Everything shifted.
Time didn't slow exactly—I'd been in enough firefights to know that was Hollywood bullshit—but my perception sharpened, narrowed, focused down to the movement of Sam Jarrow's hands as they reached for the zipper of his jacket.
"Don't move!" I roared.
He didn't listen. Maybe he couldn't. His fingers—shaking, clumsy—found the metal pull and tugged.
The zipper caught. For one eternal second, the cheap hardware refused to cooperate, and I felt a surge of irrational hope that whatever was about to happen would be delayed just long enough for us to figure out how to stop it.
Then it slid down with a rasp that sounded like tearing fabric and breaking bones.
Sam opened his jacket.
Time stopped.
Not slowed. Stopped.
My brain went into combat mode, that crystal-clear state where emotions shut down and training takes over. I saw everything. Cataloged everything. Processed everything in the space between one heartbeat and the next.
Canvas vest. Military-style, or a civilian approximation. Four pouches across the chest, bulging with what looked like clay or putty—C-4, probably, or something similar. Fragments tucked into pockets along the sides—maybe ball bearings, maybe nails, the kind of shrapnel designed to maximize casualties in a crowd.
Straps crisscrossing over his shoulders and around his torso, keeping everything snug against his body. And there, nestled against his sternum like a mechanical heart, a black box no bigger than a deck of cards. Wires snaked out from it—red, blue, yellow, green—disappearing into the pouches with the careful precision of someone who knew what they were doing.
Remote detonated or manual?
That was the question. The only question that mattered.
If it was remote, then Sam was already dead. We were all already dead. Someone out there in the marsh had their finger on a button and we were just waiting for them to press it.
Sam's eyes locked on Hazel.
"It's all going to be okay," he said, voice soft and broken and absolutely sincere. Like he actually believed it. Like he'dconvinced himself that whatever was about to happen was somehow for the best.
His hand started to move toward the black box.
Every gun at the bottom of the steps lifted.
My finger tightened on the trigger.
And then Sam Jarrow's right arm exploded.
Not the whole arm. Just the elbow, cut clean through. One second it was there, pale skin and prison-wasted muscle and those trembling fingers reaching for the detonator. The next second it was gone—obliterated in a spray of red mist and white bone fragments and shredded fabric, the rest of the arm slipped to the ground.
The sound came after. A crack that split the night, high-powered and distant. Rifle shot. Big caliber. Somewhere in the marsh, maybe a hundred yards out.
Sam looked down at what was left of his arm. His face went slack with shock, the pain not registering yet, his brain still trying to process the fact that part of him had just ceased to exist.
Then the second shot came.
It took half his head off.
Not clean. Not surgical. Just gone. Skull and brain and everything that made Sam Jarrow a person—monster, victim, whatever he was—turned into red mist and falling meat.
He dropped like a sack of wet concrete, hitting the gravel with a sound I'd heard too many times to count but never got used to.
Dead before he hit the ground. Dead before his body understood it was dead.
For one crystalline moment, nobody moved.
