What Time Devours by A. J. Hartley

with such confidence might. He reached for the phone but knew that with all the speed in the world it would take the police rather longer to get there than it would for the intruder to hear and kill him.
    Should have thought of that home security system sooner, he thought.
    He had only one advantage: the running tap. He looked quickly around the room for something he could use as a weapon. The bedside lamp was too clumsy and fragile. He scanned the cast-off clothes and stacks of books. Nothing. Then he heard the top step squeak. The intruder was outside the open bedroom door now, standing outside the bathroom. The sound of the tap might drown out any movement he might make, but the stairs were blocked and there was no other way down.
    Thomas spread his arms wide and grabbed the bottom corners of the duvet. Then he stepped out onto the landing.
    There was a man at the bathroom door, his back toward Thomas and a gun in his hand. His head looked strangely oversized, but by the time Thomas registered that, he was already charging and flinging the outstretched duvet over the intruder’s head.
    The man turned into it, grunting in surprise as Thomas launched himself, drawing his arms around him so that the bedding bound tight, muffling and stifling.
    The gun cracked loudly and a puff of feathers blew out of the duvet. The bullet shattered the hall window and Thomas’s ears rang. He felt himself flinching away from the weapon.
    Don’t back off! his brain shrilled at him.
    If his attack hesitated, he was dead.
    He clamped with his arms as the other fought to get free, and when he thought he knew where the intruder’s head was, he snapped his own hard into it. The duvet softened the blow, but it still felt hard and irregular, like the man was wearing some sort of helmet or mask. Thomas recoiled and caught an elbow in the ribs. Then the gun turned back toward him, and as Thomas fought to control the arm that brandished it, it went off twice in rapid succession. It was so close in the confined space that it sounded like a cannon, and the sound alone nearly drove Thomas back. But he wasn’t hit, and that was what counted.
    Not hit, but tiring .
    Thomas was a big man, and not in bad shape, but the gunman was stronger. Another few seconds and he wouldn’t be able to keep that gun from turning into his face. He channeled all the energy he had left, compressing it into the center of his chest like he was squeezing a tight spring in the muscles of his back and shoulders. Then, with a cry of release, he surged forward, shoving like a rocket-powered bulldozer. The gun arm came free—Thomas had no choice but to let it go—but it couldn’t turn on him because the intruder’s momentum was carrying him over the top step and down.
    The gunman fell hard, losing the duvet in his tumble, and the pistol snagged against the banister rail and tore from his grasping fingers. It fell into the hallway below and clattered on the wood floor as Thomas began his hasty descent. The living room window made a pale rectangle of streetlamp where the intruder had fallen, and Thomas knew now why the man’s head had seemed so distorted. He was wearing night vision goggles: an array of straps with what looked like field glasses lashed to the front.
    The realization alarmed Thomas, slowed him. If he had had any doubts before, this made it clear: this was not some street thug looking to pay for his next fix. This guy was serious. It was all connected: Blackstone, Escolme, the intruder in the yard. Thomas had no idea what was going on, but this guy was part of it, and that was bad.
    And the intruder could see. Which meant he would find his fallen gun in another second or two . . .
    Thomas’s right hand swept the wall and found a switch. He snapped the hall light on and the intruder winced away from it. At least now they were even. Thomas could see where the gun had fallen, and he figured he had about as much chance of reaching it as the guy who had brought it into