'Let me see where you're hit, let me see.'

He rolled to show her; the slug had hit him in the pelvic bone, and angled down to come out the inside of his thigh. A purple stream of blood flowed from the lower part of the wound, which he'd partially stopped with a sock.

'Lord.' Anna dug into her coat, found the HermŠs scarf she kept stuffed in the inside pocket, flipped it into a coil and bound the sock to the wound.

'Fuckin' killin' me,' Harper said.

Crack.

Apparent miss.

'We got to find some way out,' Anna said frantically. 'The car is right outside the door, but he's shooting it to pieces.'

'I don't know if I could make it out anyway,' Harper moaned. 'Do you think you could ran for it? I can probably hold him off a while longer, he just got me with a lucky shot. If you could run to someplace where the phone would work.'

'God!' Anna, trying to think. She looked over the rim of the tub at Glass, who now had both eyes open. Glass recognized her, tried to speak, her broken lips working, but nothing came out.

Crack. Another miss. How do you miss a house?

'Let me go look at the car,' she said to Harper, and she scrambled back out into the hallway, through the back room. The car was still there, engine running.

Crack.

Missed again; she frowned, wondering what he was doing. He wasn't shooting at the car. She looked back toward the room where Harper was hidden, decided. She'd have to go. If he could hold them off for ten minutes, like he said, she might be able to get back.

She decided, and scrambled back to tell Harper.

Crackand the house lights went, all at once.

'Coming for ya now, Anna,' the voice screamed.

'Come on in,' Anna shouted back. 'The cops will be here in five minutes, and then we're gonna kill you. You hear that? In five minutes, you're gonna die. Think about it, Steviefive minutes, no more Steve. Just a piece of trash they're gonna throw in a hole, and nobody'll care. Not even your parents. Your parents'll be embarrassed to be related to you.'

Crack.

'That's right, piss him off,' Harper said, and she could hear the grin in his voice.

And that pissed her off. She was bleeding herself, she had the blood of two people dying on her hands, and one of those persons was trying to laugh.

'Goddamn you, Jake,' she hissed.

'What?'

'Keep your mouth shut. No matter what you hear, keep your mouth shut, and stay here. Don't move. Don't come to help me. Okay? Number two: You shoot the next thing that comes through the bathroom door. If I decide to come through, I'll tell you. Otherwise, just shoot it down.'

'What're you going to do?'

'I'm gonna kill this sonofabitch.'

'How?'

'I don't know,' she said, her voice deadly. 'But I'm going to.'

She moved out of the bathroom into the office, groping her way in the dark. She could hear the car engine running in the backgroundand then suddenly, it stopped.

And the voice: 'I killed the guy, didn't I?'

'Get the fuck away from here,' Anna screamed. 'Get away from me.'

He wasn't coming inhe was staying outside, and the next time he spoke, his voice came through a window in the back.

'I don't see anybody. I don't see anyone.' Then from another window, maybe the bathroom window: 'Where is everybody? Everybody else dead?'

Anna pushed further into the office room, found shelter behind a desk. Couldn't see much: when it came to it, she thought, it might be whoever saw the other person first. Fifty-fifty.

But he knewthe place, and she didn't.

And now he was around in front. 'Hey Anna, come on out.'

'Get away from here,' she screamed. 'The cops are coming.'

'You were trying to run away from me, weren't you? You went down and got the car and you were all gonna run out of here, but something happened. And I know what it was. I hit the guy. I killed him. He's dead, isn't he? This is a thirty-ought-six, makes a big hole.'

His voice was working around to the side, now coming through a shot-out window behind her.

She needed a set: a movie set. And a scene.

'I'm coming in, Anna. I'm coming in. Bet you can't guess where.'

She moved to a corner of the room, pulled her knees up to her chin. She called softly, 'Jake, can you hear me? Jake, can you hear me? Are you there?'

'He's not there,' the voice said. 'Jake's dead. He's a dead motherfucker, Anna.'

'What do you want from me? What do you want? Tell me,' she screamed.

'All I wanted was the goddamn time of day, but you couldn't even give me the time of day. You'd fuck all those other people, but you wouldn't even talk to me. And you were like, you were perfect. You and me would've been perfect, but you wouldn't even talk.'

'I didn't even know you,' Anna shouted.

His voice came from a different window, pitched lower. 'I wanted to talk at the raid: you saw me at the raid, I was leading the raid, but you wouldn't even talk to me then.'

Pause: then the voice from another window.

'You saw me lead it, you wouldn't even talk to the leader. I set the whole fucking thing upafter that night at the club when I first saw you, so you could judge me in action, and you wouldn't even talk. You just made fun of me with that pig. Which is dead, by the way. I cut that pig's throat, God, it bled, it bled about a gallon.'

He was circling the house, speaking from one window, then the next, then skipping a window.

From the back, now: 'I was really disappointed,' he said. 'And then at that golf place? When I'd set everything up, just you and me? And you did it again, you humiliated meyou humiliated me. What made you think you could get away with that? And now you're going to pay, Anna. Just like that Pig.'

Anna whispered harshly, 'Jake, you gotta help me. Jake, I lost my glasses. Jake, I can't see. where's the gun? Jake?'

She heard him coming. She took her glasses off and put them in her pocket, and the world around her went soft. She pulled her knees up tight to her face, hunched her shoulders, pulled herself further back into the darkest corner of the room.

Heard his footfalls.

'Go away,' she cried. 'Just go away. haven't you done enough?'

'No.'

Now he was inside. Close. But she still couldn't see him. She tried to pull back even further, pull her knees higher. 'Go away,' she moaned, 'Please, just let me alone.'

'Look at me, Anna. I've got a gun.'

'I can't see,' she cried, 'I can't see anything, my glasses.'

A brilliant light cut across her face, just for an instant, and was gone.

'Aw. Little girl can't see?'

'Go away.'

He was coming in now, like a rat to a cheese. She was holding her 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.