Winter Moon

could clearly hear the vicious hissing, a sound that only stoked her

anger.

Murmurs of conversation. Couldn't catch the words.

Stealthy footsteps hurrying toward the back of the house. A low,

suppressed laugh, almost a giggle. Having such a good time at their

game.

Judging the moment of his appearance by the sound of his swiftly

approaching footsteps, intending to scare the living hell out of him,

Heather moved forward. With perfect timing, she met him at the turn in

the sidewalk.

She was surprised to see he was taller than she was. She had expected

them to be ten years old, eleven, twelve at the oldest.

The prowler let out a faint

"Ah!" of alarm.

Putting the fear of God into them was going to be a harder proposition

than if they'd been younger. And no retreating now. They'd drag her

down. And then . .

She kept moving, collided with him, rammed him backward across the

eight-foot-wide setback and into the ivy-covered concrete-block wall

that marked the southern property line.

The can of spray paint flew out of his hand, clattered against the

sidewalk.

The impact knocked the wind out of him. His mouth sagged open, and he

gasped for breath.

Footsteps. The second one. Running toward her.

Pressed against the first boy, face-to-face, even in the darkness, she

saw that he was sixteen or seventeen, maybe older. Plenty old enough

to know better.

She rammed her right knee up between his spread legs and turned away

from him as he fell, wheezing and retching, into the flower bed along

the wall.

The second boy was coming at her fast. He didn't see the gun, and she

didn't have time to stop him with a threat.

She stepped toward him instead of away, spun on her left foot, and

kicked him in the crotch with her right. Because she'd moved into him,

it was a deep kick, she caught him with her ankle and the upper part of

the bridge of her foot instead of with her toes.

He crashed past her, slammed into the sidewalk, and rolled against the

first boy, afflicted by an identical fit of retching.

A third one was coming at her along the sidewalk from the front of the

house, but he skidded to a halt fifteen feet away and started to back

up.

"Stop right there," she said. "I've got a gun." Though she raised the

Korth, holding it in a two-hand grip, she did not raise her voice, and

her calm control made the order more menacing than if she had shouted

it in an

He stopped, but maybe he couldn't see the revolver in the dark. His

body language said he was still contemplating making a break for it.

"So help me God," she said, still at a conversational level, "I'll blow

your brains out." She was surprised by the cold hatred in her voice.

She wouldn't really have shot him. She was sure of that. Yet the

sound of her own voice frightened her . . . and made her wonder.

His shoulders sagged. His entire posture changed. He believed her

threat.

A dark exhilaration filled her. Nearly three months of intense taste

kwon do and women's defense classes, provided free to members of police

families three times a week at the division gym, had paid off. Her

right foot hurt like blazes, probably almost as badly as the second

boy's crotch hurt him. She might have broken a bone in it, would

certainly be hobbling around for a week even if there wasn't a

fracture, but she felt so good about nailing the three vandals that she

was happy to suffer for her triumph.

"Come here," she said. "Now, come on, come on."

The third kid raised his hands over his head. He was holding a spray

can in each of them.

"Get down on the ground with your buddies," she demanded, and he did as

he was told.

The moon sailed out from behind the clouds, which was like slowly

bringing up the stage lights to quarter power on a darkened set. She

could see well enough to be sure that they were all older teenagers,

sixteen to eighteen.

She could also see that they didn't fit any popular stereotypes of

taggers. They weren't black or Hispanic. They were white boys.

And they didn't look poor, either. One of them wore a well-cut leather

jacket, and another wore a cable-knit cotton sweater with what appeared

to be a complicated and beautifully knitted pattern.

The night quiet was broken only by the miserable gagging and groaning

of the two she'd disabled. The confrontation had unfolded so swiftly

in the eight-foot-wide space between the house and the property wall,

and in such relative silence, that they hadn't even awakened any

neighbors.

Keeping the gun on them, Heather said, "You been here before?"

Two of them couldn't yet have answered her if they'd wanted to, but the

third was also unresponsive.

"I asked if you'd been here before," she said sharply, "done this kind

of crap here before."

"Bitch," the third kid said.

She realized it was possible to lose control of the situation even when

she was the only one with a gun, especially if the crotch-bashed pair

recovered more easily than she expected. She resorted to a lie that

might convince them she was more than just a cop's wife with a few

smart moves: "Listen, you little snots--I can kill all of you, go in