It was Ice’s turn to curse and to snap out of it. Hesitation gone, replaced by adrenaline and anger, he yanked his auto from the holster and moved forward to help Gage. Then it went all wrong.

Boom! Boom! Boom! The unmistakable sound of a shotgun rent the air. The blasts were deafening in his earpiece, and Royal yanked it out, instinctively ducking and looking for cover. Gage seemed to step backward, stagger, and then fall in the doorway.

“There’s another one—another one,” a woman’s voice yelled.

Ice was about two feet from the porch when a figure appeared in the doorway behind the body of poor, dead Gage, and he had the terrifying experience of having a shotgun pointed right at him.

“Drop it!” the agent on the ground screamed from his left, and suddenly Ice found two guns aimed at him.

The shotgun boomed again, and because he was turned slightly, Ice took the blast a little off center. The body armor saved him, but he lost his footing and went down on one knee, struggling for his breath and blinking with the pain. Stunned and disoriented, he fought to get back on his feet and raise his gun and kill the woman in the doorway when she cracked the shotgun open to reload.

The hit had knocked the wind out of him. He fired two shaky rounds in her direction, but his aim was off, and the shots went high, smacking some horns above the door and sending them clattering to the porch next to Gage. The woman with the shotgun ducked back. Now he moved, thinking only about survival. He needed to get back to the car and out of the line of fire.

On wobbly legs he turned toward the car, only to face another weapon. The Fed on the ground fired twice at him, a bullet whistling by his face, missing but impacting the car. Royal jerked away.

He brought his gun up to shoot the Fed, but from the corner of his eye, he saw that the woman with the shotgun had finished reloading and was in the doorway taking a bead on him again.

Scrambling, he lurched to the only cover close, a horse statue off to his right.

The woman with the shotgun fired, hitting the wooden horse square and sending bits of wood into Ice’s face. A sharp pain in his shoulder told him one of the pellets had made its mark outside the body armor. For the first time he could remember, Ice felt cold, hard fear course through him. All he could think was I have to get away.