Arthur Sterling let out an un-human, feral shriek from the bottom of his lungs.
The seventy-two-year-old retired Vice Admiral did not look like an officer now.
He lunged out of the leather wing chair, his Walther PPK coming up with spastic, violent velocity, aiming the barrel directly at his sister’s forehead:
“I BUILT THIS TRUST!” Arthur screamed, spit spraying across the cherry-wood table:
“I SPENT FORTY YEARS IN THE NAVY TO PROTECT THOSE DOCKS! YOU CANNOT GIVE MY EMPIRE TO A BROKE CARPENTER’S BOY! I WILL KILL YOU BOTH! I WILL BURN THIS ENTIRE HOUSE TO THE GROUND!”
BANG.
The sound was not a gunshot inside the room.
It was the clean, concussive, high-velocity crack of a .300 Winchester Magnum sniper rifle firing from the ridge three hundred yards away on North Table Mountain:
CRACK.
The large double-paned picture window of my living room did not shatter into dangerous fragments; a single, half-inch hole appeared in the upper left pane of the safety glass with a tiny, surgical zip.
