He reached the pad on the wall at the exit from the corridor and briefly wondered why it was illuminated when the electricity was off, then remembered that the alarm system had a battery that supplied backup power. He pressed numbers and felt his shoulders sag in relief when the alarm stopped.

"Thank G.o.d," he murmured, having to contend now only with the ringing in his ears. He was still holding Beth up. In dismay, he felt her vomit. "She needs an ambulance."

"Where's a phone?" the policeman shouted.

"They aren't working! The power's off! The phones are down!" Decker's ears felt less tortured. He was hearing slightly better.

"What happened here?"

Dismayingly, Beth slumped.

Decker held her, lowering her to the brick floor in the vestibule. He felt a cool breeze from the open front door. "Get help! I'll stay with her!"

"I'll use the radio in my patrol car!" The policeman rushed from the house.

Glancing in that direction, Decker saw two stationary headlights gleaming beyond the courtyard gate. The policeman disappeared behind them. Then all Decker paid attention to was Beth.

He knelt beside her, stroking her forehead. "Hang on. You'll be all right. We're getting an ambulance."

The next thing he knew, the policeman had returned and was stooping beside him, saying something that Decker couldn't hear.

"The ambulance will come in no time," Decker told Beth. Her forehead felt clammy, chilled. "You're going to be fine." I need to cover her, Decker was thinking. I need to get her warm. He yanked open a closet behind him, grabbed an overcoat, and spread it over her.

The policeman leaned closer to him, speaking louder. Now Decker could hear. "The front door was open when I arrived! What happened? You said someone broke in?"

"Yes." Decker kept stroking Beth's hair, wishing the policeman would leave him alone. "They must have broken in the front as well as the back."

"They?"

"The man in the hallway. Others."

"Others?"

"In my bedroom."

"What?"

"Three. Maybe four. I shot them all."

"Jesus," the policeman said.

FIVE.

1.

A chaos of crisscrossing headlights gleamed in the s.p.a.cious pebbled driveway outside Decker's house. Engines rumbled. Radios crackled. The eerily illuminated silhouettes of vehicles seemed everywhere, patrol cars, vans, a huge utility truck from Public Service of New Mexico, an ambulance speeding away.

Naked beneath an overcoat that didn't cover his bare knees, Decker leaned, shivering, against the stucco wall next to the open courtyard gate, staring frantically toward the receding lights of the ambulance speeding into the night. He ignored the policemen searching the area around the house, their flashlights wavering, while a forensics crew carried their equipment past him.

"I'm sorry," one of the policemen said, the stocky Hispanic who had been the first to arrive and who had eventually introduced himself as Officer Sanchez. "I know how much you want to go with your friend to the hospital, but we need you here to answer more questions."

Decker didn't reply, just kept staring toward the lights of the ambulance, which kept getting smaller in the darkness.

"The ambulance attendants said they thought she'd be okay," Sanchez continued. "The bullet went through her right arm. It didn't seem to hit bone. They've stopped the bleeding."

"Shock," Decker said. "My friend's in shock."

The policeman looked uncomfortable, not sure what to say. "That's right. Shock."

"And shock can kill."

The ambulance lights disappeared. As Decker turned, he noticed confused movement between the headlights of a van and the hulking Public Service of New Mexico utility truck. He tensed, seeing two harried civilians caught between policemen, the indistinct group coming swiftly in his direction. Had the police captured someone a.s.sociated with the attack? Angry, Decker stepped closer to the open gate, ignoring Sanchez, focusing his attention on the figures being brought toward him.

A man and a woman, Decker saw as the nearest headlights starkly revealed their faces, and immediately his anger lessened.

The two policemen flanking them had a look of determination as they reached the gate. "We found them on the road. They claim they're neighbors."

"Yes. They live across the street." The harsh ringing persisted in Decker's ears, although not as severely. "These people are Mr. and Mrs. Hanson."

"We heard shots," Hanson, a short, bearded man, said.

"And your alarm," Hanson's gray-haired wife said. She and her husband wore rumpled casual clothes and looked as if they had dressed quickly. "At first, we thought we had to be wrong. There couldn't be shots at your house. We couldn't believe it."

"But we couldn't stop worrying," Hanson said. "We phoned the police."

"A d.a.m.ned good thing you did," Decker said. "Thank you."

"Are you all right?"

"I think so." Decker's body ached from tension. "I'm not sure."

"What happened?"

"That's exactly the question I want to ask," a voice intruded.

Bewildered, Decker looked beyond the gate, toward where a man had appeared, approaching between headlights. He was tall, sinewy, wearing a leather cowboy hat, a denim shirt, faded blue jeans, and dusty cowboy boots. As Officer Sanchez shone his flashlight toward the man, Decker was able to tell that the man was Hispanic. He had a narrow, handsome face, brooding eyes, and dark hair that hung to his shoulders. He seemed to be in his middle thirties.

"Luis." The man nodded in greeting to Officer Sanchez.

"Frederico." Sanchez nodded back.

The newcorner directed his attention toward Decker. "I'm Detective Sergeant Esperanza." His Hispanic accent gave a rolling sound to the r's.

For a fleeting moment, Decker was reminded that esperanza was the Spanish word for "hope."

"I know this has been a terrible ordeal, Mr. ...?"

"Decker. Stephen Decker."

"You must be frightened. You're confused. You're worried about your friend. Her name is ...?"

"Beth Dwyer."

"Does she live here with you?"

"No," Decker said. "She's my next-door neighbor." Esperanza thought about it, seeming to make the logical conclusion. "Well, the sooner I can sort out what happened, the sooner you can visit your friend in the hospital. So if you bear with me while I ask you some questions ..."

Abruptly the light above the front door, a motion detector, came on. Simultaneously the light in the vestibule came on, casting a glow through the open front door.

Decker heard expressions of approval from the policemen checking the outside of the house.

"Finally," Esperanza said. "It looks like Public Service of New Mexico managed to find the problem with your electricity. Would you tell Officer Sanchez where the switches are for the outside lights?"

Decker's throat felt scratchy, as if he'd been inhaling dust. "Just inside the front door."

Sanchez put on a pair of latex gloves and entered the house. In a moment, lights gleamed along the courtyard wall and under the portal that led up to the front door. The next thing, Sanchez had turned on the lights in the living room, their welcome glow streaming through windows, illuminating the courtyard.

"Excellent," Esperanza said. The lights revealed that he had a 9-mm Beretta holstered on his belt. He looked even thinner than he had seemed in the limited illumination from the headlights and flashlights. He had the weathered face of an outdoorsman, his skin swarthy, with a grain like leather. He seemed about to ask a question when a policeman came over and gestured toward a man beyond the open gate, a workman who had Public Service of New Mexico stenciled on his coveralls. "Yes, I want to talk to him. Excuse me," he told Decker, then headed toward the workman.

The Hansons looked overwhelmed by all the activity. "Would you follow me, please?" an officer asked them. "I need to ask you some questions."

"Anything we can do to help."

"Thank you," Decker said again. "I owe you." Esperanza pa.s.sed them as he returned. "You'll be more comfortable if we talk about this inside," he told Decker. "Your feet must be cold."

"What? My feet?"

"You're not wearing any shoes."

Decker peered down at his bare feet on the courtyard's bricks. "So much has been going on, I forgot."

"And you'll want to put on some clothes instead of that overcoat."

"There was shooting in the bedroom."

Esperanza looked puzzled by the apparent change of topic. "And in the walk-in closet," Decker said.

"Yes?" Esperanza studied him.

"Those are the only places where I keep clothes."

Now Esperanza understood. "That's right. Until the lab crew finishes in the bedroom, I'm afraid you can't touch anything in there." Studying Decker harder, Esperanza gestured for them to go into the house.

2.

"They cut off the electricity at the pole next to your house," Esperanza said.

He and Decker were sitting at the kitchen table while policemen, a forensics crew, and the medical examiner checked the bedroom and laundry room areas. There were flashes, police photographers taking pictures. Decker's eardrums were still in pain, but the ringing had diminished. He was able to hear the harsh sc.r.a.pe of equipment being unpacked, a babble of voices, a man saying something about "a war zone."

"The pole's thirty yards off the gravel road, behind some trees," Esperanza said. "No streetlights. Widely separated houses. In the middle of the night, n.o.body would have seen a man climb the pole and cut the line. The same thing with the phone line. They cut it at the box at the side of the house." Despite the overcoat Decker wore, the aftermath of adrenaline continued to make him shiver. He stared toward the living room, where investigators came in and out. Beth, he kept thinking. What was happening at the hospital? Was Beth all right?

"The men who broke in had ID in their wallets," Esperanza said. "We'll check their background. Maybe that'll tell us what this is all about. But... Mr. Decker, what do you think this is about?"

Yes, that's the question, isn't it? Decker thought. What in G.o.d's name is this about? Throughout the attack, he had been so busy controlling his surprise and protecting Beth that he hadn't had time to a.n.a.lyze the implications. Who the h.e.l.l were these men? Why had they broken in? Despite his bewilderment, he was certain about two things-the attack had something to do with his former life, and for reasons of national security, there was no way he could tell Esperanza anything about that former life.

Decker made himself look mystified. "I a.s.sumed they were burglars."

"House burglars usually work alone or in pairs," Esperanza said. "Sometimes in threes. But never, in my experience, four of them. Not unless they intend to steal something big- furniture, for example-but in that case, they use a van, but we haven't found one. In fact, we haven't found any vehicle that seems out of place in the neighborhood. What's more, they chose the wrong time to break into your house. Last evening was the start of Fiesta. Most people go out for the celebration. The smart thing would have been for them to watch to see if you left the house and then to break in as soon as it got dark. These guys were smart enough to cut the phone and power lines. I don't see why they weren't also smart enough to get their timing right."

Decker's face felt haggard. Tense and exhausted, he rubbed his forehead. "Maybe they weren't thinking clearly. Maybe they were on drugs. Who the h.e.l.l knows the way burglars think?"

"Burglars with a sawed-off shotgun, two Uzis, and a MAC-10. What did those men expect they were going to have to deal with in here, a SWAT team?"

"Sergeant, I used to work in Alexandria, Virginia. I traveled into Washington a lot. From what I heard on TV and read in the newspaper, it seemed every drug dealer and car jacker had a MAC-10 or an Uzi. For them, submachine guns were a status symbol."

"Back east. But this is New Mexico. How long have you lived here?"

"About a year and a quarter."

"So you're still learning. Or maybe you've already realized, they don't call this the City Different for nothing. Out here, in a lot of ways, this is still the Wild West. We do things the old fashioned way. If we want to shoot somebody, we use a handgun or maybe a hunting rifle. In my fifteen years of being a policeman, I've never come across a crime involving this many a.s.sault weapons. Incidentally, Mr. Decker ..."

"Yes?"

"Were you ever in law enforcement?"

"Law enforcement? No. I sell real estate. What makes you think ...?"

"When Officer Sanchez found you, he said you acted as if you understood police procedure and how an officer feels in a potentially dangerous situation. He said you emphasized that you'd have your hands up when you left the laundry room, that you'd show your hands first before you stepped into view. That's very unusual behavior."

Decker rubbed his aching forehead. "It just seemed logical. I was afraid the officer might think I was a threat."