“Shoot him!”

To our right, from the kitchen, someone said, “Hello.”

Angie turned her head, and I could smell the bullet when it hit her. It smelled like sulfur and cordite and blood.

Her own gun went off between Evandro and me and the muzzle flash was like fire in my eyes.

I jerked forward and felt the stiletto pop back out of my flesh and clatter to the floor behind us as Evandro’s nails tore across my face.

I drove my elbow back into his head and heard bone break and a scream and suddenly Angie’s gun roared twice and glass shattered in the kitchen.

Evandro and I wrestled our way blindly into the bedroom and then shapes began to take form again through the blaring white in my eyes. My foot hit Dunn’s service revolver and it discharged loudly and skittered out into the kitchen.

Evandro’s hands clawed at my face and I dug my hands into the flesh under his rib cage. I spun, tightening my fingers on his lowest ribs, and hurled him over Angie’s vanity chest and into the mirror.

The flash of white disappeared as I watched his slim body crest her makeup and crash through the glass. The mirror cracked in large, jagged pieces the shape of dorsal fins and the candle flames sputtered, then flared as they fell to the floor. I dove over the bed as he came down and the entire vanity came with him.

I grabbed my gun from Angie’s nightstand as I went over it, came up on the other side of the bed and fired without hesitation at the place where I’d seen him last.

But he wasn’t there anymore.

I turned my head, saw Angie sitting up on the floor, one eye squinting as she aimed down her barrel and steadied her arm, a fallen candle burning on the floor beside her. Footsteps paused on the kitchen floor, and Angie pulled the trigger.

And then she pulled it again.

Someone in the kitchen screamed.

And I heard another scream from outside, but it was the scream of metal, the howl of an engine, and suddenly the kitchen exploded in bursts of angry fluorescent, and the hum of electrical appliances followed.

I stamped out the candle by Angie’s arm and stepped out into the hall behind her, pointed my gun at Evandro. His back was to us, his arms held down by his sides. He swayed from side to side in the middle of the kitchen floor, as if to music only he could hear.

Angie’s first shot had found the center of his back and a large hole was torn through Dunn’s black leather patrolman’s jacket. As we watched, it filled with red, and Evandro stopped swaying and dropped to one knee.

Her second shot had blown off a flap of his head just over his right ear.

He raised his gun hand to it absently, and Dunn’s service revolver fell and skittered across the linoleum.