Chapter Eleven

SHAUNA WAS GRABBED by the back of her neck and yanked out of the bed. She hit the floorboards in a painful heap, elbows and knees and shoulders knocking, her nightgown slipping humiliatingly up over her hips. There wasn’t time to scream. She rolled over, and a boot clamped down on her chest, pinning her, and that searing light whipped up again into her eyes, bursting blood-red through her scrunched eyelids.

“Where’s the safe?”

“Help!” she cried. It was barely enough for the two intruders to hear, she was sure. A frightened rasp. The boot crushed down for a moment and then eased off.

“Chill, chill, chill. She’s pretty old, babe.”

“Let me go. I’ve got this.”

A man and a woman. It was unmistakably a man’s hand that encircled Shauna’s thin wrist and dragged her up, shoved her down again on the floor by the end of the bed. She noticed blood on her fingers as she tried to push herself upright, but she couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

“Tell us where the safe is, old bag. Quick, so we can get out of here.”

“The what?” Shauna managed.

A kick to the chest. For a second, she was lifted completely off the ground from the force of it. The pain made her eyes bulge, seized her breath. She saw slices of the intruders in the green and red clouds that were exploding against her vision. Skinny, both of them. Sharp-angled faces hollowed out around the eyes, cheeks, and mouth. Skeleton people. In the terror swirling through her brain and limbs, Shauna tried to understand what they wanted, but she was flailing through darkness, emptiness. The woman grabbed a chunk of Shauna’s hair. Shauna smelled cigarette smoke in the hot breath on her face.

A cold, metal edge touched the corner of her mouth, then jammed into her cheek. Shauna couldn’t bear to look at the weapon. She felt it shudder as the hammer clicked back.

“Don’t be stupid, bitch.”

“I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Shauna said. The words were suddenly there, and she felt a surge of confidence. She could talk her way out of this. Reason with them. “There’s n-n-n-no safe. There’s money in my bag by the door. You c-can take the jewelry. I’ll show you where it is.”

“The safe. The fucking safe. That’s what we want.”

“There is no safe!” Shauna pleaded.

“I will put a bullet in your goddamn knee, woman.”

“Don’t!” Shauna cried.

“Where is it? Where is it? Where is it?”

“There! Is! No! Safe!”

Silence. Shauna wiped the blood dribbling from her mouth on the sleeve of her nightgown. Her breath was rattling in her throat.

“Babe,” the woman ventured to the man. “Maybe she doesn’t know about it.”

“She fucking knows.”

“But—”

“Go take another look around,” the man said. “I’ll stay on her.”

“All right but just chill, OK?”

“Don’t tell me what to do!”

“You kick her again and you’ll probably kill her, Poon!”

Shauna looked up. They were turned toward each other. The male one, Poon, was holding a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other. The woman was standing closer to Shauna, her revolver gleaming in the light. Shauna could see the frustration in their eyes. The fear. Their plan had unraveled. If the old woman knew where the safe was in the house, she’d have given it up as soon as that steel-capped boot collided with her birdcage chest. They were restless on their feet, poised to give up and run, locked in a wordless negotiation in which they weighed the merits of a full-house search, more torture of the old crow on the floor, the possibility that a neighbor might have heard the commotion and called the police. Flicking over to Plan B.

Shauna knew this was her moment. She slid a hand under the mattress on the bed beside her and gripped the handle of Mark’s shotgun, lying there as it had been for years, a sleeping snake that she tugged out of hibernation by the tail.

Shauna lifted the gun and pumped it once.

The intruders turned at the sound.

Shauna blew the woman’s head off.