“Sweet…” he said. “Go on, then—shoot. You can’t touch me, the cards told me. You fire and you’ll miss.”

She would miss—through a mist of pain, Pascal could see that: Gini, who hated and feared guns, who did not even know how to hold a gun like this.

The Beretta needed a two-handed grip. She was holding it, Pascal saw, in the worst possible way, a woman’s way, backed up against the end of the bed, the gun in one hand, her arm fully extended, so the weight of the gun and her terror made the barrel waver and shake. He could see she was rigid with fear, her eyes fixed, her face white. When Star took one slow step forward, she flinched. From somewhere very distant, Pascal heard sounds, footsteps, low commands, new urgency. He thought distantly—fine, but they’re too late. He tried to haul himself to his feet, and Star took one more step forward. He radiated confidence now, it came off him like heat.

“You dumb fucking cunt,” he said in a low voice. “You know what I’m going to do? What I was about to do earlier. And your fucking boyfriend there can fucking watch. Find out how it fucking feels—both of you. Because when I come, I’m going to blow your fucking brains out. Get down on your knees, cunt, give me that fucking gun, bitch…”

Backed against the bed, Gini watched the centuries it took him to walk ten feet. She could see all this detail, the smashed room, Pascal’s smashed arm, the blood streaking his white face. He was still trying to rise, and Star was approaching with that wet, ugly smile on his extraordinary face.

She understood: she could hear what the small voice in her head was saying: Pascal could not reach her in time, no one was going to burst through the doors or the windows in time, so it was just her and this approaching shape, and this heavy instrument in her hand, which might be nearly out of ammunition, so if she fired, she had to be very careful not to miss.

Star was still moving, words were still spilling out of his mouth, and then as he moved, he made just one little mistake. As he stepped past Pascal, he aimed one final kick at his legs—and then it was easy. As she curled her finger around the trigger, she was back on a bridge in Amsterdam, and soaring right through her body was a current of astonishing force. All that latent female power, in Anneke’s mother, in herself. The power blacked out the panic and the pity, so when he was four feet away from her, she fired.

The gun kicked like a live thing, and she kept on firing, and she could see she must have missed, though he was so huge a target and so close, because he was still coming at her, so she held the gun closer, clutched it with two hands, and as he reached for her, she fired straight at the bloodstains on his chest.