Elizaveta brought her knees to her chest and tried using her feet to push Pita away. Pita clutched Elizaveta’s hair with both hands again, shaking as though she were trying to dislodge stubborn weeds from the ground.

Elizaveta kicked. Her foot struck Pita in the gut. Pita’s grip loosened.

Elizaveta kicked again. This time her foot winged Pita’s face.

The bitch finally released her.

Elizaveta tumbled away, the roots of her hair raw with pain. Pita lay on her side, panting, her bottom lip bleeding.

“Jesus!” Elizaveta said, pushing herself to her feet.

Somehow Jesus had gotten the better of Jack, and he now knelt on top of him, his hands around Jack’s throat, strangling him.

He didn’t show any signs of hearing her—or letting up.

The pistol lay on the floor a meter from her. She retrieved it, surprised by its cold, heavy weight. She aimed the barrel at the ceiling and squeezed the trigger.

The report boomed.

Jesus turned his head to look at her. His face was so twisted with hatred she barely recognized him.

“Get off him!” she said.

“Put that down!”

“Get off him!”

“Put—”

Jack bucked Jesus off him and rolled away, wheezing.

Jesus seemed ready to go for him again, while Pita was on all fours, spider-like, ready to come after her.

She fired a second round.

“Stop!” she shouted. “Everybody stop!”

2

Jack crab-scuttled farther away from Jesus. Blood smeared his chin. More blood soaked his tank top on the left side of his abdomen.

Had one of her bullets ricocheted off the ceiling and struck him there?

Elizaveta hurried to him, giving Pita a wide birth.

“Give me that,” he said, holding a hand out for the pistol.

She hesitated only a moment before pressing the gun’s grip into his palm.

He immediately swung the weapon at Jesus, who was bending over, picking up something.

A knife, she realized. A blood-drenched knife.

Had he stabbed Jack?

“Put it down,” Jack told him.

“Put the gun down,” Jesus retorted. The bangs of his usually slicked back hair hung in front of his face. His left shirt tail dangled from his pants. At some point he’d lost a penny loafer; one foot was bare.

“I don’t think so, Jesus.”

“What are you going to do, Jack? Shoot me?”

“I’m pretty tempted right now.”

“Dammit, Jesus,” Elizaveta said. “You stabbed him? Are you crazy?”

“Jesus…?” Pita said, appearing confused. She stood up. Her chambray shirt hung open to her sternum, revealing her breasts in a lacy bra a size too small so it acted like a corset, ballooning her cleavage.

“He attacked me,” Jesus protested. “He was going insane.”

“Where’d you get that knife, Jesus?” Jack asked. He pushed himself to his knees and grimaced, his free hand going to his bleeding abdomen.

Elizaveta helped him the rest of the way to his feet.

“Are you okay?” she asked, worried.