Blue Smoke and Murder

49

SEPTEMBER 16

1:11 A.M.

Zach had yanked on his jeans and was running for the guesthouse door before he consciously registered what had awakened him.

“Zach?” Jill asked, her voice husky from sleep.

“Stay here,” he commanded on the way out the door. “Gunshots.”

From the front of the compound, a car alarm barked urgently.

Zach shut the guestroom door and raced barefoot across the courtyard and through the house. His weapon was where he should have been-in the upstairs guestroom.

The front door stood open. Frost was down, red blood glistening in the hall light. A big revolver lay a few inches beyond his right hand.

Fire leaped in the driveway, engulfing the rental car and giving everything inside the adobe wall a hellish glow.

A bullet sang off the metal bell six inches from Zach’s head.

Silencer.

Zach snapped off the lights as he went down hard on the floor next to Frost. With one hand Zach felt for a pulse.

Fast, but there.

He picked up Frost’s revolver, took a two-handed grip, and aimed for a man-shadow that had paused at the top of the adobe wall.

Flames gleamed on dark metal in the shadow’s hand.

The sound of Frost’s gun thundered a second time, then a third, shattering the night. The revolver kicked hard against Zach’s hands, but he’d been expecting it. Frost always said that a gun that didn’t kick like a mule was for girls.

A cry, a curse, and the shadow disappeared over the wall.

Zach came to his feet in a rush and punched in the gate code. As he did, he heard bare feet running down the hall behind him, heard Jill yell his name.

“Call 911,” he shouted over her voice. “Frost is hurt. Stay out of the light. Could be more than one shooter.”

Zach ran to the gate, heard someone running away, and risked a fast look through the slowly opening gate.

A bullet screamed off the metal bars.

He dropped to his stomach and elbow-crawled forward just enough to see that the man was running again. Zach triggered two more closely spaced shots, a double explosion of sound.

A hesitation, then the shadow ran around the corner of the block and vanished.

Zach was on his feet and through the gate in a coordinated rush. Within three strides he was running flat out, chasing the deadly shadow.