“We’d like to talk to you.”

“I have nothing to say.”

“I think you do. I think you have a lot to say, and we can do this the easy way or the hard way.”

“Hoda,” Nico said. “Don’t do this. Don’t make it worse than it already is.”

“How can it get any worse?” she asked, her voice cracking with emotion.

“It can get a lot worse if your finger slips and you shoot a cop,” Sam said.

“I don’t want to shoot anyone, but I don’t want you here.”

“If you put down the gun right now and come talk to us, we’ll forget you pulled a gun on us.”

“No, you won’t! Cops say stuff all the time to get people to do what they want them to do, but I don’t believe you!” Her gun discharged, and a bullet whizzed by Sam’s head. If she hadn’t dropped to the right when she did, she’d be dead.

“Take her,” she said into her radio from a crouch on the floor.

Upon hearing what was transpiring inside the house, the patrol officers had entered from the back and apprehended Hoda.

“No! Don’t touch me!”

“Clear,” one of them said on the radio as they dragged Hoda kicking and screaming out of the bedroom into the living room. The girl was strikingly gorgeous, even with a tearstained face and wild-looking dark hair. With a quick glance, Sam could see how she might’ve successfully passed as Brooke’s sister. She wore a revealing tank top that showed off impressive breasts and a pair of barely there panties that left little to the imagination. Her outfit gave Sam a pretty good idea of how she’d passed the time while hiding out with Nico.

“Lieutenant,” a dispatcher said over the crackling radio. “Report.”

“Active shooter neutralized,” Sam said. “No injuries. Send another car for transport.” She slapped cuffs on Nico.

“What’d I do?” he asked as he resisted her.

“Where’d she get the gun?”

“I didn’t tell her to shoot at cops!”

“You made sure she was armed, which makes you eligible for attempted murder charges too. How old are you anyway?”

The words “attempted murder” seemed to have sobered him somewhat. “Twenty-four,” he mumbled.

“And she’s just turned eighteen. Hmmm.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, scumbag, that the U.S. attorney is going to be really interested in whether your relationship with her began when she was still a minor, and how she ended up in possession of a gun. Her mother has been looking for her for days, and all that time she’s been here. You could be looking at kidnapping charges.” That last part wasn’t true, but he didn’t need to know that.

“Kidnapping? I gave her a place to stay and kept her safe! I didn’t kidnap her!”

“Tell it to the judge.”