Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2) by Jack Lively (reading well TXT) 📕

foam implements. The wall was covered in sketches and paintings. I walked out of there and back toward the living room. A toilet flushed behind me, and down the corridor. Helen, no doubt.

The window was still open, I walked toward it. I was a couple of feet away when I heard the sound of gravel crunching under boots. Four boots. Two guys coming up the drive. I ducked down under the window again.

A voice shouted out, “Hello, anyone home?”

The footsteps came closer. Then one set of feet departed from the first. The second set crunched gravel toward me, then directly outside the window under which I was crouched. The second set of feet kept on going to the right of the window. The first set took up again left of the window, near the kitchen door.

The same voice shouted again. “Hello, anyone home? It’s Alaskan Broadband.”

I was calculating the distance between myself and the kitchen, on the other side of the living room from me. There would be knives, hopefully big and sharp ones. Maybe a hammer if I was lucky. I figured, hammer in one hand, carving knife in the other. I’d be invincible. I was also thinking that I didn’t have much time to find out. Maybe ten seconds. But then Helen came into the living room, wiping wet hands on her jeans. She glanced at me innocently and shouted out, “Hello. Yes, we’re home. We got it working now.”

Then she looked at me strangely, because I was crouched under the window. She mouthed, “What are you doing?” I was waving at her madly, trying to get her to stop walking in that direction. But she was already moving. Helen turned and looked at me, puzzled. Then she turned again, framed in the open doorway, seeing someone who I couldn’t see.

I was going to explain it to her, the danger and the issues at hand. But before I could say anything, I heard the double cough of a silenced, small caliber semi-automatic weapon being triggered twice in quick succession. Both of Helen’s eyes were shot out and she collapsed soundlessly to the ground, like a tea cloth fluttering off the hook. It was like a trick shot, a show off gag. She fell at about the same time as the glass from the kitchen door window. A tinkling on to the doorstep and the gravel. The weapon coughed again, once. I figured the third shot would be between her eyes, to keep things symmetrical. The shooter was showing off his skill, making a joke, which made me very angry. I couldn’t see Helen’s body at that point, but I knew that the shooter could see it through the door.

Which meant that I knew where the shooter was.

It was the shooter from the Beaver Falls Lodge, where the killings had also been done with morbid panache. No doubt whatsoever in my mind. But I also remembered how over at Beaver Falls, there had been no shell casings to find. Which meant that the shooter was hunting down brass right now.

So, it was my turn. Right now.

The first two shots had come from outside. The third, I didn’t know. I hadn’t heard the door opening, but then again, I didn’t know if it would have made any noise if it had been opened. In the back of my mind I thought the shooter was still outside, because it was how I would have done it. Outside there was less chance of the brass being lost in some nook and cranny of the house. Maybe in a shoe, or in a plant pot, you never know. Outside, the rounds would eject right there on the gravel, easier to find.

If I was lucky, there would be fractions of seconds to play with, perhaps no margin at all. I rolled over the window sill, out into the chill air. Boots hit the ground and I was sprinting. The shooter was crouched, both knees bent, head down and looking the other direction. He was reaching for a brass casing with his right hand. The left hand was flattened on top of a pistol, balanced between the palm of his hand, and his knee. The way I read the situation, he was a right-handed shooter who had shifted the weapon to his left in order to pick up the shell casings with his dominant hand.

Which was one point in my favor. Another was that the pistol was pointing the other direction, across his body, away from me. The guy’s head swiveled to me. He was a man in his fifties. Close-cropped silver hair with a solid hairline above experienced blue eyes that watched me as I came in. I registered the green tattoo lines coming up from the collar line and crawling around the ears. His hands were also covered in ink, and busy doing the complicated shuffle that would be necessary to stop me.

He was some kind of murder artist, but the question this time was about speed and efficiency more than aim. He had made a big mistake when he decided to switch over the gun from right to left. Now his left hand was trying to spin the gun around and present the butt to the right hand, like an old friend. The shooting hand was delicate, like the hands of a pianist. I could see the slender trigger finger seeking out the trigger guard, eager to get in there. I could see special tattooed symbols on the fingers, but I wasn’t interpreting them just yet. Guys like that shy away from the experimental. They don’t really want to get off a shot with the wrong hand, because their right hand is so perfect.

Which was one advantage I had at that moment.

The man was looking at me blankly while his hands were busy. But then, the busy hands got confused. The left hand was spinning the gun for the right hand to take, but I was coming at him fast and the