Rounding the corner of the house, in the dim yellow of a single porch light, Ellis saw Madison, her face streaked with blood, flailing around on the ground, screeching and kicking out at the man Ellis knew must be her husband.

Standing over Don Shackleford was a mud-covered Ty Bazemore, with a crazed look in his eye and what appeared to be a two-by-four raised menacingly above Don Shackleford’s head.

In the moonlight, they saw the gun clutched in Shackleford’s hand, pointed directly at Ty’s chest. For a nanosecond, time seemed to stand still. And then Ellis heard her own voice, at a decibel level she didn’t know she possessed. She burst out of the shadows, with Julia right beside her, the two of them screaming like banshees.

Instinctively, the friends split up, with Julia running in one direction towards Shackleford, and Ellis in another.

Julia stopped five yards away, held the pistol out, elbows locked, the gun clutched in both hands, the way she’d seen Clint Eastwood do in all those Dirty Harry movies Booker loved so much. “Stop, or I’ll shoot!” Unlike Clint Eastwood, her voice cracked and the words came out more of a squeak than a roar. Also unlike Clint, her hands shook like a drunk with a bad case of the DTs.

Shackleford’s expression was more of bemusement than terror. He shoved Madison aside and stood easily.

“I’ll shoot your ass,” Julia screeched, planting her feet and assuming the position.

“Sure you will,” Shackleford said, laughing. He raised his own pistol and pointed it at Julia, but at just that moment, they heard an earsplitting burst of siren: Whee-OO, whee-OO, whee-OO. Startled, Shackleford turned his head, just for a second.

Whee-OO, whee-OO.

It was all the distraction Ty needed. He slammed the two-by-four across the top of Don Shackleford’s skull, at precisely the same moment that Ellis, crouched behind Shackleford, circled around, leapt into the air, and with an unearthly howl which Julia later described as “half Karate Kid, half feral dog,” made a direct hit to Shackleford’s groin with the fireplace poker.

At which point, the bad guy, Julia said in subsequent retellings, “folded like a Kmart lawn chair.”

53

Ty dropped the two-by-four and limped over to Ellis, gathering her into his arms, deliberately turning her away from the sight of Don Shackleford crumpled on the ground with a gaping gouge across the top of his head.

Julia stared down at Shackleford, who was motionless. Wordlessly, she dropped the pistol, and went to comfort Madison, who had retreated to the cover of the back porch, and was now weeping softly, clinging to the handrail of the iron staircase.

“It’s all right,” Julia said, hugging Madison. “You’re all right. He can’t hurt you anymore. Not anymore. Not ever.” Her voice was soothing, singsongy. Madison shuddered, and Julia petted her, as she would a frightened kitten. “I swear, he’ll never touch you again.”

“You guys!” they heard a voice call. Looking up, Ellis and Julia saw Dorie loping towards them, through the mist. “I heard gunshots. Are you all right?”

“Dorie!” Ellis cried. “We’re okay. We’re all okay. Ty…” Her voice was as shaky as her legs, which now felt like they might collapse under the weight of her. “Ty saved us.”

“You saved yourselves,” Ty corrected her, wincing. Now Ellis saw the blood oozing from his left thigh. “You’re hurt,” she exclaimed. “Oh my God, he shot you.” She looked wildly around. “Ty’s been shot. We’ve got to get an ambulance.”

“I’m fine,” Ty said wanly, clamping his hand over his thigh. “Just a flesh wound. Like on TV.”

Ellis fumbled in her pocket for her cell phone, but now they heard a different set of sirens, and looking up, saw a procession of blue and red flashing lights: three Dare County sheriff’s cruisers, a K-9 drug enforcement unit, and an ambulance.

“Thank God,” Ellis murmured.

Everything happened at once then. Cops with dogs swarmed out of the cruisers, weapons drawn. Connor Terry pulled up in his Jeep a moment later, and rushed to Dorie’s side. The EMTs strapped Shackleford to a gurney and shoved him into the ambulance.

“Come on, buddy,” said another technician, trying to herd Ty towards the same ambulance.

“Nothin’ doin’,” Ty said through gritted teeth. “I’m not getting in the same buggy as the asshole who just tried to kill us all.”

Madison, despite her own vehement protests, was told that her head injury, and a shoulder that was likely dislocated, meant a direct ticket to the emergency room. Red lights flashing, the ambulance left, bearing both Madison and her unconscious husband to the emergency room.

Ty was still arguing with the EMTs when the pretty black paramedic who’d just finished applying a butterfly bandage to Madison’s forehead came walking up. “Aw, Bazemore, don’t be such a hardhead,” she called.

“Kalilah, you know this guy?”

“Sure,” she replied. “You know him too. He works the bar at Caddie’s.”

“Hey, Kalilah,” Ty said. “I’m was just trying to tell your friend here it’s no big thing.”

“Lemme see,” Kalilah said, pushing him gently onto the bumper of the nearest cruiser. Donning a fresh pair of latex gloves, and illuminated by the headlights of another cruiser, she gently probed the wound. “You are one charmed sumbitch,” she told him, swabbing the wound with disinfectant. “Looks like that bullet only grazed you. Couple inches to the right, and it would’ve hit your femoral artery. You would’ve bled out before we got here.”

“Yeah,” added the first EMT, “and another inch to the right of that and you’d be singing soprano.”

“My lucky day,” Ty said, wincing.

Kalilah was an efficient worker, and a moment later she had his thigh cleaned and dressed. “Now,” she ordered with a grin. “I need you to drop those pants so I can hit you with some antibiotics. Which one of those cheeks is the prettiest?”

Ty shrugged, and unflinchingly dropped his rain-sodden shorts to offer up his left buttock. Before he could stop her, she jabbed him with a second needle. “A lil’ something for the pain,” she said. “You’re gonna sleep good tonight, my friend.”

Thunder growled in the distance, and a streak of lightning tore through the night. But the rain had slacked off to a gentle drizzle, and finally, after what seemed like an eternity, after all the witnesses had been questioned and statements taken, the police cruisers made their bumpy exit down the Ebbtide driveway. The group stood, huddled under a green-and-white striped golf umbrella, watching them go.

“Hey,” Ellis said suddenly. “It just struck me. That first siren we heard. Right when Don Shackleford was going to shoot Ty. Where the hell did that come from?”

Dorie laughed. “My bad.” She reached in the pocket of Connor Terry’s borrowed, bright yellow Dare County Sheriff rain slicker and brandished her weapon of choice. “You ever try to slash a steel-belted radial Michelin with the equivalent of a butter knife?” She gave Ty a reproachful head shake. “Dude, you gotta get some decent equipment in that kitchen of yours. I was still sawing away on that first tire when the Escalade’s car alarm went off. I thought for sure he’d kill all of y’all.”

“Actually, that car alarm probably saved my life,” Ty told her. “Shackleford had a dead bead drawn on me. He’d have shot me for sure. So it looks like you’re the real hero here.”

“She did great,” Ellis said, looking around at all their haggard, mud-splattered faces. “But I think we all did pretty good. We make a decent team, don’t you think?”

“Awesome,” Julia said. “But I’d just as soon not ever go through anything like that again. Ever.”

Ty nodded his agreement, but his eyelids were drooping, and it was clear he was in pain. “Come on,” Ellis said finally, draping Ty’s arm around her shoulder. “I’m taking you home.”

He looked off at the spot where his garage and apartment had been, and yawned. “Got no home anymore,” he said drowsily.