Alice screamed into the gag as her ribs detonated. She shut her eyes tight, and when she opened them, Tania was aiming a gun at her face. The woman slowly rose to her feet, backing off, the gun steady. The wailing sirens were joined by the roar of multiple engines being pushed hard.
“If I’m going to hell, I might as well send you first,” Tania said.
For the third—fourth?—time that afternoon, Alice found herself staring down the barrel of a gun. Except this time, there was no escape. If she charged, Tania would shoot. If she ran, Tania would shoot. If she surrendered, if she stayed still, if she fell to her knees and begged, Tania would shoot. She couldn’t even speak. All because she had the stupid idea to run after the woman. Letting her go would have been a perfectly valid option. Everyone kept saying this wasn’t Alice’s fight, and yet here she was.
“No, you fucking don’t!” Florence yelled, leaping out of nowhere to kick the weapon clean out of Tania’s hands. It bounced along the gravel.
Tania seemed to contemplate her options, then lunged for the discarded weapon. Somewhere behind the cars, a vehicle skidded to a halt, and another. A couple of sirens silenced, but more wailed up behind them.
Bringing her hands to one side, Alice pushed up with a muffled cry, staggered to her feet and collapsed belly-first onto the gun a second before Tania got there, her arms trapped awkwardly underneath her, which was about as sophisticated a maneuver as she could manage. Her ribs absorbed the impact and she yelped.
“Drop the weapon,” a woman’s voice shouted.
“Silvia, don’t shoot! That’s my mom!”
Carter! It was Carter.
Alice turned her head to one side, scraping her cheek across the gravel, just in time to see Tania run for the shed—and get swarmed by FBI agents in actual SWAT gear, shouting at her to get down. Just like how Alice had imagined it, except they weren’t coming for her. Well, not yet.
And if they were coming for her next, well, shit, they could have her.
Florence tossed her gun to the ground and raised her hands. “Just little old me here,” she called out. “You okay there, hotshot?” she said to Alice.
Alice grunted. She tried to push up, then decided not to bother. Fast footfalls scraped the stones behind her. All those books she’d read where the characters had run for miles with bullet holes through their stomachs and she had no visible wounds and couldn’t even sit up.
“Mom? Alice, shit, you okay?” Carter crouched beside Alice and carefully slipped off her gag. His forehead was creased even more than usual. She could kiss him. If she could move. She settled for just looking at him as best she could from the awkward angle. He looked haggard and scruffy, and he was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen. She laughed. Well, she tried to, and then thought better of it.
“I’m fine,” she squeaked.
“You catch a bullet?” he said, scanning her body.
“No, it’s nothing serious, I’m sure,” she said, fighting for breath. “I jumped from the balcony. Landed badly. Maybe broke a rib. Or several.”
“Youjumped? Are you insane?”
“To the balcony below. Didn’t go quite as I’d imagined. I was a little low on options.”
“Wait one sec—I’ll grab something to cut these ties.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Alice groaned.
“Carter?” Florence said, as he returned with a small pocketknife. She wasn’t even out of breath. “You know what happened to Rashida?”
“She’s safe,” he said, as he freed Alice and gently helped her into a sitting position. Perhaps sensing that sitting up was all she could manage for the moment, he sat behind her so she could lean into him like an armchair, and she very happily let him take her weight. She flailed a hand to her side and found his leg. Carter. Here. Alive.
“She caught a bullet in her side and played dead,” Carter said. “Sounded like they were more interested in finding you. She lost some blood but she’s gonna be okay.”
A fully kitted-out FBI agent crunched over the gravel toward them. “Everyone okay here?” she said.
“Good for now,” Florence said, waving her off. “You all just do what you need to. We’ll be here when you want us, though I think this one will need some medical attention. You know a bunch of Tania Garrett’s crew drove off just before you arrived?”
“We got ’em,” the agent said, walking away. “Fun times.”
“And Yuri?” Alice said to Carter. She could only inhale strawfuls of air at a time. “Did you know that the Daisy Sparkles guy was Yuri, Nika’s ex? He’s on our side.”
“Only from some crime scene photos Silvia showed me on the way here, from the apartment. Couldn’t believe what I was seeing.”
“Crime scene photos?” Alice said, feeling like her heart was stopping.
