“Jesus.” Diving, Coltrane heard the shot as he felt a bullet whiz by him. He hit the stairs on his side, winced, and tumbled to the landing, seeing the blurred figure of Jennifer racing down the continuation of the stairs.

He rolled, the next gunshot making his ears ring, plaster exploding from the wall, stinging his face. Jolting to a painful halt in the living room, he only then realized that he was still holding the revolver that he had picked up before climbing the stairs to the bedroom. Reflexively, he pointed it upward and pulled the trigger, his aim bad, missing Tash as she ducked back from the landing above him.

Her surprise at being shot at slowed her enough that Coltrane had time to race down to the front-door landing before Tash fired again. He collided with Jennifer, who was fumbling to unlock the front door. “No time!” he yelled, dragging her down the further continuation of the stairs an instant before two bullets whacked holes in the door.

They were on the bottom level now, but the overhead light exposed them, and Jennifer flicked switches, sending the bottom level of the pool area into darkness. The next moment, Tash appeared at the landing, fired three times into the shadows, and dove back out of sight. Before his eyes could tell his brain to stop the impulse, Coltrane fired at the empty landing, the gun awkward in his hand, the recoil unnerving.

“Jennifer?”

“Here.” Her voice was unsteady behind him.

“Are you hurt?”

“No.”

Coltrane’s heart pounded so hard that he feared his arteries would burst. Crouching behind a concrete pillar, he aimed up toward the landing.

“The garden.” Jennifer’s voice shook. “We can get away through the back.”

“No, we’d be trapped. There’s a wall around it. We’d only have bushes for cover. She could pick us off from the living room balcony. Tash!”

No answer.

“Tash!” Coltrane raised his voice louder.

Still no answer.

“Melinda!” Jennifer called.

“What?”

“The neighbors will have heard the shots! They’ll have phoned the police!” Jennifer said. “It’s finished!”

“Not yet!” Tash/Melinda said. “But it soon will be!”

What’s she talking about? Coltrane wondered. She isn’t stupid enough to hang around until the police come. Why is she waiting?

And why is she wearing plastic gloves?

So she won’t leave fingerprints, he thought.

Then why did she press Walt’s semiautomatic into his hand and use his finger to pull the trigger?

So his hand would have gunpowder residue. Isn’t that what Walt said up in Big Bear? He threatened to shoot me, then put a pistol in my hand and squeeze off a shot. “So you’d have powder residue,” Walt had said. So it would look like I’d shot at Walt and he was forced to defend himself.

That’s what she’s doing. She wants to make it look as if Walt did the shooting, not her.

But there’ll be other evidence she can’t hide, he thought. How does she plan to -

What was that remote control she pressed Walt’s thumb on?

“Do you smell smoke?” Jennifer murmured.

Coltrane whirled. Even in the darkness, he could see thick gray smoke billowing behind him.

From the darkroom.

It wafted up his nose and made him bend over, coughing, his eyes watering, the smoke so dense that it cloaked the exit to the pool.

Walt must have planted an incendiary device among the chemicals in there. The remote control Tash pressed Walt’s thumb on set off -

“Jennifer, get away from-”

The door to the darkroom exploded, flames bursting out, flashing across the corridor, whooshing toward the ceiling. But as loud as the eruption was, it didn’t muffle Jennifer’s scream as she sprinted toward the concrete pillar behind which Coltrane crouched.

Tash shot at her silhouette against the flames.

Coltrane shot back.

“Jesus, my hair.” Jennifer pawed at it, brushing out sparks.

“Now it’s almost over!” Tash said.

Coltrane cast a panicked glance toward the roaring wall of flames behind him.

“So I’ll give you a choice!” Tash said. “You can burn to death, or you can let me shoot you.”

“And then drag Walt’s body down here to make it look like he killed us but got caught in the fire he set?”

“Sounds good to me!” Tash said.

“But you’re running out of time! I hear sirens!” Jennifer said.

“I don’t! It’s only been a couple of minutes! Nice try, though!”

Coltrane felt the heat of the fire through the back of his sport coat. His hair felt warm. Smoke seared his throat. Doubled over, coughing, he knew that he and Jennifer had only a few more seconds before they would have to run toward the stairs. Although the house was made of reinforced concrete, the walls, floors, and ceilings of the interior had conventional wooden frames. Held in by the concrete, the flames would shoot along the wood like a firestorm. We have to get out of -

The vault, he thought, unable to stop coughing. It’s fireproof. He almost struggled toward it before he remembered that it had a halon-gas fire-extinguishing system. Not sufficient to put out the flames in the rest of the house but certainly enough to suffocate the two of them if they tried to seek shelter in there.

We have to rush the stairs and hope she doesn’t shoot us before we -

As the heat on his back became unbearable and he braced himself to run, he heard a scream from the front-door landing. A shot. But the bullet wasn’t aimed toward the lower level. It was aimed toward the figure who toppled down the stairs toward where Tash crouched out of sight at the side of the landing. The figure collided against her and sent her sprawling in full view of Coltrane. The figure was Walt. The blow to his head hadn’t killed him. Regaining consciousness, he must have lurched downstairs toward the sound of shouting on the bottom level. His husky body pinned her. His hands groped for her throat as she screamed again and pulled the trigger, blasting a spray of crimson from the back of his already-battered skull. In a panic, she squirmed to get out from under Walt’s now-truly deadweight.

Jennifer took advantage of the distraction and raced toward her. Caught by surprise, Coltrane took a second longer to rush from the fire.

Tash pushed Walt’s body off her and down the stairs, then aimed at Jennifer, who lost her balance when she dodged Walt’s tumbling body. The bullet meant for her hit Coltrane’s shoulder, knocking him backward onto the floor. For an instant, he blacked out. The heat of the spreading fire stung him back to panicked consciousness, the pain in his right shoulder sending his nervous system into spastic overdrive. As the flames seethed closer, he struggled to stand and saw Jennifer grappling with Tash on the landing. Tash pulled the trigger on her pistol, but nothing happened, the slide staying back, the magazine out of ammunition.

She threw the handgun, grazing Jennifer’s head. As Jennifer moaned and stumbled back, Tash turned, slipped, and scurried on all fours up the stairs. Jennifer grabbed for her, snagging the ankle-long hem of her dress. When Tash kicked backward, Jennifer held firm, but Tash’s frantic movements tore the dress, exposed her right leg to the knee, and left Jennifer holding a scrap of cloth.

Again, Tash tried to scurry up the stairs. Again, Jennifer grabbed at the dress, ripping more of it away, unable to restrain her. The two of them raced higher.

Jennifer doesn’t know I’ve been hit, Coltrane thought in dismay. His right shoulder throbbed as he wavered up the stairs. She thinks I’m coming to help her.

Amid the roar of the flames behind him, he heard noises outside the house: shouts, approaching sirens. Thank God, he thought, as he managed somehow to unlock the front door. But the crash of something being thrown above him and a wail of pain warned him that Jennifer needed him.

He struggled to climb higher, his mind swirling when for a second time that night he came to the wreckage of the furniture in the living room. And again he heard a commotion from even higher. Dripping blood, he wavered up the stairs.