West Shore

Chapter 8: Three Bullets

The sun had come around the west end of the house, and the deck lay in flat white light, and nobody had turned the music back on.

Jason pulled a chair out from the table and sat down.

"Three rounds each," he said. "Strip it, build it, shoot. First man to hit the apple wins."

Nobody needed to ask which apple. At the far end of the lawn, past the diving board, where the grass stopped at the hedge and the ornamental wall stood behind it, a green apple sat on a boy's head in the same spot it had been set in twenty minutes ago.

The two pistols lay on the table between the chairs, a matched pair on a square of grey felt, three rounds in each of them.

Will Thorne was already in the other chair with his elbows on his knees and his hands hanging, cracking the knuckles of his right hand one finger at a time, slowly, so that the row behind him could hear there was nothing wrong with that wrist.

He heard the rule out. He gave it a snort and said nothing else. From Will Thorne, that was a yes.

Behind the chairs, Amanda Cole stood with the stopwatch in both hands and her eyes on the table.

The guests who had grown up in the county had drifted back off the stone without being asked to. The ones who hadn't stayed exactly where they were. Somebody down by the bar set a glass down, and that was the last sound on the property.

At the shallow end, Lance Ellery had carried his drink back up onto the steps when the pistols came out — the one precaution anyone had ever seen him take — and he sat there with it now, watching the two chairs the way a man watches a ball game.

"Ready," Amanda said. "Go."

Will was fast. His hand closed on his pistol and the magazine was out of it and in his palm before Jason had finished turning the second one over, and the slide came off the frame in one long pull and went down on the felt with a flat click.

Jason had long hands and even knuckles, and he had played the violin since he was four. He took his pistol apart the way he played — in tempo, nothing rushed, nothing wasted. Thumb on the catch, the magazine dropping into his left hand. He laid it down. The slide off the rails and set beside it. He was unhurried, and he was behind, and nothing in his hands changed on account of it.

Down the row, Will Thorne was already into the spring.

A PPK is not a difficult pistol. Stripped and rebuilt at an ordinary pace, it is ten seconds of work. Jason had done it before. So, plainly, had Will.

Between the two chairs the only sound was parts: click, click, the small clean knock of steel on felt.

Will finished stripping first. He went straight into the build, one eye down the row at Jason's hands the whole time, the look on him pleased and barely bothering to hide it.

The spring wouldn't seat. He had it in crooked and he knew it, and he was moving faster than his fingers were, so he shoved — and the spring came back out of the frame with everything it had and went into his left eye.

He came up out of the chair, both hands over his face, swearing into his palms. Half the party was on its feet.

Two of Will's people dropped into the grass on their knees and started feeling under the loungers. A third got down on the stone and crawled along the edge of it, one arm out, sweeping. Nobody found anything, and the swearing went on.

At the shallow end, Lance Ellery laughed into his drink.

Jason finished taking his pistol apart. He didn't look up once. He laid the last part down at the edge of the felt and started putting it back together while the three of them were still down in the grass, hunting.

"Got it!" One of them stood up out of the grass with the spring pinched between two fingers and held it over his head. Will Thorne took it out of his hand and went back after the clock.

He was quick. He had always been quicker than Jason Vance. It didn't matter. The race had ended when he put his hand over that eye.

Jason set the slide back on the rails and pushed until it seated, and racked it, and a round went into the chamber.

Then he brought the pistol up in both hands.

At the far end of the lawn, under the hedge with the wall behind him, the apple was where it had been for twenty minutes, and the boy under it stood with his hands at his sides. Something crossed Jason Vance's eyes just then — a trace of gold, thin as a thread — and was gone.

Will Thorne's slide went home on his own frame.

Jason squeezed.

The apple burst. What was left of it went across the boy's head and down onto one shoulder, and he didn't move.

Somebody at the back of the crowd started clapping and thought better of it.

Then, behind him, a slide went forward on a live round.

Will Thorne had already lost. He was supposed to have put the pistol down. He had it up and he was pulling the trigger before it had come anywhere near his eye line.

The first round took a strip out of the hair on the side of the boy's head and struck the wall behind him, and a brick broke out of it and spun off into the hedge. The second went into the wall at the height of his chest, into the exact place he had been standing half a second before, because in between the two shots he had gone down flat against the base of the wall.

Somebody screamed at the shallow end. Then the whole lawn was screaming, and nobody moved off the stone.

Will's eyes were red and wet and he was bringing the pistol up for a third time.

Jason was already walking. He came up the deck past the loungers without hurrying, put a round through the table two feet in front of Will Thorne on his way, and the glass top went across the stone — and then the muzzle of Jason's pistol was against Will Thorne's temple, still hot.

"You lost," Jason said. He said it low.

"We've each got one round left. It comes down to where we put it."

Lance Ellery stopped smiling. He set his glass down on the step and left it there.

Will Thorne's arm came down. It took him a while.

One of the Vance men came up the deck without being told, took the pistol out of Will Thorne's hand, and stood there until Jason handed him the second one. Then he carried both of them up to the house.

"Good game," Jason said. He said it to the lawn.

He didn't look at Will Thorne, standing there with his eye already going shut and his hands empty. He didn't look at Amanda Cole, holding the stopwatch in both hands, still running, smiling about something and not managing to put the smile away. He didn't look down the lawn at all.

He put both hands in the pockets of his board shorts and walked off the deck in his flip-flops, and the slap of them followed him around the side of the house.