She stopped mid-step and looked up at me with a look of exasperation.

“Give me a break!”

“Let’s go back up and talk this out like adults. No reason to keep acting up like this.”

“Acting up?” She choked out, looking at me in rage.

“Yes, acting up,” I said, stomping right up to her. She seethed and attempted to push my chest.

“Trying to escape being kidnapped isn’t acting up!” She yelled, trying and failing yet again to budge me. She was a seething ball of irritated energy, her pale skin flushed with rage. I smiled down at her and considered pushing her buttons a little more. There was something just so fun about it.

The jingle of spurs permeated the casino, all other noise becoming a background murmur as a caricature of a man waltzed into the place. He stood tall with a leather duster and a big stetson cowboy hat. In the corner of his mouth was a cigarillo that he sucked hard enough to make a red-hot ember glow on the end.

His ebony hair stuck out from the side of his hat. Around his jeans was a gun belt with several guns I did not want to see the business end of. My eyes watched as smoke expelled from the side of his mouth.

Remington. He was here and that meant our time was up. Time to survive or die trying. There was a boiling sense of destruction that came off him like heat waves. His dark eyes were cruel, his body hard, and his stance powerful. He looked at the crowd and I knew all he saw were bodies.

Life was an annoyance that he liked to snuff out as quickly and chaotically as possible. The man was the cruelest, wildest sonofabitch I’d ever heard of.

Remington was number one on the Council’s hit list not long ago. Higher than the rest of us because he was much more dangerous. One day his name disappeared from the list and we didn’t know what to make of it. Something had gone down that had him doing dirty work for the Council. Bad news for us.

He flicked the burning bud of his still-lit cigarillo towards a trash can, watching as a napkin caught fire. He flipped his leather duster open with a dramatic flourish and grabbed his guns. As the trashcan caught fire, he swung his guns up, looking around until his eyes settled on me.

He tipped his hat and then he started squeezing the triggers. This time he didn’t even bother aiming for me, it was all for Lacey. It took everything I had to not step in front of her, but I knew that wouldn’t help anyone.

Bullets ricocheted away, missing her entirely but hitting bystanders that didn’t have the same luck.

Screams erupted and the cowboy smiled widely, kicking over the flaming trash can and causing its fire to spill out on the carpet. Burning pieces of paper flew up and caught on fabric curtains framing the entrance he came in from, setting it aflame. Lacey swung around to face him, looking as pissed off with him as she had been with me.