Charley looked over at Tricia, past the gun. There was something in his eyes—sadness? Regret? Resignation? Maybe a little of all three.
“Name a card,” Nicolazzo said. “Or I tell him to start pulling the trigger right now.”
Charley closed his eyes. “I don’t know,” he said. “Queen of spades.”
“There you go,” Nicolazzo said. “Was that so difficult?
With a nasty flourish, Nicolazzo turned over the top card. His face paled, and he looked from the card to Charley and back again. It was the queen of spades.
“What did you...?” Nicolazzo threw the cards down, scattering them everywhere. He grabbed Charley’s throat in both hands and started throttling him. “How did you do that? I demand that you tell me!”
“I didn’t do anything,” Charley croaked. “It was just a guess—”
Tricia ran to Nicolazzo, started battering his back with her fists, but it had no effect.
“You lie!” Nicolazzo roared. With one arm he swatted Tricia away from him and she went sprawling among the cards. “You,” he said to Kagan, “kill the sister—now! How many times do I have to tell you?”
“Yes, sir,” Kagan said. He crossed to the other side of the room, pointed his gun at Coral.
What happened next Tricia didn’t see clearly. There was a blur of motion as Coral stood up from the chair and slapped Kagan’s arm aside; his gunshot went wide, punching a hole in the wall. The rope that had bound her hands and legs fell to the ground, neatly sliced through.
Coral swung at the big man’s chin, a bare-knuckled uppercut that cracked, bone against bone, like a second gunshot. Kagan staggered back. Coral closed again and gave him another brutal right, then slashed at his arm with her left hand. A spray of blood shot into the air and his gun tumbled to the floor, just inches from Tricia’s face. A moment later a razor blade landed beside it—the one Tricia had passed Coral when she’d hugged her, the one Coral had just used to draw blood.
Tricia grabbed the gun and got to her feet. She also—carefully—picked up the blade. Above her, Coral was raining jabs and body blows on Kagan. He had his hands up protectively, but she kept sneaking punches in below his guard and to either side, vicious kidney punches and below-the-belt combinations.
Nicolazzo looked on, furious, shouting something in Italian to Pantazonis, who looked like he only understood every third word.
But he understood enough to whip out a gun of his own.
He leveled his at Coral and Tricia leveled Kagan’s at him. They both pulled the trigger at the same time.
The dual explosion in the small room deafened everyone and the choking cloud of gunsmoke added to the confusion. Pantazonis lay at Charley’s feet, leaking blood like a punctured water bottle. Kagan and Coral were both upright; Pantazonis’ bullet had missed them.
Nicolazzo released Charley’s neck as Tricia swept her gun up toward him. He jumped over Pantazonis’ body and shoved her aside, continuing on through the door. Tricia heard him running down the hallway, shouting for his men.
She raced to Charley’s side. Her hands were shaking; her breath was coming rapidly. She fought the nauseous feeling rising in her gut. Had she just killed a man? She pushed the question from her mind. She could think about that later. If there was a later.
She started working on the ropes around Charley’s hands with the razor blade, trying not to slit his wrists in the process. At the other end of the room, Kagan and Coral were still standing toe to toe, fists raised like contenders in a boxing match. They looked at each other, smiled. He shrugged his shoulders; she stretched her neck, bending it this way and that; he cracked the knuckles on both his fists. Then she drove a right cross into his face. He swayed for a moment and fell like a tree. He didn’t get up.
“My goodness,” Tricia said.
“I don’t mean to be selfish here,” Charley said after a moment, “but do you think you could...?”
“Oh, yes—sorry.” Tricia finished slicing through the rope.
Coral, meanwhile, bent to grab Pantazonis’ gun.
“Is there any other way out?” Tricia said.
“Not unless you can fit through that porthole.”
Tricia thought she might—it wasn’t that much smaller than the bathroom window at the Satellite Club. But there was no way Coral or Charley could, and anyway none of them could swim to safety from wherever they were, somewhere outside U.S. coastal waters. The nearest land was probably miles away.
“Then let’s get out of here,” she said, just as a pair of Nicolazzo’s men burst through the door with guns in hand.
Before Tricia could react, Coral had dropped them both, one with a bullet to the gut, the other with a pair in his leg, the second shot blowing out his kneecap. Both fell to the ground moaning. Coral threw away the gun she’d used and pried theirs out of their hands. “Here,” she said, handing one to Tricia. “These’ll be fully loaded.” Tricia had only used one bullet from Kagan’s gun; she held onto both.
They went cautiously out into the hall. There was no one there at the moment, but halfway to the stairs they saw a pair of legs coming down. Coral didn’t wait, just took aim and fired, and the possessor of the legs slid to the bottom in a heap.
“Where’d you learn to shoot like that?” Tricia said.
“You pick things up,” Coral said.
“Sure,” Tricia said, following her up the steps to the deck, “but not things like that.”
“You do if you have to,” Coral said.
A bullet caromed off a metal railing beside them and they dropped to their hands and knees, crawled behind the nearest bulkhead. Coral poked one arm around the side to blindly squeeze off a shot, then fell back.
“How many of these guys are there?” Tricia said.
“I’m not sure. Fewer than ten, I think. Maybe it’s ten with the ones that brought you.”
“Then we’ve already gotten rid of half of them,” Tricia said.
“You always were an optimist,” Coral said, and rose from her crouch to take another shot.
Behind them, Tricia heard Charley crawling away. “Where are you going?” Tricia said.
“I have an idea.”
“How about not getting shot? I’d think you’d like that idea.”
“I love that idea,” Charley said, “but I’m not convinced sitting here waiting to run out of bullets is the best way to accomplish it.”
“We should stick together,” Tricia said.
“With Annie Oakley there on your side? You don’t need me.”
“At least take a gun,” Tricia said, and tried to hand him one.
He held up his taped hand. “Broken trigger finger. Thanks, anyway.”
“Be careful, Charley,” she said.
“Always.” He hesitated a moment, then leaned in and kissed her. “In case I don’t get another chance,” he said. Then he scurried away, around the corner, chased by gunfire.
Someone patted her roughly on the shoulder.
“Hey,” Coral said, “are you listening? I said give me that gun.”
“Sorry,” Tricia said, and passed Kagan’s gun to her.
Coral pointed across the way, the opposite direction from the one Charley had gone. “When I say go—”
Tricia nodded.
“Go!”
Tricia scuttered through a wide open No Man’s Land while Coral laid down protective fire and followed her. Return fire plowed up the wooden deck at their feet and one splinter caught Tricia in the calf. She could feel the bite and the blood running down her leg.
“You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said, grimacing. She hunched behind a broad wooden bitt with a hawser coiled around it. Coral crammed in beside her.
“Ladies,” came a booming voice, Nicolazzo’s, “if you put your guns down right now, I won’t kill you.”
