And her last thought-Jack did this.
That thought came back to her now, and with it came a surge of furious indignation at this man who had already taken everything from her, and who dared to take even more.
She twisted away from him as the gun went off, a purplish blast clouding her vision, the shot missing her and tearing through the headrest of the passenger seat.
“Fuck you, Jack!” She heard a crazy woman screaming and realized it was her. “Fuck you!”
She lashed out with her fists. She beat him in the face. The gun lurched toward her but she batted it away and flailed at him, and one of her swinging blows caught him in the thigh where the bullet had struck.
Then he was the one screaming.
His cries brought her back to herself. She had to get out of this car. She had to get away.
She flung open the door and clambered out into the ugly fluorescent glow, the word ugly beating like a flap of wings in her mind-this basement world, like catacombs, an ugly place to die, all concrete and shadows.
She fell on the floor-more concrete-and threw herself upright, staggering toward the nearest row of columns, where cars were parked, and beyond the cars there was a door marked STAIRS, an escape route, if she could get there, but she couldn’t, of course. Reynolds would kill her first, gun her down.
She heard the crack of a gunshot. Another. Another. But she wasn’t hit. Somehow she was alive.
She stumbled between the pillars, half running, half crawling, her legs not working right, and by some inexplicable miracle she reached the shelter of a parked car and scurried behind it as the gun rang out again and again.
From her position of relative safety she risked a glance back, and then she understood. It wasn’t Reynolds who was shooting.
Abby was there, gun in hand, crouching behind another column yards away, snapping off shots at the Mustang.
This probably made some kind of sense, but Andrea couldn’t put it together, and she had no time to think about it.
She ran for the door to the stairs.
Abby had pounded up the stairs and was running for the garage exit, meaning to retrieve her Miata from the alley, when she heard the crash.
It had to be Reynolds’ car. He’d wrecked it somehow. And she had no doubt he would use the diversion to gain the upper hand.
She hadn’t been far from the collision. She reached it in time to see Andrea emerge. When Reynolds leaned out, Abby snapped off a series of rounds, not expecting to hit him, just laying down covering fire so Andrea could escape.
It worked. Reynolds ducked back inside the car, and Andrea was gone, and everything was hunky-dory.
From the wrecked van, a volley of shots.
Okay, not so hunky-dory, after all.
Abby threw herself flat on the concrete and rolled to a new position. Evidently the van driver hadn’t been an innocent victim in all this. He was one of Reynolds’ buddies, trying to protect his boss by taking her out.
For the second time in two days she was in a gunfight. It irked her. Variety was one of the perks of her job, but this case wasn’t offering her any.
Her revolver had used all six shots. She dumped the empties and speedloaded another six. There was a second speedloader in her purse if she needed it. She figured she would.
Reynolds was edging out of the Mustang again, the gun leading him. She took aim this time-couldn’t afford to waste any more shots-and fired once. He twisted away, disappearing into the vehicle’s interior. She thought she might have scored a hit on his shoulder or arm.
More gunfire from the van. Sounded like only one gun, which meant only one bad guy inside. He had the advantage, though. As long as she was pinned down, he and Reynolds could pop caps in her direction until one of the shots connected.
She risked a peek at the van and saw that the gunman had ventured out of the vehicle. Time to go on offense. She fired off three more shots, repelling the driver back inside the van, then sprinted out from behind the pillar and dived under the Mustang. It was a good bet that in the dim light and the confusion of battle the van driver hadn’t seen where she went.
Beneath the car she crawled forward on elbows and knees. Oil leaked from the chassis, forming a viscid pool on the concrete.
Movement from the van. It rocked gently on its springs. A pair of leather sneakers came into the view.
The driver was out of his vehicle again, edging sideways along the Mustang.
That was a mistake.
Abby gripped the. 38 in both hands and fired twice at his feet. He went down. Even as he hit the ground she dumped the spent shells from her revolver and speedloaded her last six rounds.
A shot burned past her, her wounded enemy firing blindly under the car. She squeezed off three rounds and blew the gun out of his hand, which was not a hand any longer but a gushing stump. He howled like an animal and fell abruptly silent, unconscious or dead. No threat either way.
But Reynolds was still a threat. Directly above her, in the Mustang-
In time with that thought, a bullet punched through the chassis, plowing into the concrete and kicking up splinters of stone.
Son of a bitch was firing straight down through the floor of his car.
She rolled sideways, dodging three more shots that punctured the bottom of the Mustang, then fired upward into what she thought was the front passenger compartment, hoping for a lucky hit, but luck wasn’t with her, and his gun boomed back, targeting the spot where the shots had originated, missing her-but only just-as she flipped to one side. She squeezed off two more shots, and the hammer made a dry click.
Out of ammo. No more speedloaders in her purse. Not that it mattered, since her purse was gone anyway, lost in her rapid maneuvers beneath the Mustang.
Reynolds hadn’t run out. He fired again and again, and above the roar of the shots she heard him yelling, a long incoherent shout of rage.
Andrea’s gun was an automatic. Maybe fourteen rounds in the clip. And Reynolds was probably carrying a gun of his own. Too much firepower. She couldn’t dodge every shot.
She propelled herself out from under the car, sliding on a slick of blood from the van driver, and found his gun, the one he’d dropped when she blew his hand off his wrist.
She spun in a crouch and fired at the Mustang, gouging a hole in the side window, and Reynolds, in silhouette, dipped quickly as if hit.
She waited, expecting him to pop up and return fire.
He didn’t. Maybe he was hit worse than she’d thought. She wasn’t in a hurry to find out, though. He could be playing possum. Never trust a politician-that was her motto.
Movement in the car. It shivered on its springs, rocking gently, and something fell out of the far side, something heavy and ungainly.
Reynolds, blindly seeking escape.
He drove himself to his feet and stumbled away, one shoulder crooked at an impossible angle, his legs trembling with the strain of holding him upright. Behind him leaked a long ragged trail of blood.
Abby jumped onto the hood of the Mustang and tackled him. He went down hard, the gun still in his hand. She ripped it free and pitched it into the shadows, then pressed her weapon to the back of his head.
For a moment the garage disappeared, and the ruined vehicles, and she was facing Dylan Garrick again.
“Don’t do it,” a man’s voice said, and it might have been Reynolds or Garrick, she couldn’t say. “Please. Don’t.”
She felt her finger tighten on the trigger. Just a little more pressure, a few ounces’ worth, and she would expel this man from the world.
But she didn’t fire. She took a long, slow breath and let her grip relax.
“Quiet, Jack,” she said softly. “Quiet now.”
Beneath her, Reynolds was whimpering. In pain, maybe, or in humiliation. She knew he didn’t like to
