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Shit.

I stepped back automatically. Knew this man wouldn’t hesitate to shoot if he had to.

A smile formed on his lips at the sight of me.

It was quiet a moment as we all took in the situation, only our heightened breathing breaking the silence.

Then he moved. Got up on his feet and walked toward me. A sheen of sweat covered his tan skin. He’d been running hard up the hill. The look he gave me indicated this could all still be salvaged. Everyone might be dead, but if he could bring me into his employers, all might be forgiven. I could see it in the relief mixed in with his triumphant face. Even despite the bruises. He raised his hand to hit me with the gun, and I braced myself instantly.

“Stop,” Hansen shouted.

The kidnapper froze and turned around as Hansen fired his gun. The kidnapper had made the mistake of forgetting him. The sound of the gun startled me at such close range–more than the other ones had. The bullet hit the kidnapper between his shoulder and chest, making his hand go limp, his gun falling to the floor before him. The last thing he did was cling to my leg while bleeding out.

Hansen and I stood in silence watching him for several minutes after it was over. I realized after a while I was drawing deep breaths automatically. The adrenaline leaving my body, I was coming down to a troublesome reality.

So was Hansen, by the look of him. He gazed around the small and trashed den. A once quaint and seventies-looking room with its brown, yellow, and orange colors. Of course, now, red was the dominant color. Hansen stood there, gun still in his hand. Two dead kidnappers and an FBI agent. The smell of gunpowder, blood, and burned clothes encompassing the room. He turned to me with an unusual bland look in his eyes.

“We are so screwed.”

Eleven

“Here,”came Evans’ voice behind me as she handed me a beer and sat down beside me on the stone steps by the front door of the Steep Rock house. I took it and drank automatically while staring at the little worn-down shed across the dirt road that led to the house and ended in front of us.

“I honestly need a stiffer drink than this,” she said, “but it’s all they had.”

I only nodded and took another swig. It didn’t taste half bad. Some imported brand I’d never even heard of. Too bad that would be the last beer to drink in a long while. On this side of the house, the wind we had run through on our way up, wasn’t too bad. It was a slight breeze that felt good after all that had transpired since we came ashore in this damn place. It was turning out to be a nice day. The sun was up. It seemed a peaceful place, really. Until you looked inside the house, that was.

Evans cleared her throat beside me, obviously preparing herself to say something. It was so unlike her it almost made me smile. Almost.

“Have you ever shot anyone before?”

I nodded. “This is the first one that died, though.”

I could see out the corner of my eye that she nodded quickly. “I’m not sorry he died,” she said, “but I am sorry about that…you know?”

“Yeah, I know.”

We sat there a while, drinking our beers, waiting for the inevitable. Having a beer with Evans. After all the weird things that had happened lately, this seemed the most ludicrous. And in a way, perfectly normal.

Normal.

I let go of the unhelpful shed with my eyes and turned a little toward her. “I have a question for you.”

She swallowed a mouthful of beer, “shoot,” then seemed to wince at her poor choice of words.

I didn’t care. “That guy by the beach…the one you…”

“I broke his neck.”

I nodded. With quite an amazing move as well. He might not have died, though, but the downward slope had given her a lot of momentum. He hadn’t had a chance down there.

“That move. That’s something you’ve practiced?”

“Again and again.” She took another swig from the bottle.

“You had your hands behind your back. Not out to the side for balance like you’d expect.”

She shrugged at this. She knew what I was getting at. She had her hands behind her because she practiced it like that. Something to get her out of a tight spot if she was tied up. That was how her life was. As batshit crazy and far from normal as you could get. And her reward? Exile, or prison, most likely. She didn’t deserve that for trying to help someone. But still…here we were. No point in postponing it. I finished the beer and put the bottle down with a clink as it hit the stone step. Larkin had returned all my things when he’d decided to help–the poor bastard–and I fished the disassembled cell phone out of my pocket. The pieces had survived through the violence.

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