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Juliette aimed and blew holes in the men’s upper thighs. Merciless. They yelled out, collapsed to the ground, and she charged forward. When she struck her palm against the office door, it flew back hard enough to put a dent in the wall.
“Watch out!”
Roma pulled her aside roughly, muttering a prayer under his breath. A red-hot bullet struck the doorjamb where Juliette’s head would have been.
Zhang Gutai stood behind his desk, aiming his gun again. His grip was unsteady. He had beads of sweat dripping down his face, eyes turned to saucers. Caught at last.
“What have I done to you?” Zhang Gutai demanded. He recognized them. Of course he did. It took more than one flimsy cloth to disguise Juliette Cai. “What is your issue here?”
“I have issue with your madness,” Juliette answered, thunderous.
“I do not know what it is you speak of!” Zhang Gutai yelled. “I have nothing to do with—”
Juliette fired. Zhang Gutai looked down, looked at the blotch of red blooming on his white shirt.
“Don’t,” he whispered. His gun fell from his weak grasp. Instead of trying to pick it back up, his hand flopped onto his desk. He closed his hands around a framed photograph of an elderly woman. His mother. “Don’t—you have no quarrel with me.”
“The Larkspur told us everything,” Roma said tightly. His eyes were on the photograph in Zhang Gutai’s hands. “We’re sorry it has to be this way. But it must.”
“The Larkspur?” Zhang Gutai wheezed. Blood loss sent him crashing onto the floor. He swayed, barely holding on to enough life to remain sitting. “That… charlatan? What does… he have to… say—”
Juliette fired again, and the Communist slumped over. His blood soaked the photograph beneath him completely, until his mother’s stoic expression was covered with a sheen of red.
Slowly, Juliette walked over, then nudged his shoulder with her toe to roll him onto his back. His eyes had already glazed over. Juliette turned away, putting her pistol into her pocket. It felt like the moment needed more ceremony, perhaps a solemn air, but all that was present in this room was the cold stink of blood, and Juliette wanted to get away fro
m it as soon as possible.
She would be a callous killer for as long as she was doing something right. She cared for little else.
“Someone’s coming,” Roma warned. He had his head tilted toward the door, listening for the rustle of footsteps bounding up the staircase. “Climb through the window.”
Juliette did as she was told. She clambered one leg out the glass pane and yelled a warning down to Marshall and Benedikt, who startled to see her appear, her neck splattered with dots of red. They were even more startled when she said, “Marshall Seo, catch me,” and dropped down, leaving Marshall a split second to quickly open his arms. Juliette landed with a neat, polite bounce.
“Thank you.”
An alarm started to blare from within the building. On the first sharp note, Roma quickly lowered himself through the window until he was hanging from the ledge by his fingers. When he let go, he managed to land with a firm plop upon the grass.
“Did you do it?” Benedikt asked immediately. “Is the monster dead?”
Just as Roma was about to nod, Kathleen burst around the corner, her breath coming fast.
“Why didn’t you kill him?” she demanded. “I saw you make it to the second floor!”
Juliette blinked. Under the bleary sunlight, her hands were still stained with the evidence of her crime. “What do you mean?” she asked. “I did.”
Kathleen jerked back. She swore softly.
“Then it didn’t work,” she breathed. “The madness. Listen.”
A short, sharp scream. A chorus of rough shrieking. Gunshots, in quick successions.
“No,” Juliette breathed. “Impossible.”
She sprinted forward. Someone called out after her and someone else made a grab for her elbow, but Juliette shook them off, coming around the building and returning to the scene of her crime. She didn’t have to push the front doors, nor as much as reach for them. Through the panel of glass running vertical down the wood, she saw three workers inside tear at their throats, falling in utter synchrony.
“No,” Juliette muttered in horror. “No, no, no—” She kicked the nearby wall. Her shoe scuffed a dirty mark onto the pristine white.
It hadn’t worked.
