I went home to get a bigger gun.
I went home to get more than one.
I went home to break into the stash upstairs. A twelve-gauge pump better than the sawed-off, and a. 45 automatic pistol. I kept them inside the closet there, behind the opening in the ceiling, up in what served as an attic. Both were cold pieces. There was plenty of plastic-wrapped ammunition up there too.
Sometimes when I thought of those things up there, I felt as if a sleeping dragon were just waiting for me to call it out and use it wrong.
But this time, I was happy. Whoever had wiped out Jimson and his men, and Shit Fingers, they had been the one who shot Leonard. Had to be. Too big of a conincidence otherwise. And I had no reason to doubt that I was next on the list.
This time I couldn’t wait to get my hands on those guns, to let the dragon loose.
I was thinking about all that as I drove into my drive, got out carefully, and looked around, Brett’s revolver hanging loose in my hand. I thought I heard the icy grass crunch once, but I went still and waited and didn’t hear it again. It could have been anything. Ice shifting. A cat or a dog running across the backyard. Anything.
Or nothing.
When I was on the porch I kept Brett’s revolver in my right hand and held my keys in the left.
As I was pushing the key in, a voice said, “I wouldn’t do that.” I dropped and wheeled.
Standing in the yard, wearing a long heavy duster-style coat, was a young woman with long blonde hair. In the glow of the single streetlight at the end of the drive her hair appeared to fall over her shoulders and down the front of her coat like a waterfall of butter. She had a gun in her right hand, and the hand was leveled at me, and I knew before I could even get a shot off, I’d be dead.
It was Vanilla Ride.