She tried to speak. It came out as a rasp. Tears mixed with whatever had splashed onto her cheeks.
Valkyrie appeared at the end of the bar like she’d been conjured, gun up, scanning the room before lowering it a fraction when she saw the body and me and Cali.
“He dead?” she asked, voice ragged.
“Yeah,” I said. “He’s done.”
She slid behind the bar, dropped into a crouch and cupped Cali’s face gently, thumbs just above the purple marks forming.
“Hey, Cal,” she said, softer than I’d ever heard her. “Stay with us.”
California’s breath hitched. She clung to Valkyrie’s wrist like a lifeline.
“He—he came from the window,” she rasped. “Thought it was Indigo… then…”
“I know,” Valkyrie said. “It’s over.”
I glanced down at her. “Get her under. She doesn’t need to see any more of this.”
She nodded.
We guided Cali down, sliding her carefully into the well beneath the bar, tucking her between crates and shelves. Valkyrie grabbed a bar towel and pressed it into her hands.
“Stay down,” Valkyrie said. “If you hear someone you don’t recognize back here, you shoot them in the ankle and then the face.”
Cali gave a strangled laugh that turned into another cough, but she nodded.
I grabbed the dead man’s gun andshoved it into my waistband. No sense in wasting hardware.
“Outside,” Valkyrie said. “We’re still getting hit.”
We vaulted back over the bar into the storm.
The yard was a shooting gallery.
One SUV had rammed the corner of the fence hard enough to twist metal and open a mouth just big enough for men to pour through. Another idled in the road, doors open, shooters using it as cover as they fired into the compound. A third was already pulling away, tires throwing gravel, someone inside yelling in Spanish out the window.
Anaconda was on the ground near a cage in the middle of the yard clutching her calf, blood seeping between her fingers. Arizona was over her, half-shielding with her body, pistol in one hand, camera forgotten around her neck.
“Stay down!” Arizona shouted as bullets chewed into the dirt nearby.
A shot cracked from the rooftop. Indigo, taking her angles. One of the gunmen by the SUV jerked back, shoulder exploding in red.
Liberty was closer to the gate, firing in controlled pairs from behind a pile of tires that had become an impromptu bunker. Rosé knelt beside a bike, taking careful shots between the handlebars. Cobra had a shotgun and a look on her face that said she’d been born waiting for this.
Diamondback and India rushed toward Anaconda at a crouch, medical bags banging against their hips. India slid in on her knees, hands already onAnaconda’s leg.
“Through and through,” she said. “You’re lucky. Cry later.”
“Already started,” Anaconda gritted.
“If you can whine, you can live,” Diamondback snapped, even as her fingers went gentle, checking the wound. Her bandaged arm barely slowed her.
Shots rang from the road again. A bullet tore through Arizona’s cut as she turned to grab fresh mags from Anaconda’s vest. She gasped, hand flying to her side.
“Shit,” she hissed. “That was my favorite fucking patch.”
“Any holes that matter?” India called without looking up.
