Sign Off (Caught Dead In Wyoming, Book 1)

Chapter Thirty

More accurately, a brick shattered the glass in the kitchen door's window.

But I wasn't considering accuracy at that moment. I was hitting the floor.

Seeing the brick was almost a relief, because my first thought had been that it was a gunshot. Actually, that was my second thought. My first thought was a mental scream: Duck!

Throwing bricks might not be friendly, but the mortality statistics aren't real high. Still, it seemed the wisest course to crawl away from the source of the brick sitting amid a glitter of glass shards on the worn linoleum.

I'd nearly reached the front door, still on hands and knees, when a second brick arrived in my kitchen, this one through the window over the sink. I stood up and quietly went out the front door. The heel of my right hand was bleeding. I dug out a tissue from the pocket of the sweats I'd slept in, and wrapped it around my hand as best I could.

For some reason, the sight of my blood soaking through the ineffectual bandage made me angry. I could have-I should have-run to a neighbor's house and pounded on a door telling them to call the police. The fact that the only neighbor I'd talked to for more than a do-you-recognize-this-dog conversation was an elderly woman across the street who would probably die of a heart attack if awakened in such a way was not really the reason I didn't follow that path.

Quite simply, I was angry.

What right did somebody have to come hurling bricks through my windows at this ungodly hour of the morning? This rental house wasn't much, but it was mine, by God, and I was going to defend it.

I was not, however, angry enough to be completely stupid, no matter what Paycik said later.

I skirted around the side of the house, behind the row of budding lilac bushes dividing my house from my next-door neighbor's, and snagged the shovel from where I'd left it leaning against the back of the garage. I came up behind my house-attacker as he let fly a third brick, right through the window by my kitchen table. The sky was lighting rapidly, and I could plainly see the gaping hole it left and the flutter of the curtain as a draft sucked it out.

I also could see the thrower's stocky build beneath a Sherman High School letterman's jacket.

Brent Hanley was using a pile of bricks left by a previous tenant for ammunition like a kid's stack of snowballs. He reached for another rectangular missile. Holding the shovel just above the metal part, I swung the handle like Sister Mary Robert wielding a yardstick. I aimed for his forearms. He must have caught sight of the handle just before it hit because he yanked his left hand back.

The handle thudded against the padded surface of his right jacket sleeve hard enough to make him drop the brick, but the cracking against his hand was the more sickening sound.

He bellowed, "My hand! Oh, shit, my hand!"

"Get back," I shouted while he careened around, nursing his left hand in his right. "Get away from those bricks." I used the handle of the shovel like the muzzle of a gun to line him up against the garage wall.

"You broke my hand! I think you broke it."

"That'll teach you to play with bricks." I had no sympathy. "What the hell do you think you're doing, Hanley?"

"You wouldn't stop asking questions." He seemed to think that justified heaving bricks through my windows. I didn't. "I had to show you I was serious. I could've done worse than this, you know."

"Then you would've been in even more trouble than you are now."

That didn't seem to penetrate. But then came a sound-a throaty, rumbling growl-that definitely grabbed his attention. Mine, too.