Tera gritted her teeth. She threw her arm up and bucked her hips, lifting his two-sixty through a mist of hysterical strength. Ruben wobbled. His gun went stray at the same moment he pulled the trigger, and the bullet skimmed across the floor. He tried resetting, but Tera twisted beneath him, managing to free her right knee and drive it up into his balls. He barked and spluttered. Tera lashed out again—with her elbow, with the Beretta’s grip. Ruben sagged and flopped off her. She rolled away from him, scrabbling to one knee and reaching for the spare magazine in the back pocket of her jeans.

Ruben lay with his left arm pinned beneath him. His gun hand was still free. He swung the barrel toward her, his eyes burning with shock and pain.

“Uggaroo,” he bubbled, not even a word, but it was the last thing he said. It took him a second too long to steady his aim. Tera rammed the fresh mag home, racked the slide, and pulled the trigger.

A single bullet to center mass, at close range. Ruben died staring at her. The light in his eyes didn’t flicker. It just went out.

Tera pulled a long, shuddering breath into her lungs and screamed on the exhale. Her wounded side throbbed and bled. She pushed herself to her feet and staggered toward the lobby. Her first objective had been met, but she was still a long way from making this shitstorm right.

She hooked her cell phone from her pocket, dialed as she walked. Now would be a good time to call for backup. An ambulance, too.

Kitty had been gone no longer than thirty seconds before the berserker entered the pool area. He had a gun in his left hand and a cell phone clamped in what remained of his right, directing its flashlight in a jittery arc.

Luke covered his mouth, focusing on silence, on stillness. He was a rock in the shadows. A yucca, growing in the dry dirt between the wall and a fan palm. Xander would pass him by without even a second glance.

“Fucking kill you motherfuckers,” he rumbled, dragging his left leg behind him. “Kill you. Fucking rip you.”

It helped Luke to imagine Kitty busting through one of the hotel’s emergency exits, tear-assing across the parking lot, flagging down some good ol’ boy who just happened to be passing by in his Chevy pickup. (Even at the direst of times, Luke’s thoughts were at least seventy percent movie script.) In reality, it might take hours for a vehicle to come this way. And even if Kitty got lucky, how long would it take for the cops—the real cops, not some rinky-dink part-timer from Podunk PD—to arrive?