The plasma bolt hits his chest and throws him backward into the doorframe with a flash of blue-white heat. He screams, drops his weapon, and collapses half in, half out of the apartment. The smell of burned fabric and scorched flesh floods the room.
The second man curses and dives sideways into the hall.
I fire again, missing him by inches and blowing a smoking hole through the stairwell wall.
Then Ron Sanchez laughs from outside my door.
“Oh, sweetheart,” he calls. “You’ve got bite.”
My whole body goes cold.
“Come in and find out how much,” I shout.
My voice does not shake.
I am proud of that for about half a second before gunfire tears through the apartment wall.
I drop behind the couch as projectiles rip through plaster, glass, and my grandmother’s framed bakery license. The window behind me cracks. A lamp explodes into sparks. My ears ring, and the air fills with dust, ozone, and the bitter stink of burned insulation.
Ron steps through the doorway when the gunfire stops.
He looks worse than before.
The left side of his face is swollen from Kauss’s earlier violence and whatever came after. His nose is bandaged crookedly. One eye has a red burst in the white. But he is smiling, and the smile is the most frightening thing about him because it has detached from sanity.
Two men remain with him. One drags the wounded man into the hallway. The other keeps a pistol trained toward the couch.
“Evie,” Ron says. “You shot Benny.”
“Benny broke into my apartment.”
“Fair point.”
“You should leave before I improve my aim.”
He laughs softly. “Still talking.”
“Still disappointed.”
His smile twitches.
Good.
He points toward the kitchen counter. “Put the gun down.”
“No.”
His man fires into the couch inches from my shoulder.
Stuffing bursts beside my face. I flinch but keep hold of the pistol.
“Next one goes through you,” Ron says, voice still light.
I believe him.
That is the problem.
I also know if I put the pistol down, I am dead, taken, or worse. I have been dragged once. I have been used as leverageonce. I will not go politely into another vehicle so Ron can write his little tragedy across my body.
