On Harrow Hill

He checked the time on his phone. It was just one minute after midnight. There was a distant flash of lightning, followed several seconds later by a rumble of thunder. The air from the open window was cool and damp.

He placed a call to Hardwick.

The voice that that answered was rough and sleepy. “Yeah?”

“Sorry to wake you, Jack. I’ve got a visitor.”

“You have a plan?”

“Catch him. ID him. Arrest him. Question him.”

“That’s not a plan.” Hardwick cleared his throat with disgusting thoroughness. “That’s a procedure-manual fantasy.”

“You have a better idea?”

“Put a bullet in his head, rocks in his pockets, and dump him in your pond.”

“Always a possibility. Drop by if you can.”

“On my way, Sherlock, locked and loaded.”

Gurney slipped the phone in his pocket. There was another flash of lightning and another rumble of thunder. The storm was getting closer.

Madeleine was sitting on the edge of the bed. “You called Hardwick.”

“Yes.”

“Why not 911?”

“He’ll get here quicker.”

“Quicker than the cops down in Walnut Crossing?”

“After ten o’clock there are no cops in Walnut Crossing. Everything gets redirected to the sheriff’s department in Bounderville.”

“So what will—” She stopped, staring out the window. “What’s that?”

Gurney looked out in the direction she was pointing. There was an almost imperceptible orange glow on the foliage of a tree by the corner of the house. The glow was faint and unsteady, like the reflection of a small fire. He moved closer to the window for a broader view. There was no fire visible on that side of the house.

He ran to the kitchen and saw it immediately through the French doors—the beginning of a fire at the point where the new shed and the chicken coop were joined together. Madeleine followed him and was heading for the doors.

He put out his arm to stop her. “Stay back! The son of a bitch is waiting for us to come out.”

“But we have to stop the fire!”

“We will. But not this way. That’s what he wants. I’m going out the back way.”

He ran to the bedroom, put on his sneakers, and slipped out through the window next to the bed. Landing on an uneven spot in the moist grass, he twisted his ankle sharply, the stab of pain diluted by adrenaline. He pulled the Beretta from his rear pocket and eased off the safety.

A triple flash of lightning illuminated the thicket behind the house. He saw no one. He made his way in the dark to the nearest corner of the house, then around that to the end of the side that faced the chicken coop. Crouching, he peered slowly around the corner drainpipe.

The fire was larger now, its glow clearly illuminating the area between the coop and the house. The area behind the coop and on Gurney’s side of it were left in darkness, seemingly deeper now in contrast with the blaze.

Still seeing no one, he crept out from the house as far as the asparagus bed, whose foot-high enclosure of four-by-fours offered partial shelter, and waited there to see what the next lightning flash might reveal.

The flash came a second later. What it revealed was both predictable and shocking.

Beyond the end of the coop, at the corner of the new shed, stood a perfect image of Billy Tate—the Billy Tate he’d seen in the video of the crazy night on the roof of St. Giles—Billy Tate in a gray hoodie and black jeans. But instead of a spray can for graffiti, this Billy Tate was carrying an AK-47. As suddenly as it had illuminated him, the flash died, and the hooded figure disappeared in the darkness, followed by a deafening crash of thunder.

The idea of calling out, “Police! Drop the gun! Now!” would satisfy a procedural guideline, but it would materially diminish the chances of survival—his own and Madeleine’s. And survival was now the imperative.

With one knee on the ground, Gurney raised his Beretta in a solid two-handed firing grip and waited again for the lightning. When the flash came, his view of the corner of the shed was partially blocked by the asparagus ferns bending and swaying in the wind. But he caught a glimpse of the assault rifle and the gray sweatshirt, and he fired off three quick rounds.

There was a yelp of pain, a curse, followed a moment later in the pitch darkness by half a dozen return rounds, two of which Gurney heard strike the low wall of the planting bed he was using as a shield.

Since there was no longer any downside in doing so, he shouted out the standard police warning. Twice. When there was no reply, he fired off another three rounds in the direction of the shed, then retreated around to the back of the house, feeling his way to the far side, from which he’d have a clear, direct line of fire to the hidden side of the shed.

Aided now by multiple lightning flashes, he ran toward that ideal position. Just as he arrived there, he stepped on the edge of a rock, turning the same ankle he’d injured on his way out the bedroom window. Feeling something in the joint snap, he stumbled out uncontrollably from behind the house into firelight and fell to the ground.