Page 30 of The Last Dance

He tried a joke. “I am not dressed for this,” he said, voice paper-thin.

I almost smiled. “Nobody ever is.”

I scanned the building again, looking for a tell. There was no movement now. Whoever it was had done their job and melted away. Professionals. I catalogued the detail: no wild shots, no panic. Every bullet aimed to kill. All of them on Iren’s side.

Not mine.

I gripped the back of his neck. “Get us out of here, Yuri.”

Yuri floored it, the tires spitting gravel as we left the block.

For thirty seconds, nobody said a word.

Iren stared at his lap, still dusted with glass powder. He was white to the lips, pulse hammering in his neck. I watched the side of his face, the raw fear there, and catalogued that, too.

“Is it Parsons?” I asked, low.

He shook his head. “He’s a creep, but this—this is different. He doesn’t even own a gun.”

I grunted. “You sure?”

“He once called a cop because his neighbor was using fireworks on a Sunday. He’s—he’s not this.”

“Then who?”

Iren looked at me, and there was an edge of anger to it now. “I don’t know. My enemies list is shockingly short for someone who works in a strip club.”

I put my arm around him. Not for comfort, but to keep him still, to check for wounds. He leaned in, just a fraction, and let the weight of my arm settle him.

I looked at Yuri in the mirror. “Go home. Nobody stops. Nobody gets out. Lock the gate when we’re inside.”

Yuri nodded. He was already three steps ahead.

Iren started to shake, then got it under control. “My stuff—”

“Replaceable,” I said.

“But—”

“You are not.”

He went quiet.

We drove the rest of the way in silence, the engine humming beneath us, the bullet pocks in the door a visible ledger of what mattered and what didn’t.

I pressed my hand to his shoulder. He was still trembling, but less now. I catalogued the fear, the damage, the new thing I had to protect.

The rage never left. It just found its address.

We were half a block clear of the ambush before the next shot found us. It came from a new angle—higher, with the gravity that only distance can add. The sound was glass breaking, a very specific kind of shatter: not like a tumbler hitting tile, but like a skull being split with a hammer.

The rear window atomized, the fragments catching sunlight and raining down over the seat in a perfect arc. The bullet went through where Iren’s head had been two seconds before, punched a thumb-sized crater into the back of the front passenger headrest, and vanished into the padding.

There was a moment of total silence in the car, like the world had taken a breath to see if we’d notice. Iren was frozen, his face sprayed with a fine mist of safety glass, each fleck sparkling against his hair and the slope of his cheek. His eyes were wide, not with shock, but with the precise awareness that comes from seeing your own death fly past in real time.

I looked at the hole in the headrest. It was clean, punched all the way to the metal core. The car was rated for small arms fire, up to a point. This round was not small. The glass had slowed it, but not stopped it.

“High velocity,” I said to Yuri. “Probably a rifle. Where?”