And then she heard the yelling coming from the farmhouse where Shane and Eve and Michael were being held, and the day got just a little bit brighter, somehow. Yes. She wasn’t the only one raising hell.

Time to raise a little more.

Her guard was distracted for a moment, and when she tripped over a rock and jolted against him, she threw him off balance. His gun weaved off target.

Claire saw it in slow motion in her mind, just the way Shane had drilled her. Against an armed opponent, you had to be decisive and fast, because any hesitation would be your last.

She whirled into his grip, throwing him further off balance, and whipping him around in a strange, stumbling dance. She got her foot between his, and then they were falling, and he instinctively let go of the gun to break his fall. She threw her weight against him as they landed, and flung out her hand to grab the gun as she rolled past it.

She almost missed it. Her fingers slipped off the grip, and she fumbled it, but retrieved it with one last, desperate effort that pulled muscles in her side as his weight continued to roll her forward. She used physics in her favour this time, wrapped her legs around him, and used their momentum to whip him hard around, slamming him into the hard gravel on his back as she rolled up on top of him.

She had the gun, and she aimed it right at his head.

He dropped his hands at his sides, signalling surrender. He looked young, and very scared, all of a sudden.

Claire didn’t have it in her to shoot him, but she hit him with the gun, hard enough to leave him curled up and moaning.

Then she ran for the farmhouse, where all hell was still breaking loose. And all the way there, the fear sank in deeper and deeper.

What if I just killed us all?

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

SHANE

What got us loose was an old wrestling trick, but hey, there’s a reason those guys keep making money. First, pick a fight – a loud one, loud enough to attract the attention of the guards. Next, have a fight, the more real, the better. (And trust me, Eve can throw a punch when she feels like it. Girl knows how to power out from the shoulder.)

Last, score yourself a bloody head wound, self-inflicted and minor, to sell the show as you flop down defeated, beaten and – in this case – preferably looking really dead. Have your friends sell it with lots of distress and screams for help while getting their hands very bloody. Eve was maybe a little too over the top, but Pete sold the whole package – he looked grim, scared, and smeared blood around like I’d sprung an arterial leak and was pumping out the last pint.