Page 116 of Pieces of Her (Andrea Oliver 1)

Jane could see the crazy red dots from rifle scopes slipping along the walls as if they were in an action movie. The police had found them. They had tracked Jasper’s car or someone in the neighborhood had reported them or they had followed Andrew and Jane and none of that mattered now because Quarter was dead. Maplecroft was dead. They were all going to die in this horrible room with the bucket of shit and piss and Jane’s vomit on the floor.

Another bullet broke out the rest of the glass. Then another zinged around the room. Then another. Then they were suddenly completely swallowed by the sharp percussion of gunfire.

“Move!” Nick yelled, upending the mattress to block the front window. “Let’s go, troops! Let’s go!”

They had trained for this. It had seemed preposterous at the time, but Nick had made them drill for this exact scenario.

Andrew ran in a crouch toward the open door at the top of the stairs. Paula crawled on her hands and knees toward the back window. Jane started to follow, but a bullet pinged past her head. She flattened back to the floor. The vase of flowers shattered. Holes pierced the flimsy walls, lines of sunlight creating a disco effect.

“Over here!” Paula was already at the window.

Jane started to crawl again, but she stopped, screaming as Quarter’s body bucked into the air. They were shooting him. She heard the sickening suck of bullets punching into his dead flesh. Maplecroft’s head cracked open. Blood splattered everywhere. Bone. Brain. Tissue.

Another explosion downstairs; the front door blowing open.

“FBI! FBI!” The agents screamed over each other like a crescendo building. Jane heard their boots stomping through the lower floor, fists banging on the walls, looking for the stairs.

“Don’t wait for me!” Andrew had already closed the door. Jane watched him heft up the heavy post that fit into the brackets on either side of the jamb.

“Jane, hurry!” Nick shouted. He was helping Paula guide the extension ladder out the back window. It was too heavy for just one person to manage. They knew this from the training exercise. Two people on the ladder. One person barring the door. Mattress against the window.

Duck and run, move fast, don’t stop for anything.

Paula was first out the window. The rickety ladder clanged as she crawled on hands and knees to the house on the other side of the alley. The distance between the two windows was fifteen feet. Below was a pile of rotting garbage filled with needles and broken glass. No one would willingly go into the pit. Not unless the ladder broke and they plummeted twenty feet down.

“Go-go-go!” Nick yelled. The pounding downstairs was getting louder. The agents were still looking for the stairs. Wood started to splinter as they used the butts of their shotguns on the walls.

“Fuck!” a man yelled. “Get the fucking sledgehammer!”

Jane went on the ladder next. Her hands were wet with sweat. The cold metal rungs dug into her knees. There was a vibration in the ladder from a sledgehammer pounding into the walls below.

“Hurry!” Paula kept looking down at the pile of garbage. Jane chanced a peek and saw that there were three FBI agents in blue jackets swarming around the pile, trying to find a way in.

A gunshot rang out—not from the agents, but from Nick. He was leaning out the window, giving Andrew cover as he made his way across the ladder. The going was slower for her brother. The metal box was clutched under his arm. He could only use one hand. Jane couldn’t even remember him bringing the box up the stairs.

“Fuckers!” Paula screeched as she shook her fist at the agents on the ground. She was drawing a sick sort of excitement from the carnage. “Fascist fucking pig cunts!”

Andrew slipped on the ladder. Jane gasped. She heard him curse. He’d almost dropped the box.

“Please,” she whispered, begged, pleaded.

Forget the box. Forget the plan. Just get us out of this. Make us sane again.

“Nickel!” Paula yelled. “Throw it to me!”

She meant the gun. Nick tossed it across the fifteen-foot span. Paula caught it with both hands just as Andrew was coming off the ladder.

Jane had her arms around him before his feet hit the floor.

“Fuckers!” Paula started shooting at the FBI agents. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth was open. She was yelling like a madwoman because of course she was mad. They were all deranged, and if they died here today that was exactly what they deserved.

“Take my hand!” Andrew reached out to Nick, yanking him across the last few feet. They both fell back onto the floor.

Jane stood at the window. She looked across at the shed. The stairs had been found. The snipers had stopped firing. There was an agent, an older man cut from Danberry and Barlow’s same cloth, standing directly across from her.

He raised his gun and pointed it at Jane’s chest.

“Idiot!” Paula pulled Jane down into a crouch just as the gun fired. She reached up with both hands to push the ladder off the edge of the windowsill.