Hailey had been waiting for more than an hour, but waiting didn’t matter. She was content with waiting, felt calm at her core, felt she could wait out a stone. She had made a decision, and it had set her to the side of time. The world was a small world, of narrow attention and intent. No other meanings, confusions, emotions, objects. Only the weapon and the aiming of it and the using of it.

Yet, annoyingly, when she raised her Colt it made little uncontrolled jumps. She lowered, breathed. She stood at the center of her home office, the open doorway before her. Behind her, a converted toy box painted with purple monkeys in bubble helmets held an improvised assembly of hooks and trays with a number of firearms: AK-47 semiautomatic, Benelli autoloading shotgun, HK MP5 submachine gun. But she had wanted the Colt—a Series 70 with cylinder and slide ambidextrous mag release and fiber optic sight—for her success with it in short distance accuracy. Feet set at shoulder-width. Calm. She assured herself of her calm. She imagined her rage funneling into a single hot flame.

Then finally she heard Kevin’s car in the driveway, and she raised the Colt. It fluttered as if she held a desperate bird. It really pissed her off.

*

Kevin was halfway across the lawn when he heard a subterranean chortling. . . . Read More.