Written in Fire

CHAPTER 37

Natalie watched the flare carve a red scar in the night sky. Higher and higher it arced, burning as it went. Consuming itself.

She felt a sudden desperate urge to pee. What was she doing here? She was a lawyer, a mother, not a soldier. She hadn’t been in a fight since Molly McCormick had taken her Twinkie in the second grade and the two of them had ended up rolling around pulling each other’s hair.

In the distance, a white spark flared. A second or two later she heard the bang. It was a gun. Someone was shooting at them. Another spark flashed in the same place, but this time, before she heard the report, something shattered, like a champagne flute hurled at concrete. Out her window, the world grew suddenly darker.

They’re shooting the floodlights.

In the twilight, the New Sons of Liberty had moved closer to town. It was hard to gauge, but she guessed that muzzle flare had been maybe half a mile away. Which was scary for another reason; she’d been married to a soldier and had some idea of the kind of weaponry and skill required to shoot at that range.

Another flash, and another spotlight died. She set down the rifle and wiped her hands on her jeans, breathing fast and shallow. She should be used to fear by now. As a girl, she’d been effortlessly bold, but once she became a mom, worry had entered her life, a subsonic buzz that never went away. Worry that a cough was meningitis, that a tumble down the stairs could break a neck. Then, later, worry that Kate was gifted, and once that was confirmed, worry that she would be taken away, sent to an academy. Worry that Nick would get careless and one day she would find Bobby Quinn on her front porch with pain for eyes.

When Nick had gone undercover, worry became fear. For six months fear had marked her every moment, sometimes a nagging ache, sometimes an open wound. No, that was wrong; it hadn’t ended with his return. She and her children had been kidnapped at gunpoint. They had watched cities burn. Seen Todd attacked by a killer, suffered the endless hours of his surgery. Held Nick as he bled out on a restaurant floor.

She was no stranger to fear. But this. This was something different.

Why? Are you so frightened of dying?

She didn’t think so. She wasn’t eager or anything, but death was just leaving the party, and everybody did that eventually. No, it wasn’t for herself.

It was for them. For Todd and Kate. The fear had less to do with dying and more to do with failing them.

Realizing that made the difference. She forced a deep breath, and then another. Held her fingers out in front of her face and willed them to stop shaking. After a moment, they obeyed.

Then she picked up the rifle, flipped off the safety, and looked out the window.

One by one, the floodlights died. And with each, the darkness crept closer, until the only light came from the glowing globe and from the embers of buildings. Slowly her vision acclimated enough for her to make out shapes.

Some of them were moving.

Use the fear.

“Jolene.”

Twenty feet away, the woman sat at the base of a file cabinet, those cheekbones making her eyes seem even bigger than they were. Natalie pointed to the logo, then spun her finger in a circle to suggest the orbit of the purple light. For a moment, Jolene just stared, then she got it. Nodded, shouldered her own rifle, pointed it out the window.

Natalie stared into the darkness. Hard to tell what was a moving shadow and what was just a speck in her eyes. She made herself take steady yoga breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Waited with the rifle braced on a filing cabinet, the metal cold on her forearm, finger soft on the trigger.

As the star swung around the front of the logo, her world washed purple, and then it passed, the purple light spilling out across the ground and the men creeping along the edge of a building thirty yards away.

Natalie stared down the barrel. Tried to line the sights upon the nearest man. The luminous dots swung and bobbed with the beat of her heart and the whistle of her breath. The man was moving at a crouch, a weapon in his hands. She inhaled. Let it out steadily.

Pressed the trigger.

The crack of the rifle was like God clapping. Her ears rang. The flare of light stole her vision.

But not before she saw the man fall.

There were answering flashes from the street, and the roar of guns. Glass shattered somewhere. A ricochet whined. Natalie aimed at the flashes, pressed the trigger. Again, and again, and again.