Second Shot

“Oh no, you don’t,” he muttered, his voice tight and breathless, and he deliberately shoved one fist into the back of my right shoulder blade and leaned his weight onto it.

The pain was instant, inescapable. Deep inside, I swear I heard my own flesh tearing. I managed half a cry that shrank into a gasp and then I went utterly still. I think my mind detached from my body at that point and began to float. There was no other explanation for the fact that I could see his face clearly, the feral focus in his eyes, the dark primeval glitter. Except for the fact, of course, that it wasn’t the first time I’d seen that look.

Tou can survive this. Tou have survived it before….

Reynolds gave a satisfied grunt at my sudden capitulation. I felt him shift his weight again, positioning himself. I shut my eyes.

I felt the impact, secondhand, and the jerk as his body absorbed the blow and then collapsed sideways, dropping hard onto the floor alongside the sofa.

“Get off her, you bastard, or I will blow your fucking head off!”

I’d forgotten Matt, lying on the floor with a bleeding lump on the back of his head. So had Reynolds, clearly He remembered him now, mainly because Matt had staggered upright, unnoticed until he snatched up the Beretta from the coffee table and smacked Reynolds round the back of his skull with the butt.

As he fell, the pressure lifted off the wound in my back as suddenly as it had landed. On the whole, I’d say it didn’t immediately make things any better. I wanted to shout at Matt that he’d got a gun, not a bloody club, and to pull the trigger and keep pulling it, but I found Reynolds had stolen my voice along with half my self-respect.

Reynolds half-dragged himself upright, dazed from the blow, stumbled and went down again as far as his knees. I rolled onto my side, hauling my sweatpants back up with all the strength I could manage, and kicked him in the groin with my right foot. It wasn’t hard enough to do him any lasting damage, and the resultant jar nearly made me black out, but it was definitely worth it.

Matt was on his feet, blinking, with the gun held stiffly in front of him in both hands now. He was trembling. I had a sudden flash reminder of the way Simone had held a gun, like it had been a living beast that might escape at any moment and devour her.

Matt clearly didn’t know anything about firearms, either, and I noticed that fact at exactly the same time Reynolds did.

He lunged for Matt, making a grab for the gun. I saw Matt’s hands clench as reflex made him jerk at the trigger. The barrel oscillated wildly as he took up the pressure and nothing happened.

“Safety!” I shouted at Matt. “Take the bloody safety off!”

I pivoted onto my side and lashed out at Reynolds again with my foot, catching him on the cheek, just under his eye. He half-fell onto the coffee table, which was made of glass. It should have been safety glass but he hit it hard. It splintered under his weight and he pitched through, tangling himself in the wrought-iron frame.

Matt stared at the gun in alarm. “How?”

“Give it to me!”

Reynolds was fighting out of the wreckage of the table, eyes burning intently into Matt. Matt saw the shark approaching with its mouth open and its teeth exposed, and threw the Beretta in my direction, like that was going to stop him getting his legs bitten off.

The gun landed on the sofa, almost hitting me in the stomach. I snatched it up and flicked the safety off just as Reynolds rolled clear of the debris. I aimed for the center of his body mass and pulled the trigger without a second’s hesitation.

And missed.

The bullet smacked into the body of the chair to his left. My right arm was still so weak that I could barely keep the gun up, never mind hold it steady under fire. The kick of it up through my arm and across my shoulders seemed immense. I jammed my left hand against my right and fired again.

Closer, but no hit.

Reynolds threw himself across the room and dived on Matt, who’d been crouched down with his fingers in his ears from the moment I’d fired the first shot.

He squealed as Reynolds yanked him upright and dragged him backwards towards the door. All the way, Reynolds kept Matt pinioned in front of him as a shield. I could just see Reynolds’s head to one side of Matt’s, one very blue eye watching my every move. As he reached the edge of the living room, I knew Reynolds was smiling through the faint drift of gunsmoke that hung between us.

“Not going to take the shot, Charlie?” he said, jeering. “Looks like that’s getting to be one of your specialties, huh?”

I managed to get the Beretta to point a fraction higher, but the effort made my right arm shake so badly I couldn’t sustain any sort of aim. I lowered the gun until the pistol grip was resting on the sofa.

“Lost another gun, Reynolds?” I said, tiredly. “Looks like that’s getting to be one of yours.”