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As the day died, the storm seemed to cohway, the wind ruhs iant creature were scuttling down the slope The snowflakes had become fine and dry, al the world, s it the way that sandpaper smoothed wood, until eventually there would be no peaks and valleys, nothing but a featureless, highly polished plain as far as anyone could see

With his hand still inside his coat and shirt, Stefan pressed the yellow button three tiret and fear he returned to his own ti had subsided, Laura sat on the ground at the back of the Jeep and watched her guardian walk into the slanting snow, past the rear of Kokoschka’s Pontiac

He stopped in thehappened First the air beca she had never felt before, as if the at condensed in some cosmic cataclysm, and abruptly she found it hard to draw breath The air acquired a curious odor, too, exotic but familiar, and after a few seconds she realized it smelled like hot electrical wires and scorched insulation, much like what she had s had shorted out a feeeks ago; that stink was overlaid with the crisp but not unpleasant scent of ozone, which was the sa any violent thunderstorreater, until she alround, and the air shimmered and rippled as if it ater With a sound like an enoruardian vanished froht, and sireat whoosh of wind, as ifin to fill some void Indeed for an instant she felt trapped in a vacuuone, the air sain

Except, of course, after what she had seen, nothing could ever be norrew very dark Without Danny it was the blackest night of her life Only one light rele toward soht in her darkness

Later, at the top of the hill, a car appeared Headlights bored through the glooled to her feet and took Chris into thecar slowed, she suddenly wondered if when it stopped another et out and open fire She would never again feel safe

Four

THE INNER FIRE

On Saturday, August 13, 1988, seven months after Danny was shot down, Thelma Ackerson came to the mountain house to stay for four days

Laura was in the backyard, conducting target practice with her Smith & Wesson 38 Chiefs Special She had just reloaded, snapped the cylinder in place, and was about to put on her Hearing Guard headset when she heard a car approaching on the long gravel driveway from the state route She picked up a pair of binoculars froround at her feet and took a closer look at the vehicle to be sure it was not an unwanted visitor When she saw Thellasses down and continued firing at the target-an outline of a man’s head and torso-that was lashed to a hay-bale backstop

Sitting on the grass nearby, Chris plucked six es from the box and prepared to hand them to her when she had fired the last round currently in the cylinder

The day was hot, clear, and dry Wildflowers by the hundreds blazed along the edge of the yard where the rass and weeds near the forest line Squirrels had been at play on the grass a while ago, and birds had been singing, but the shooting had teht have been expected to associate her husband’s death with the high retreat and to sell it Instead she had sold the house in Orange County four o and moved Chris to the San Bernardinos

She believed that what had happened to them the previous January on route 330 could have happened anywhere The place was not to blame; the fault lay in her destiny, in the ely troubled life Intuitively she knew that if her guardian had not stepped in to save her on that stretch of snowy highway, he would have entered her life elsewhere, at another moment of crisis At that place Kokoschka would have shown up with a subic events would have transpired

Their other home had held more memories of Danny than did the stone and redwood place south of Big Bear She was better able to deal with her grief in the h, the hly populated suburbs of Orange County, where the streets and freeways teemed with more than twothe crowd until he chose to act In the hly visible, especially since the house sat almost in the center of their thirty-acre property And she had not forgotten her guardian’s warning: Arm yourself Be prepared If they come for youthere’ll be a squad of them When Laura fired the last round in the 38 and pulled off the ear guards, Chris handed her six es He reet to check her accuracy

The backstop consisted of hay bales piled seven feet high and four deep; it was fourteen feet wide Behind it were acres of pine woods, her private land, so the need for an elaborate backstop was questionable, but she did not want to shoot anyone At least not accidentally

Chris lashed up a new target and returned to Laura with the old one "Four hits out of six, Moood wounds, but looks like you’re pulling off to the left a little" "Let’s see if I can correct that" "You’re just getting tired, that’s all," Chris said The grass around her was littered with over a hundred and fifty es Her wrists, ar to ache froet in another full cylinder before quitting for the day Back near the house, Thelain and picked up the binoculars to watch the target while his mother fired

Sorrow plucked at Laura as she paused to look at the boy, not merely because he was fatherless but because it seehth birthday should already kno dangerous life was and should have to live in constant expectation of violence She did her best to make sure there was as much fun in his life as possible: They still played with the Toer believed that Toe personal library of children’s classics, Laura also was showing him the pleasure and escape to be found in books; she even did her best to ame and thereby divert the focus fro able to protect the their lives were doer, by a fear of the unknown That reality could not be hidden from the boy, and it could not fail to have a profound and lasting effect on him

Chris lowered the binoculars and looked at her to see why she was not shooting She smiled at him He smiled at her He had such a sweet set, raised the 38, gripped it with both hands, and squeezed off the first shot of the new series

By the time Laura fired four rounds, Thelers in her ears, wincing

Laura squeezed off the last two shots and reet The roar of gunfire was still echoing through the ed her

"What’s all this gun stuff?" Thel to write new movies for Clint Eastwood? No, hey, better yet, write the female equal of Glint’s role-Dirty Harriet And I’h, cold, with a sneer that would e"

"I’ll keep you in mind for the part," Laura said, "but what I’d really like to see is Clint play it in drag"

"Hey, you’ve still got a sense of humor, Shane"

"Did you think I wouldn’t?"

Thelma frowned "I didn’t knohat to think when I saw you blasting away, lookingdecay"

"Self-defense," Laura said "Every good girl should learn solitter of brass shell casings in the grass "How often do you do this?" "Three times a week, a couple of hours each tiet "Hi, Aunt Thelood wound, and ato-the left, do you think?" Laura asked the boy

He showed her the target "Not so much as last tiet-just a lousy ’Hi, Aunt Thelet with the pile of others that he had taken down before it, went to Thel that she was no longer done up in punk style, he said, "Gee, what happened to you, Aunt Thelma? You look normal"

"I look normal? What is that-a compliment or an insult? Just you remember, kid, even if your old Aunt Thelenius, a dazzling wit, a legend in her own scrapbook Anyway, I decided punk was passe"