It was difficult to see exactly what happened next, but as he was trying to reload again, a delivery truck came out of nowhere. Franks spun the wheel and stomped on the brakes, so he managed to not directly T-bone the truck, but couldn’t avoid all of it. The truck’s back bumper tore through his driver’s side and ripped the door off. The impact was jarring. Glass and debris struck him as the police car went spinning away on screaming tires.

Franks snarled as he brought it out of the slide. Tire smoke floated in the cabin. Something had cut him on the forehead and he was bleeding into one eye, but he could see that the ambulance wasn’t that far away. Its brake lights came on. They were stopping. Franks mashed the accelerator to the floor, intending to ram them. Kurst’s new body was tough, but it probably wouldn’t survive being turned into a red pavement smear. The ambulance doors opened. They were bailing out. Franks calmly reached over and put his seat belt on. He got it up to nearly fifty before the impact.

Only it wasn’t the ambulance.

His first clue that something was wrong was when the air quivered and the ambulance disappeared. It was an illusion. Franks stomped on the brakes, but the second clue came half a second later when the front end of the stolen police car smashed into a brick wall.

* * *

“It’s Foster.”

Stricken had been eagerly awaiting this call. The secure bands were all talking about a massacre at MCB headquarters and most of them were implicating Franks as the perp. There was so much to do. So many plans hinged on Franks being eliminated. This was like Christmas morning. He took the phone from his subordinate and hit the answer button. “Yes, Mr. Foster?”

“Foster’s dead, man! There are cops everywhere!”

“Renfroe?” It was one of his people but he was no operative. Renfroe was a glorified sys-admin who’d been marked by Fey and been lucky enough to end up with useful abilities rather than the normal Fey-related outcome of dead. It was always a roll of the dice what you’d end up with when you pissed off a witch queen. “What happened?”

“Franks shot him in the face. He gut-shot the Spider and she’s squirting green stuff everywhere. I guess he killed some of your other guys inside, maybe, I don’t know. And he messed up two of your weirdos. I didn’t sign up for this. They were killing innocent people!”

“Calm down, Mr. Renfroe . . .” People with functioning moral compasses were such crybabies, but his ability to communicate directly with electronics was invaluable. “This is very important. Did you alter the security footage in the manner I directed?”