She looks at me.
Her face is the calmest thing in this warehouse. That is the part that gets me. I have just put six bodies on the floor. She is looking at me like I am a problem she has to solve before someone makes her solve it the wrong way.
I do not raise my hands. I do not lower the gun I took off the lead.
I stand there bleeding and watch her decide.
"Who sent you?" she says.
"You stole my gun."
"You were busy killing six men."
"That feels judgmental."
For half a second, I think her mouth might move. Not a smile. Something smaller. More dangerous.
Then it’s gone.
Her voice is level when she speaks again. The same quality her hands had on the table. The stillness has teeth.
"Who sent you?"
I think about the answer.
My badge inside the pocket of the jacket I am bleeding through. The months of work I just lost.
They came for her.
She knows it. She is holding my own gun on me while she decides whether I’m part of the problem.
"Tell me before I decide," she says.
She means it.
I start to answer.
I do not know what I would have said. I will think about that later. In a different room. When she is close enough to touch and nowhere to run.
Sirens. Distant. Closing fast.
Her eyes flicker once toward the freight door. Just once. Then back to my face.
I understand, with a clarity that will cost me everything I have built, that she is not going to wait for the police.
She is going to make a decision in the next four seconds. Whatever she decides next, I already know I am not letting her disappear.
I take a step toward her.
She does not warn me.
I take another.
The gun stays where it is. Her finger stays on the trigger.
I close the distance.
I do not stop until the muzzle is against my sternum.
