle around until she could get him in the passenger side and wedge the door closed. Some thing was wrong with the door, but it seemed to hold.
    Her scalp was bleeding badly; she hadn’t seen a scalp cut, but every time she put her right hand to her ear, it came away with a palm full of blood. She pointed the car down the drive, and took it out as easily as she could.
    They’d come in and out the same way each time, and that was the way she knew: there might have been a faster way to get an ambulance out to them, but she didn’t have time to look.
    She tried the phone after five minutes. No connection. She tried again at seven or eight minutes, without luck. At ten minutes, she got 911.
    ‘‘My God, everybody’s shot,’’ she babbled as she guided the car to the side of the road. She knew about where she was, gave enough direction that an ambulance could find them.
    She called Wyatt, told him.
    He was still shouting questions when she dropped the phone.

thirty-one

    Anna Batory was waiting at the dock when they came in on the Lost Dog, Creek and Glass with another couple, a pair of gay and ferociously competitive endodontists.
    Creek cut the outboard when they were fifty feet from the berth, reached over the side, released the transom lock and pulled the motor out of the water. The boat’s momentum carried it gracefully on, and then Creek pushed the tiller over and it turned, slowed, slowed more, and Glass stepped over the rail onto the finger pier, dropped the bow line over a cleat and snubbed the boat off.
    Anna stood up, brushed off her butt. ‘‘How’d it go?’’
    Glass was bubbling: ‘‘It was amazing. These things, there was a boat, I mean . . .’’
    ‘‘Spit it out,’’ Creek laughed.
    ‘‘Some of those boats were as big as locomotives. And they were this close,’’ Glass said, spreading her hands a