Second Shot

I nodded. I was putting all my energy into focusing on what was to come and I didn’t have anything left over to formulate coherent words. Besides, how could I tell him that I doubted I’d have the strength to fire the rounds I’d got, never mind to reload?

I was going to have to make them count.

And then, from a doorway ahead of us, a man stepped out into view. He was dressed in a dark shirt with an open ski jacket over the top. He wasn’t particularly tall, quite slim, wearing gold-framed glasses. I recognized the size and the shape of him, rather than the face-Reynolds’s partner from the kidnap attempt at the Lucases’ place. The man who’d seen Reynolds captured and who had calmly abandoned him.

Cool, calculating and not to be underestimated.

He came out with purpose, head already turned in our direction, gun in his right hand but held loosely, down by his side. Rosalind had called ahead. He knew we were coming, so we were not a surprise to him.

I saw his eyes flick to the space behind us, to where Rosalind should have been, covering the pair of us, herding us forwards. His eyes flew back to me, startled. He saw the Beretta in my hand and he started to bring his own gun up to fire, diving for the cover of the nearest wall of racking.

I stayed planted lumplike in the middle of the space between the racking and the gun safes. It felt as though I had a bloody great target painted on my chest. I had to stand and fight because I couldn’t run and hide. And I had to be totally ruthless because I couldn’t afford to let him get a second shot.

I swung the Beretta up, using my whole shoulder. The crutch was trapped tight into my armpit. I daren’t let go of it this time, but I released the handle to wrap my left hand round my weakened right, wedging my elbow hard into my ribs to stabilize my aim. As a shooter’s stance went, it wasn’t exactly pretty, but it was the best I could do.

I didn’t wait for the man with the glasses to complete his move, or give him a chance to drop the weapon, or shout a warning. I didn’t attempt to aim for an area of his body where I might wound rather than kill him, either. Most of the time, unless you’re looking at your target through a sniper’s scope, that’s a fallacy anyway. You shoot to stop, and if the other guy dies, well, at least it wasn’t you.

I was vaguely aware of a hot white flare from the end of the gun facing me, and some part of my brain registered the fact that he’d fired fractionally first. I was a stationary target, which was bad, but he was moving, which proved better.

The shot went wide to my left, close enough to my ear that I heard the high-pitched whine as it passed, but that could just have been the outrageous noise of the report, bruising my ears. I sensed Matt flinch down behind me, but I didn’t have the mobility to duck myself.

As soon as I had the sights more or less leveled on the center of my target’s mass, I pulled the Beretta’s trigger twice in quick succession, no finesse, feeling the vicious slap of the recoil through my palm. It exploded along my arm and up into my shoulder, a jolt that took my breath away. If I’d missed I wasn’t certain I could go again so soon.

I hadn’t missed. The man with the glasses stopped moving suddenly as the realization that he’d been shot caught up with him. After the initial shock, the pain hit him hard and fast. He froze, as though by keeping quiet and still he could somehow evade it.

You can’t, friend. Trust me on this….

With a kind of disbelieving grunt, his fingers opened to let go the gun, and he folded both hands almost tenderly across his stomach.

He staggered backwards a pace. Then his knees gave out, twisting him so his back hit the gun safe nearest to him and he slid slowly down the face of it until his rump hit the floor. He was starting to gasp now. He sat there, legs splayed out in front of him, staring at nothing.

I didn’t so much lower the Beretta as simply stop making the effort to keep it raised. Without the support of my left hand, I could barely maintain my hold on the gun. The pistol grip was greasy with sweat. I grabbed the handle of my crutch so I could edge forwards. Matt was behind me like a shadow.

The man with the glasses looked up with difficulty as I reached him, like his head was suddenly too heavy for him to lift his chin. He gave a breathless little laugh.

“Who’d have thought it?” he murmured, wonder in his voice. He let his hands flop to inspect the blood that coated his palms, as though he couldn’t quite work out how it had got there. I saw that I’d managed to place both rounds into his stomach. One had just nicked the belt of his jeans so the leather had split and frayed. The other was slightly lower, and the blood that oozed from it was very dark, almost black. Probably from his liver, I noted with detached interest. Without a medic he didn’t have long.