“I think we had better take this,” she said.
Jack shook his head. “No. Leave it.”
Kate was incredulous. “What? Someone wants to kill me. They’ve been in my bedroom—and you don’t want me to take a gun?”
“Guns have their place and there is no doubt that sometimes they are invaluable in saving your life, but guns can also get you into all kinds of trouble you don’t need. If you go into the wrong place and forget you have it you will get arrested. Then you have a weapons offense linked to your name and if you need the police they likely won’t be on your side.”
“But I—”
“What if you’re on the run and you need to get on a plane, or into someplace with security? Where are you going to leave it? Guns make people, especially police, freak out. If you shoot someone you will go to jail while they sort it out.
“Jails are full of bad people. There may even be someone there who can recognize what’s in your eyes. You would be helpless in that situation, trapped in a cage with a killer like a Christian in the Colosseum with a lion. You wouldn’t be able to run and you wouldn’t be able to protect yourself.
“More importantly, a gun isn’t always going to save you.”
Kate wasn’t willing to give up the idea so easily.
“I’d rather take my chances of ending up in jail for shooting a killer than be killed myself. At least I’d be alive.”
“That’s the right attitude, but there are better ways.”
Kate was beside herself. “You came to find me because killers are after me. And yet you don’t want me to have a gun so I can protect myself?”
“Of course I want you to be able to protect yourself,” he said. “Like I said, guns certainly have their place, but in this situation they aren’t going to help save you from the kind of killer who will be coming for you.”
Upset, Kate stood with the weight of the gun in her hand at the end of her hanging arm. “What do you mean?”
He gestured to the gun in her hand. “Pretend I’m a threat. Try to shoot me.”
Kate was incredulous. “What? It’s loaded.”
Jack took the gun from her hand, dropped the magazine onto the bed, and then pulled back the slide to empty the chamber, letting the chambered bullet land on the bed beside the magazine. He slid the slide back again, double-checking to make sure it was empty, then handed the gun back to her, grip-first.
“You couldn’t shoot me if you tried, but there you go—now it’s empty.” He flicked a hand. “Go stand over there by the closet and I’ll show you what I mean.”
Kate was skeptical, but moved closer to the closet.
“I’m a killer,” Jack said. “You just came home. I’ve been waiting, hiding inside your house. I’m here to kill you. I just walked into your bedroom, catching you by surprise. Try to shoot me.”
“What?”
Jack lunged at her. In an instant he closed the distance. Kate started to raise the gun to point it at him but before she could, he slammed her up against the wall with one forearm. With his other hand he had already grabbed her wrist with the gun, holding it down before she could point it at him.
Kate blocked upward, knocking his forearm away. She spun out of his grip. Before she could twist away from his attack, he slammed her up against the wall again, face-first.
She felt something sharp at her throat. She froze, panting. His weight held her pressed up against the wall.
She didn’t know how he had gotten it, but he had the cold barrel of the gun pressed against her left temple.
Jack pulled her back away from the wall enough to hold the blade up before her eyes, showing her the knife that had been at her throat. He tossed the gun on her bed.
“Rule of twenty,” he said.
Kate stared at the short, stout blade in front of her face. It looked sinister.
She looked back over her shoulder at him. “Rule of twenty?”
Jack finally released her. “Inside twenty feet a knife is faster than a gun. You didn’t even begin to get the gun up enough to shoot me before I got to you. Bad guys always try to get as close as they can, first, so they can attack before you have a chance to react. They want surprise on their side. You lost before you started. I already had you where I wanted you.
“You said that you’ve been practicing martial arts all your life. You know how to protect yourself, yet in that instant of surprise, you abandoned what you know, depending instead on the gun.
“Unless you have a lot of training and a gun close at hand at all times, you won’t have enough time to use it. This is about saving your own life, not the method you use. The kind of killer who is stalking you isn’t going to announce himself from a distance and tell you that he’s going to kill you so that you can pull out a gun and shoot him. He’s a predator, and a predator is going to sneak up and get up close in order to strike before you have a chance to react. These people are up-close killers.
“He’s going to want to get close enough for you to look into his eyes before he kills you.”
“But I didn’t—”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re already dead. Excuses can’t change that. A gun is false security in this situation. In your case, it’s better to use your training. You have muscle memory that’s already there with you all the time. That’s the start of how you will be able to defend yourself. I’ll teach you the rest.”
Kate pulled hair back off her face as she sat on her bed. She looked down at the gun in her hand a moment before reloading it and then locking it back in the safe.
“AJ is expecting us,” she said as she closed her carry-on bag and pulled it off the bed. “And I’d like to get out of my bedroom where I know a killer has been through my underwear.”
“I don’t mean to scare you. I only want to keep you alive.”
Kate nodded. “I don’t want to end up like my brother. You just keep on doing what you need to, even if I don’t like it.”
“I understand,” he said. “Let’s get to AJ’s.”
CHAPTER
THIRTY
Kate was silent on the short drive to AJ’s house. She couldn’t help running everything through her mind over and over again. AJ would want every little detail.
Kate had been shaken by the realization that some guy, most likely John’s killer, had been standing in her bedroom, pawing through her underwear. He had wanted to make her afraid. He wanted her to know that he could reach out and touch her. He wanted her to know that he was coming for her. He wanted her to feel violated and vulnerable.
But her initial reaction of fear had curdled into anger. He had intended her to know he had been in her bedroom to terrify her at a gut level.
Kate was long past terrified and well into seething rage.
She remembered vividly a sifu from California coming to her martial-arts school when she was young, perhaps twelve or thirteen. It had been a great honor for their school. Kate didn’t remember the man’s name. She only remembered him as a quiet, bald, firm Asian man of few words. He had smiled, but it wasn’t friendly. It was judgmental.
To her, martial-arts school was an escape from a world she couldn’t change. It was a time for herself away from watching over John. It was a time when she could be her own person, with her own life, and not John’s sister, minder, protector.
Each student at the school had been pitted against an opponent so they could put on a demonstration of their skills; the visiting sifu evaluated them each in turn. Some of the older students received an approving nod. Some received a word or two of advice, and some a stronger criticism of the way in which they performed a particular move.
Kate went through her routine with an older boy who was more advanced. She was supposed to defend herself against his attack. She had been proud of her quick blocks and the variety of defensive moves she had used. When they were finished, she bowed before the sifu, sure she had acquitted herself well against the bigger boy.
When she straightened from her bow, the sifu looked lo
ng and hard at her. She remembered his intimidating eyes. They seemed fierce and knowing, as if they could see right through her. He tapped a finger against the base of her throat, at the top of her rib cage.
“That was disrespectful crap,” he told her in broken English as he lifted his nose. Kate stood motionless in shock.
“If you are attacked,” he went on, “it is because they have the advantage. For you, they will always be bigger, stronger. No one is going to help you, so don’t expect any. You must do everything you can with the bad intention of hurting your enemy.”
He tapped his bony finger at the base of her throat again. “You do not respect your own life. You are afraid of hurting your attacker. You should instead be afraid of him hurting you, and stop him.” He leaned toward her, his mouth in a sour expression. “You are better than you have shown me. I am disappointed in you.”
Kate had been humiliated. The class was dead silent at his words, and when it was over she cried on the long walk home. She made excuses in her own mind that she was only a girl and the boy had been much bigger and more experienced.
But even in that moment, she knew better. It didn’t matter. Failing to do what was necessary to stop her attacker had been what mattered, regardless of age or strength or gender. The sifu had been right.
Jack’s demonstration had brought back the burning shame of that lesson.
While her brother’s death was horrifying, in a way it also seemed surreal. She knew it was true, of course, but she couldn’t really wrap her head around it.
Knowing that it was likely the same man who had been in her bedroom, his hands on her underwear, made it suddenly real. It made those lessons relevant in a way they never had been before.
Rather than wanting to defend herself from the threat, as she had when she had been a girl, the way she had tried to defend herself from Jack—and having him easily get the upper hand over her—had caused some profoundly important internal switch to flip. She now grasped in a very real way that if she wanted to survive, there was only one way. She had to eliminate the threat.
She knew how to do it. She had been practicing those moves for years. Before, they were only theory practiced against a vague threat, and that threat didn’t try to kill her as she went through routines. She had never really thought about those moves being delivered with the deliberate intent to maim and cripple.
Now she did.
“Are you still mad at me?” Jack asked.
She frowned at him. “I’m not mad at you.”
“You were. I could see it in your eyes. It wasn’t a look I enjoyed seeing directed at me.”
“Well,” she said, “I guess maybe I was a little angry. But I know you were only trying to help me.”
“I’m glad you realize that.”
“I shouldn’t have been angry at you, I should be angry at myself for letting you get the better of me that way.”
“Kate, you can’t expect to know how to handle all of this. No one would. Ordinary people don’t go around getting attacked. They don’t expect it to happen. That’s where fear and instinct step in to help us.
“Give yourself some credit for how well you’ve been handling everything so far. Most people would be so broken up by their brother’s murder and the idea that the same person was now after them that they wouldn’t be able to function. You’ve been keeping your head.”
Kate swallowed back her emotion. “Will you teach me how to have bad intentions of hurting an attacker?”
As Jack studied her face, she deliberately looked at him only out of the corner of her eye, afraid that he would say no.
“I always hope that the people I find will be smart enough to ask me that. You’re the first one who ever has. I will help you for as long as you want me to teach you.”
Kate sniffled and wiped her nose on the back of her wrist as she nodded.
She finally turned off the main four-lane street into AJ’s neighborhood. AJ had been right about the party. The house across from AJ’s place was all lit up. As she drove past she could hear loud music.
At least, from what she’d heard from AJ and by the looks of people she saw, it was an adult party and not a bunch of drunken teenagers vomiting all over the front lawn. The street in front of AJ’s house was lined with parked cars. There were no empty spots to park in.
Kate drove around the block, and then widened her circle until, as AJ had guessed, she found a parking place a couple of streets over.
Kate put the car in park and then stared at nothing for a moment. “How did he get in my house?”
Jack leaned an elbow on the armrest. “That’s the wrong way to look at it.”
Kate frowned over at him. “What do you mean?”
“He wanted to get in. If you’d been at home, he could simply have kicked in the door or broken a window. The point is, he would have gotten in one way or another. You shouldn’t worry as much about how he is going to get to you, as what you will do when he does.”
Kate grimaced. “I guess you’re right.”
“I think that for now the best thing would be for you to stay at Detective Janek’s house. We need to have a long talk with her about a number of things, not the least of which is how to keep you safe. For now I’ll feel a lot better if you aren’t sleeping alone at your place.”
Kate nodded as she watched the figures of people, intermittently lit by streetlights, turning to shadows as they made their way to and from the anniversary party. A few people were leaving but most were still arriving.
It was a chilly night, so both she and Jack put on their jackets. When Kate pressed the remote to lock the car doors, the chirp blended in with the distant music and voices carrying through the night air.
“I can stay at AJ’s place tonight, and maybe for a few nights,” Kate said, looking over at Jack as they passed under a streetlight. “But I can’t stay forever. What good is running away or hiding going to do as long as these people are hunting me? Once I go back home, they will be waiting in the shadows for me. It seems clear they were even trying to get to me at work.”
He considered for a moment, and then looked over at her with a sudden thought. “Why don’t you come to New York with me? I need to go anyway. We could even go to Israel for a while. They would be glad to have you and maybe you could even help them in return. It would get you out of danger for now.”
“I have a job.”
“Can’t you take some time off?”
Kate smiled briefly at an older couple going in the other direction before answering Jack. “I guess I could. But once I get back, nothing will change. They will still be coming for me.”
“It would throw them off your trail for the time being. In the meantime, we can work on some measures to make you harder to find.”
“I’d rather end the threat,” she said as she turned up the walk toward AJ’s front door.
He gave her a more serious look. “That means killing whoever is hunting you.”
“I didn’t start this,” she said.
On the front porch, Kate glanced briefly over her shoulder at a burst of raucous laughter coming from the house across the street.
Kate knocked on the front door. But when she did, it swung inward a few inches.
The door wasn’t latched.
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
“That’s weird,” Kate said. “Their door isn’t shut.”
She started to knock again, but Jack snatched her wrist and pulled her back away from the door.
He moved them both off to the side a little and then with his foot gently pushed the door open.
Kate’s attention was caught by a mess of splintered wood. As the door swung open she saw jagged stubs of stair balusters broken off halfway up the steps. Pieces of debris lay everywhere.
Among that mass of rubble and wreckage, she saw Mike.
He lay sprawled on his back on the stairs, his legs bent back under at the knees, looking like he had fallen back from where he had been standing. He
was stretched out and motionless.
The spike of a split baluster had been driven through the center of his chest. Blood completely soaked his shirt and halfway down his tan pants. He was covered with the rubble.
Kate stood frozen in place by the shock of what she was seeing. Big, muscular Mike was clearly dead.
“Oh my god,” she whispered.
Jack already had his knife, the one she had seen before, with the stout, short, triangular blade, in his right hand. With his left hand he pulled Kate farther back, behind him.
“Stay here,” he whispered.
Kate could hear her heart pounding in her ears. Her breath came in short, ragged pulls. In her mind, she was hoping against hope not to find what she already knew they would find. She wanted to pull everything back and not have it be real.
Jack carefully stepped over the threshold and into the house. All the lights were on. Kate ignored his admonition to stay where she was and instead followed him in.
Inside the house, it looked like a tornado had ripped through the place. Splintered furniture lay scattered everywhere. What had been a warm, welcoming, lovely home was now an incomprehensible scene of wreckage. A broken lamp, still on, lay on the floor on the opposite side of the room, the shade torn off and crushed under part of a broken chair.
Blood seemed to cover everything. The smell of it hung thick in the air.
There was so much debris and torn cushion stuffing everywhere that Kate was having trouble making sense of anything, recognizing anything. The couch was the only thing still where it had been.
And then she spotted Ryan’s body in a crumpled heap at the base of the opening in the wall leading into the dining room. What was left of his head was bent back at an impossible angle. A massive amount of blood and brain matter were splattered against the fractured wall. It was clear to Kate that he had been swung by his ankles, bashing his head to kill him.
Kate saw a colorful plastic truck on the floor.
That was when she finally saw AJ among the debris.
The woman lay on her back in the middle of the shattered glass of the broken coffee table. There was so much rubble, cushion stuffing, and plaster dust all over the floor, and all over AJ, that Kate hadn’t seen her at first.