Captain Bailey called to me on our Nextels, “Sergeant, we’re going in.” But before he could give the order, a woman’s voice cried out from behind the front door.

“Don’t shoot. I’m coming out.”

“Hold your fire,” I shouted to Bailey. “Hostage coming out.”

The knob turned.

The door opened and gray smoke swirled out into the dull, overcast day. There was the sound of a well-oiled motor, and under the shifting plume of pale gray smoke, I saw the leading edge of a power chair bump and maneuver, then stall on the threshold.

The woman in the chair was small and frail, maybe palsied. She wore a long yellow shawl draped over her head, fanning out over her shoulders, bunched loosely across her bony knees. Her face looked pinched, and diamonds sparkled on the fingers of her hand.

She turned her frightened blue eyes on me.

“Don’t shoot,” she pleaded. “Please don’t shoot my son!”

Chapter 117

I STARED INTO Mrs. Vetter’s ice-blue eyes until she broke the spell. She turned her head to the side and cried out, “Hans, do what they tell you!” As she turned her head, the yellow shawl dropped away. My heart bucked as I realized that there were two people sitting in that wheelchair.

Mrs. Vetter was sitting in her son’s lap.

“Hans, do what they tell you,” Vetter mimicked.

The chair rolled forward onto the lawn. I saw clearly now. Vetter’s huge right hand was on the chair’s power controls. His left arm crossed his mother’s body, and he held the muzzle of a sawed-off, double-barreled, twelve-gauge shotgun hard against the soft underside of his mother’s jaw.

I lowered my Glock 9 and forced a level of calm into my voice that I didn’t remotely feel.

“Hans, I’m Sergeant Boxer, SFPD. We don’t want anyone to get hurt. So just throw that gun down, okay? There’s a safe way out of this situation, and I want to get there. I won’t shoot if you put down that gun.”

“Yeah, right,” Vetter said, laughing. “Now listen to me, both of you,” he said, pointing his chin at me and then at Conklin. “Stand between my mom and the cops. Now, drop your guns, or people are going to die.”

I wasn’t afraid. I was terrified.

I tossed my gun to the ground, and Conklin did the same. We stepped in front of the wheelchair, shielding Mrs. Vetter and her wretched son from the SWAT team at the edge of the lawn. My skin prickled. I felt cold and hot at the same time. We stood locked in this horrifying vignette as the smoke around us thickened.

With a muted boom, flames broke through the windows at the front of the house as the living room flashed over. Shards of glass exploded into the front yard, and sparks rained down on our heads. Conklin held his hands out so that Vetter could see them.

He shouted, “Vetter, we’ve done what you said. Now, drop your damned gun, man. I’ll take care of you. We’ll surround you all the way in, make sure you’re okay. Just put down the gun.”

There was the roar of the backdraft and then the whine of sirens as fire trucks neared the scene. Vetter wasn’t giving up. Not if I was right that the wild glint in his eye was defiance.

But Pidge had given himself no exit.

What the hell would he do?

Chapter 118

VETTER LAUGHED LOUDLY.

For a split second, all I could see were the beautiful, open-mouthed choppers of a kid who’d had the best dentistry in the world. He said to Conklin, “Can’t you just see Francis Ford Coppola directing this scene?”

I heard a faint click and then a thunderous KABOOM.

I’d never seen anything like it before.

One minute I was looking into Mrs. Vetter’s eyes, and in the next moment her head exploded, the top of her skull opening like a flower. The air darkened with a bloody mist that coated me and Conklin and Vetter with a red sheen.

I screamed, “No!”

And Vetter laughed again, his smile blinding white, his face a mask of blood. He used the barrel of his gun to shove his mother’s body out of the chair so that she tumbled and rolled, coming to a stop at my feet. Vetter aimed through the space between me and Conklin and fired again, the second horrific boom of double-aught buck sailing over the heads of cops and SWAT twenty yards away at the edge of the lawn.

I tried to wrap my mind around the horror of what I’d just seen. Instead of using his mother as a ticket to safety, Vetter had blown her up. And SWAT couldn’t get a bead on Vetter without hitting us.

Vetter thumbed the breech release, cracked the muzzle, and reloaded. He flipped his gun shut with a snap of his wrist and it clacked as it closed. It was a sharp and unmistakable sound.

Vetter was ready to shoot again.

There was no doubt in my mind. I was in the last moments of my life. Hans Vetter was going to kill us. I’d never reach my gun in time to stop him.

The air was heavy with smoke. The fire blazed. Flames leaped from the second floor up through the roof. The heat dried my sweat and the dead woman’s blood on my face.

“Step aside,” Vetter said to me and Conklin. “If you want to live, step aside.”

Chapter 119

FEELING CAME BACK into my fingertips, and hope rushed into the chambers of my heart. Now I understood. Vetter wanted SWAT to take him down in a superhero-style blaze of glory. He wanted to die, but I wanted him to pay.

As if my thoughts had caused it, Vetter suddenly screamed and jerked in the wheelchair like he was having a grand mal seizure.

I saw the wires and looked up at Conklin.

While Vetter’s attention had been focused on the SWAT team, Rich had unhooked his Taser from his belt and fired. The Taser’s electrified prongs had pierced Vetter’s right arm and thigh. Conklin kept the juice flowing as he shoved the wheelchair onto its side, kicked Vetter’s shotgun downhill.

While Vetter jerked in agony, SWAT swarmed up the slope to where we stood. I choked out to Rich, “You’re smart. Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Never.”

“Are you okay?”

He grunted. “Not yet.”

I fumbled in the grass for my Glock, then held the muzzle to Vetter’s forehead. Only then did Rich let up on the Taser. Still twitching, Vetter grinned up at me, said, “Am I in heaven?”

I was panting, my pulse beating a deafening tattoo against my eardrums, the smoke making my eyes stream with tears.

“You asshole,” I screamed.

Fire rigs drove up to the curb, and the SWAT team surrounded us. Captain Bailey saw the look of fury in Conklin’s eyes. He said slowly, deliberately, “I’ve got something in the van you can use to clean yourselves up.”

He turned his back and so did the rest of his team. With the rising blanket of smoke blocking out the news chopper’s view, Rich kicked Vetter in the ribs.

“This is for the Malones,” he said. He kicked Vetter again and again, until that psycho stopped grinning and started spitting teeth.

“That’s for the Meachams and the Jablonskys and the Chus,” Rich said. He kicked Vetter hard in the hams.

“This, you scum. This one’s for me.”