Atlanta shoots Shane a real lightning bolt of a look and jerks her head toward the closet. Shane darts toward it like a soldier in a war zone—head down so it doesn’t get shot off.

Her bare toe feels under the couch. Finds the cold metal of the shotgun barrel. Then she reaches for the iPod Touch on the rickety old side table. The iPod isn’t Atlanta’s. It’s Shane’s. She flicks it on, does what needs doing, and then waits.

Again the creaking. Toward the steps.

And down. One by one. The house is old, and every floorboard is a complainer.

From here she can see the staircase through the wooden railing.

Can see the first shadow—deeper black than the rest of the dark—step onto that top step.

She thinks suddenly: Screw this.

Drop the iPod.

Pick up the gun.

Just kill him and be done with it.

But Shane has a plan. And despite her very worst and hungriest instinct, she holds still, standing there by the couch in the dark of her own home.

Petry continues to walk down those steps.

She sees his feet. Then legs. Torso.

And then his arm and hand and in that hand—

His gun.

The same gun that shot Whitey in the head and came an angel’s whisper away from killing her dog.

The same gun that probably forced Chris out of his home and to a pear tree on a hill.

The gun that aims to kill me, too.

Soon as he reaches the bottom of the stairs, she speaks. She means for her words to sound confident and badass, but instead they come out a shaking, quaking croak. “I knew you’d come—”

Muzzle flash, gunshot, the lamp on that rickety side table pops and jumps to the floor with a crash.

Atlanta falls backward, her buttbone nailing the wooden floor. She cries out and presses her back flat against the wood, sandwiched between the base of the couch and the legs of the coffee table.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. They were supposed to have a . . . a chat, a conversation—like they do in the movies where the good guy and the bad guy square off one last time and—

Petry fires again. A pillow ejects feathery guts into the air. Motes of white snow against the dark room. All Atlanta hears is the ringing in her ears. All she smells is that gun stink, oil and powder and murderous intent.

“Wait!” she screams. “Stop! Stop!” Silence. No more shots. She cries, her words fast like machine gun chatter: “You-kill-me-you-don’t-get-the-files-please-stop.”

“You don’t have any files.” His voice is slow and cold. No emotion. No anger.

“Do too!” It’s a childish response but all she can think to say. What’s next: You’re a nanny-doody-head?

“Those files don’t live at the gun club. Orly’s got ’em elsewhere.”