by TAYLOR ADAMS
Bad odds, she knew. He had cover. She didn’t. He had her entire unshielded body to shoot at. Her target would be a sliver of his exposed face. Half a card in her deck of fifty-two.
Don’t miss.
Her index finger crawled to the trigger and squeezed it halfway. Down to a millimeter, a muscle twitch from firing. The guys at Sharp Shooters called this staging the trigger.
“Ray-Ray.” From across the bridge, that familiar Irish accent rang in the pressurized air, so strangely alien in Montana: “Oi. Ray-Ray.”
Behind his car, Raycevic’s voice was alarmingly close. “What?”
“Did you see her?”
“Yeah. I saw the little bitch.”
They’re working together. It was chilling to hear them communicate. They didn’t care if she overheard. They outnumbered her. They’d encircled her.
“I’ve . . .” Raycevic’s voice lowered to a growl. “I’ve got a clear shot on her.”
She held her aim and waited. She had no choice. Moving anywhere else was instant death. The trucker’s rifle boomed again, but Lena tried to ignore it. She knew it was another distraction, just suppressing fire. Meant to pin her down while Raycevic fired the killing shot.
She glimpsed him now, a blurry shape peering around his cruiser’s taillight. She fired again, too late. Another waste.
Four left, you idiot.
She held her aim. Bit her tongue hard. Blinked away another drop of sweat.
You’re losing.
“She’s wasting her ammo,” Raycevic hooted. “She’s pissing herself.”
She wanted to shout back—Speak for yourself, asshole—but it was a waste of breath. He had her. It was a losing engagement, him versus her forced lengthwise against her car. He knew it.
“She knows she’s pinned,” the cop crooned. “She’s got nowhere to run. Nowhere to relocate to. I’ve got her. She’s completely exposed from my side, with no cover. There’s nothing between us—”
Lena grabbed the Corolla’s door and opened it—between herself and him.
“Oh, goddamnit—”
She scooted low. Now shielded from Raycevic’s revolver by the open passenger door. Shielded from the trucker’s rifle by the engine block. A wedge of safety.
The trucker shouted, “What? What happened, Ray-Ray?”
“Nothing. It’s fine.”
“Did she block you with a door?”
“I said it’s fine.”
She laughed a hot gasp. She hunkered against the Corolla’s lifesaving passenger door, nearly bumping it shut. She held it open with one palm to the blue paint, slipping her knees underneath herself. To better crouch and return fire.
She was still in this fight, protected on both sides, dug into cover like a tick. Her Beretta in her right hand, noticeably lighter as its ammunition depleted. Her situation was still terrible—she was still cornered, outgunned, with four shots left—but hell, she was rolling with it, adapting, proving to be a royal pain in their asses. Would spartan, scrappy Cambry approve? She hoped so.
Good move, Ratface. Keep it up.
“Hey.” The cop shouted to his buddy abruptly, a jarring question: “What’s the difference between cover and concealment?”
Bizarre silence.
The trucker answered: “I don’t know, Ray-Ray. What?”
Lena’s blood chilled.
Cover versus concealment. This stirred another memory from Sharp Shooters. Something written. Where did she see it? A poster? Yes. A cartoon poster by the restrooms—just to the left of the drinking fountains—posed that very riddle, with pictures of ordinary objects sorted into two columns. Cover was boulders, cement, brick. Concealment was things like bushes, walls, furniture . . .
“Ice the bitch—”
. . . And car doors.
The painted metal exploded inches from her face. Shrapnel slashed her cheek, stung her eyes, peppered her front teeth. She screamed with shock, slapping a hand to cover her face and slamming down low to the road. Raycevic fired again—a second hole punched through the door, shattering the handle into plastic shards.
His gunshots echoed. Crisp thunder.
Lena stayed flat. Her cheek pressed to the concrete. Blood in her teeth, the taste of copper.
“She screamed!” the trucker giggled. “I heard it. Sounded exactly like Cambry—”
Hunched fetal below the pierced door, she caught her breath. Still alive? Yes. Crunchy flecks of Toyota paint on her tongue. Her cheek turning warm, a dozen tiny paper cuts soaking with blood. The window disintegrated above her, showering her with blue-white fragments. Yes, the door had been concealment, not cover. Raycevic’s bullets had punched right through it, like it was paper.
Stupid, she thought. Stupid, stupid.
I should have paid more attention to the posters.
And she realized her hand was empty. In her panic, she’d dropped her Beretta.
Piggish laughter from the cab. “I . . . I love that scream—”
She found her pistol on the concrete to her left and grabbed it with numb, blood-slippery fingers—accidentally slapping the trigger—and it fired sideways into the Corolla. Three shots left. Three left now, you fucking clumsy idiot.
“Ray-Ray. Did you hit her?”
“Can’t tell.”
“Then shoot again. Lower.”
“Okay.” His voice focused—he was aiming at the door again.
Lena’s stomach heaved with terror.
She was already pressed as low to the concrete as she could possibly flatten. No space to move. No escape. All she could do was close her eyes, cover her face, and wait for it.
In her awful, dwindling seconds she tried to picture Cambry’s face, to sear it into her mind. She couldn’t. Her thoughts were water. She tried to hold on to something. Anything. Only the bad. Fights. Plastic. Steaming guts. Barbies with molten faces. Twelve-year-old Cambry’s knife sliding through the doe’s fur with a splash of warm blood. The deep ache of last night’s dream, of being shoved away and scolded and rejected from the grave: Go, Lena. Please go.
Just go—
Raycevic’s revolver barked again and a third hole pierced the blue paint above her in a gritty blast. She held her breath as the echo faded—waiting for a bone-splitting bolt of pain, for nonexistence, for the bright tunnel of death, and experiencing none of those things.
The echo faded.
Still alive? Yes. His third bullet had hissed over her head. She had gotten lucky. She held the Beretta in livid knuckles in a bed of glass kernels, listening, blinking sweat from her eyes.
“Did you get her?”
“I don’t know. Hopefully.” Raycevic audibly smirked. She couldn’t see his face, but she knew it was the same venomous grin she’d seen once today, an hour ago.
Because she did toss herself.
Catching her breath, her heart slamming in her throat, Lena made a desperate promise: She would kill him. She would kill them both. Forget bringing them to justice. Forget the audio record. Forget writing a book. Today wasn’t about building a case or taking the proper channels. Today was about killing the men who took Cambry’s life.
And right now they were winning.
Raycevic shouted, “Still alive, Lena?”
She didn’t answer.
“You came all this way to find the truth. So, what do you think? Was it worth it? I gave you a chance to walk away, Lena. You should’ve taken it.”
She wouldn’t have. Even now.
He darkened. “You’re all that’s left of your sister, you know.”
She said nothing.
“So, when we kill you today, Lena, it’ll be like she’s really, truly gone. Erased.”
He’s goading me, she knew. Trying to make me talk.
“You should know, Lena.” His voice lowered: “I fucked her.”
She wouldn’t take his bait.
“She loved my cock, Lena.”
Still she said nothing.
She waited. So did they. The silence built a
nd built.
A shadow darted over the bridge. It was a vulture crossing overhead, its black wings stuttering through a flash of sunlight. Its flaps sounded like sighs.
Wait, Lena. She held her breath.
Wait, and force them to make a move.
“You could’ve fucking warned me she had a gun, Ray-Ray,” the trucker finally shouted abruptly. “I wouldn’t have parked so close—”
Raycevic sounded defensive. “I didn’t know she brought one.”
“You didn’t pat her down?”
“It was just a meetup.”
“And you wonder why you’re the one that flunked academy selection?”
The trucker’s words were vicious. Hateful.
She enjoyed hearing the men bicker. She kept her breaths controlled, in and out, and waited. She didn’t dare move—even the lightest crunch of glass would give her away. She gripped the Beretta, sticky with her own blood, and aimed up at the door. If she played dead, she’d force Raycevic to come in close to verify his kill, and then she could surprise him with a bullet to the face.
The trucker again: “She could be playing dead. To lure you in close and surprise you.”
“I know.”
For Christ’s sake. She could do without the commentary.
“Be careful, Ray-Ray.”
Ray-Ray. And she hated the man’s singsong nickname for Raycevic. There was no affection or humor in it. It was a taunt—sarcasm and cyanide.
She heard a dry click. Then another. Another. Her eardrums still cottony from the gunfire, it took her a few moments to recognize the small sound of footsteps on pavement. Raycevic’s boots.
He was coming.
This was her chance. She elbowed upright into a better shooting position, glass kernels crunching beneath her. Her heart slamming vivid blasts of color in her eyes. She listened as the cop’s boots clicked closer and closer. Every sound seemed magnified. The sigh of the wind. A faint ring in her ears.
His footsteps changed course. Moving right. She understood—rather than approach the open door directly, he was moving to encircle her from the right.
She repositioned, her back touching the punctured door. She aimed right.
“Passing through your line of fire.”
His voice moved, one footstep at a time. The shooter in the truck was doing his job, keeping Lena fixed with covering fire while Raycevic maneuvered. Executing a pincer move. It was unfair, but gunfighting isn’t about playing fair. Duels are for the movies. Gunfighting is about advantages, about stacking the odds in your favor, and fighting dirty and smart.
His footsteps slowed with anticipation. He was circling the Corolla’s front now, sidestepping the headlights with his revolver aimed. Rounding the corner a few degrees at a time, clearing the space beyond it inch by inch.
Crouched beside the front tire, Lena raised the Beretta and drew a shaky bead where she estimated the cop’s face would appear. She held her aim exactly there, on that unremarkable patch of smoky sky, staging the trigger with her index finger and focused on his footsteps. The creak of flexing leather. The click of the sole touching down.
So close now.
The trucker shouted, “Ray-Ray, is she dead?”
He didn’t answer. Another footstep. Was he ten feet away? Eight?
“Ray-Ray?”
She held her aim and waited.
Sweat dripped into her eye. She blinked it away.
“Ray-Ray. Hey. Talk to me.”
A small consolation: Raycevic had to be getting just as annoyed with the old man in the truck as she was. Predator and prey were mere feet apart on opposite ends of the car and drawing closer, guns up, trigger fingers rigid, a heartbeat away from instant death, and the faraway asshole would not shut up—
Ray’s sunburned face entered Lena’s sights.
Six feet away.
Right over the Corolla’s hood. Her blocky sights were right on his sweaty forehead, right between his surprised eyes as they found her, too—dead center, as sure as a shot can be—and as he thrust his gun back down at her, she was already pulling the trigger.
Nothing happened.
No kick, no noise. Nothing. The Beretta suddenly inert in her hands—
Jam.
Her mind screamed with white-hot panic—jam, jam, jam—and she kicked and scooted backward as Raycevic fired at her. Concrete chips exploded off the road, inches to her right. This close, she felt the revolver’s blast rattle her teeth.
The big man crouched behind the Corolla’s grille, huffing with adrenaline. This close, she could hear his panting breath, smell his sweat. “Holy shit.”
She kept scooting back, back, knocking the bullet-riddled passenger door shut, but there was nowhere to go. She was pinned behind her sister’s compact car. The gun useless in her hands. She recognized Raycevic’s throaty laugh, alarmingly close. “She almost got me.”
“What?”
“I think she’s jammed—”
Yes, the Beretta Px4 was jammed and slide-locked in Lena’s hand. She already knew what had happened: a stupid amateur mistake. She’d broken a cardinal rule of shooting. When she’d grabbed the weapon with her finger on the trigger and accidentally fired it off the ground, the slide had skimmed the pavement. Interrupting the cycle. She saw a gleaming brass casing pinched inside. A failure to extract, the rangemaster had called it at Sharp Shooters. They can be fussy.
She tugged the pistol’s slide—firmly stuck.
“No more chances.” She heard Raycevic lick his lips, crouched at the front of the car. His voice was calm, coaching. “She’s behind the vehicle’s front doors. You’re shooting the .30-30 big boy, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Front doors. Not the back ones.”
“Okay.”
Lena understood. Oh, come on.
She scrambled farther back on her elbows and knees, the slide-locked Beretta clattering in her hand, as another high-caliber round exploded through the passenger door behind her, slamming it violently back open. It left a crater, dwarfing Raycevic’s three pea-size holes.
She cursed through her teeth.
The Corolla was becoming Swiss cheese, leaving her unprotected. Only the steel engine block could reliably stop a bullet. That was why Raycevic had moved there—to cut her off from it.
“Did I get her?”
“She moved.”
“Where now?”
“Rear doors.”
She crawled farther back, a racing animal scramble, stopping at the Corolla’s trunk because there was nowhere else to go. She hunched up in a fetal position, covering her face, waiting. She knew it was coming. For a nerve-shredding second, nothing happened.
Then it did: another tooth-rattling detonation behind her, another crater blasted through the rear passenger door. Glass kernels fell out of the windows. Whatever this rifle was, it tore gaping, illogical holes into everything it touched. Like taking fire from a Civil War–era cannon.
A dreamy yellow substance wafted down around her. Snow? Ash?
No. Obliterated seat foam.
She gripped the Beretta with both hands and fought the weapon’s jam under the surreal blizzard, twisting the slide in her bloody fingers, but it wouldn’t budge. The 9-millimeter brass was smashed inside the mechanism’s teeth, a wicked metal clog.
Shit, shit, shit.
“Nowhere to hide.” That rancid smirk in Raycevic’s voice. “She’s behind the trunk now.”
She knew he was right; she was out of space. Trapped behind a perforated car. Struggling with a jammed pistol, useless and slippery in her hands.
She was tugging her hair again, wrenching her scalp hard, like pulling up carpet. It had all gone to shit so fast. Fifteen minutes ago, she’d had Raycevic handcuffed and alone at gunpoint. She knew he’d radioed someone. How arrogant she’d been, to believe she could handle it alone. She’d brought a gun when she should have brought backup. From the very beginning she’d assumed Corporal Raymond Raycevic was an outlier, a single rogue c
op operating alone. Serial killers are always loners, right?
She thought about Cambry in her dream, heartbroken and defiant. Refusing to let her in, refusing to say I love you, or explain anything.
I’m sorry, Cambry.
Fighting the locked pistol in her hands, she felt it coming—a wave of hot tears welling in her eyes—and she hated herself for it. It felt fundamentally wrong to cry here, while crawling behind a shot-up car with blood and scorched gunpowder on her hands. This was a gunfight. There’s no crying in a gunfight.
I screwed up, sis.
I underestimated him, and I’m so sorry.
This was it. The assholes who murdered her sister would kill her, too, on this very same bridge. All because she had the audacity to challenge a law enforcement officer to a shootout, of all things. To something he was literally trained for. And now she was pinned, encircled, almost out of ammunition, and she couldn’t even fire her three remaining shots, as the gunmen’s withering fire pierced the car’s flimsy metal, corroding it before her eyes—
Then she froze.
Meaning . . .
It hit her now, a quiet bolt: Meaning my bullets will, too.
She pictured that smug asshole in his cab, crouched behind the shelter of his own door. She gave the Beretta another twist in her hands, harder, harder, straining with pinched fingers and watery eyes—and with a gasping release, the mechanism finally opened.
A squashed shell casing fell in her lap.
She let the gun’s slide rocket forward. It clacked home on an oily spring, chambering a fresh round. Ready to fire.
Yes.
She exhaled a hot, shivery breath, and across the bridge, a matching dead-bolt click-clack echoed from the truck’s cab. As if in unison, the trucker shouted, “Ready to fire.”
“She’s right behind the trunk.”
“Gotcha.” She imagined the one-eyed man taking aim again with that devastating rifle, leveling his scope on the Corolla’s trunk. His grubby fingernails crawling over the trigger, squeezing.
Raycevic panted: “Blow her guts out.”
Lena had an idea. A bad one. She sat still with her back to the metal trunk and waited, the noise and sun and gritty discomforts dissolving away, last night’s dream slipping back to clarity. The way Cambry had refused to even look at her. The piercing heartbreak in her eyes when she finally did. Her cold sidelong whisper: Just go.