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give her time if she was lucky. He hit the door with an-
other earsplitting shot. What if there were more than one
of them? Damn, she hadn t thought of that. Why hadn t she
thought of that?
The chest jumped as another bullet slammed through
the back. It sounded like an elephant gun, it was so loud.
Diane checked to see if the safety on her gun was off. It
wasn t. Shit. She would get killed if she didn t start thinking.
She moved the switch with her thumb.
Sirens whined in the distance. Hurry. Please, hurry.
The intruder shot the door twice more. The sound was
so loud the entire neighborhood should have heard it. She
thought she could hear him reloading clink, clink.
The chest began to inch forward. He was pushing on it
now. Diane steadied her gun. He apparently put his shoul-
der into it, for the chest moved forward at least three feet
and he stumbled into the room facing Diane. He raised
his shotgun toward her as she fired three times and ducked
behind the trunk. She felt the floor shake when he fell.
At the same instant, a blast from his shotgun shook her
eardrums and the wall behind her exploded, debris falling
over her. Diane lay still a moment, stunned. When her head
cleared, she wanted to peek over the trunk, but she was
afraid it was a trap. What if he was playing dead? What if he
DUST TO DUST 241
had backup? She was stuck. She crouched behind the trunk
and listened to his breathing. It came in gasps, sounding
real enough, but she didn t believe it.
 Help me, he whispered.
She was too scared to move, too wary to trust. She tried
to think what to do, but her brain was too panicked.
Damn, she thought. I ve been in bad situations before.
Why am I suddenly such a coward?
She stayed low and moved slowly to look around the side
of the trunk next to the wall. There was a six-inch open-
ing between the wall and the trunk she could have seen
through, if it weren t so dark. The only significant light re-
flected through the windows from the security lamps. They
had suddenly gone dark. The motion detector outside had
timed out. Only dim light from the floor below seeped up
the stairs and through the open doorway. It did little to il-
luminate.
The sirens were louder. Help was coming. But the sirens
were too loud. She wouldn t hear him if he moved. Diane
stayed still and listened hard through the noise. She stared
through the space beside the trunk until her eyes became
adjusted to the darkness. She saw a booted foot moving,
trying to get up. She shot at it and he yelped.
She heard him whimper and mutter something she
couldn t make out. He seemed to be down, but Diane didn t
trust him. She waited, tempted to shoot him again.
Get some backbone, she told herself.
She heard banging on the door downstairs. The police.
But what if it was Frank? He wouldn t know what he was
walking into. She rose slowly, keeping her back flat against
the wall, and surveyed the darkened attic. She saw the dark
form of the intruder squirming on the floor. The shotgun
was within his reach. She aimed her gun at him and made
her way slowly to the downed form and kicked the shot-
gun aside. She stepped over to the door, keeping him in
sight, keeping her gun trained on him, and flipped the light
switch.
The sight startled her. The man on the floor looked like
Ray-Ray Dildy. No, it looked like a slightly younger and
different version of Ray-Ray Dildy.
What is this, some kind of maniac crime family?
242 Beverly Connor
 Police! Muffled voices came from downstairs.
Diane walked around and picked up his gun. She looked
down at his face. He was scared and suffering. She could
see he was wearing a bulletproof vest, but one of her bul-
lets had managed to hit him through the arm opening and
another in his leg.
 Help will be here soon, she said, and walked out of the
room, down the attic steps, and out to the stairs. She stood
his shotgun in the corner of the stairwell.
 I m up here, she called.
She heard running through the house from the rear.
They had found the broken back door. She walked down
the stairs, her hands held high where they were clearly vis-
ible to the police. The first person she saw was Douglas
Garnett. He met her at the base of the stairs.
 The intruder is wounded on the attic floor, she told
him.
Diane sat on the living room couch, leaning forward with [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]