In the last chapter Dortch set off the backyard alarm. A light bulb that Ohmie’s father thought he taken care of came on and interrupted the trap. Dortch blows in both the front and the back doors, after successfully killing the home’s electricity. Ohmie calls 9-1-1 and then has to go outside to call the responding cops off.

I tried to back up into the house, but I stumbled a bit when I got to the threshold. An arm caught me and kept me from falling. Wishful thinking made me believe for a second that it was Dad, but I knew better. Dortch let go, but only long enough to grip me by the back of the neck. His paw wrapped just about all the way around.

“I gotcher kid,” Dortch shouted. “And the police are gone.”

Mom was inching her way up the hallway. I could feel her. I guess Dortch did too. Either that or he felt me looking that direction. He fired several rounds toward where I’d been looking. Mom was down. I knew it. She’d been creeping our way, but Dortch just threw bullets that way. One of them got her. I screamed as loud as my cancer-ravaged body could, struggling to get free.

Dad yelled from the dining room. “Let him go, Dortch. Just you and me, hand-to-hand. Take Ohmie into the yard. I’ll come out.”

There was only one reason Dortch would take Dad up on that – that’s if he had a second gun. All of a sudden, I was being yanked by the neck backwards. I almost lost my footing. His grip hurt so bad that I thought I would pass out. There was a street light a half block away that provided a little bit of illumination, enough if your eyes had adjusted to the dark.

Dortch had me with his left hand. His gun was in his right. Dad carefully laid his gun on the concrete porch and stepped toward us. Dortch pitched his toward a birdbath that I used to hate mowing around, and flung me in the other direction. The two faced off. Dad feinted with his right, parried a blow from Dortch that glanced off his head and threw out his foot in a crotch kick. I could feel the clonk through the ground that I was still trying to get up from. We later learned that Dortch was wearing some sort of custom designed protective cup. It was not only a cup, but also a holster for the Browning .25 semi-automatic that he had pointing at Dad.

Bam! I put the one shot from the single use nine-millimeter right in his breadbasket. Dad slapped the .25 out of his hand and ran for Mom. I retrieved both of Dortch’s guns. I’d seen too many horror movies where the supposedly dead guy sneaks up in the dark, or from your blind side.

The cops were there within an instant, it seemed like. Guns drawn, aimed at me, at Dortch, at the house, back at me. They were shouting, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. One of them was taking the guns out of my hands. There was an ambulance at the gate. Turned out the cops that came for my call decided to circle the area and drift back for another look. By then, calls had come in about the explosions and shooting.

My hearing and other senses were coming back by then. Dad was carrying Mom out of the house toward the first responders who’d jumped the gate. I heard Dad tell them that her arm cast was shattered and either the bullet, or a fragment had grazed her head. Her head was wrapped with Dad’s shirt. Dad opened the gate after they put Mom on their surfboard stretcher.

One of the cops was tending Dortch and was on his shoulder microphone telling them to send another ambulance. Then Dad was leading me to our car. We would follow the ambulance that had Mom.

“Dad, I’m sorry, I…”

Dad interrupted me. “Ohmie, you saved my life… again. No, the 9-1-1 call was not in the plan. But neither was blowing up both doors and possibly coming in a third door. Ohmie, I was beside myself back there unable to help your mother.”

“I didn’t see. H-how was Mom’s wound? Bad?” Tears erupted like two water faucets, streaming down my face.

“It was dark, too dark to tell, really. But I think, well, I don’t know if it was one shot that broke up when it hit her cast, or two shots. But she has a head wound. Fragments maybe….” Dad stopped talking when his voice began to break.

The cops were still taking our stories, first a uniform cop, and then a detective when a doctor came into the room where we sat with Mom. They’d already x-rayed her arm and head. The doctor looked from Dad to me, causing Dad to tell him that it was okay to talk in front of me, a wisp of a kid. He was pretty sure that a bullet had fragmented when it hit her cast, a piece of it made a four-inch slice in her scalp and did a little more than just graze her skull – there was penetration. They had a neurosurgeon on his way. She was in a coma.

Not good news.

“Dortch?” Dad asked.

The doctor was familiar with the ordeal and the relationship. He knew that I was the one who shot Dortch. Probably from the first responders, maybe hearing the cops. “Blew up his duodenum, pancreas, half his stomach… oh, and a few inches of his spine. He’ll live, but he won’t be very happy.” The doctor winked at me. I couldn’t believe it. My bet was that the doctor had a little brother.

Then the doctor looked squarely at me. “How are you doing? How long since you’ve had anything?” He glanced at my shunt.

Dad let me speak for myself. “I’m due for the steroids. We’re not doing the antibiotics.” I saw him grimace. “I think I could use some antiemetics, though.”

“That, I can do.” He looked to Dad, who nodded assent.

When we got home the next day, Mom admitted after brain surgery and still in a coma, Mom’s boss, Paul Santos had a contractor crew fixing the doors. I guess he felt some responsibility since it was Company C-4 that blew up our house. Grandma was there waiting for us. She’d already cleaned up inside. She said that professionals were coming out to clean the carpet where Mom was shot. Dad said fine, they should come out; but he ripped out that section of carpet and threw it away. Dad showed her how to give me shots and then helped me with a shower and get into bed. I was out for the rest of the day and all that night.

When I woke up, Grandma gave me a sponge bath and changed my sheets like they do in hospitals, one side at a time. I was kind of surprised at her skill. And I didn’t care that she saw me. I mean what do I care? They say pride goes before a fall. Well, I fell. What does that say about whatever pride a thirteen-year-old should have?

“Ohmie. I, I love you. You know that, don’t you?”

I didn’t, and I guess my face showed it. “There are things… well. You know it now.” She smiled at me like Nurse May and Mom do.

She mouthed a word, or a phrase, actually. She gave it no voice, but I made out the phrase. Then she got up saying that she would go start the laundry, taking the towels and sheets with her, promising to come back with some food. I told her that I was feeling some better and would eat in the dining room. She nodded approval.

The Pledged. That was what she’d mouthed. That was gonna take some thinkin' on.

Three days later, when Grandma brought me a plate of scrambled eggs, scrambled with milk the way I like ‘em, she said that Dad had gone to get Mom, she’d been out of her coma two days and doing well enough to come home as long as Dad had some kind of home health nurse check her every four hours. The hospital set it up. Dad hinted that he had to plead national security. I had learned a lot about how spies operate.

Grandma went to the kitchen to cook, giving the three of us a chance to talk. Dad and I wanted to bring Mom up to speed. I don’t know why I wrote that, since I detest writers speaking in clichés. We told her all about the fight. She couldn’t remember anything past the garage door going up. Which reminded me that I wanted to check that out.

“You shot Dortch?” Mom was shocked. And dismayed. “Oh, Ohmie.”

“Dad’s plastic gun was on his desk. He was using it for a paperweight.” I said, like it was just sitting there going to waste. Funny, it was just a paperweight now.

“But only one shot, and you would have to be close.”

“Twelve feet,” Dad injected. I measured it. “Dead center mass.”

“Blew up his duodenum,” I said with a grin.

Dad’s left lip twitched just that tiny bit.

“But I was aiming for his nose.”

Mom and Dad both just about busted a gut.