Johnny Walker stood in the middle of the street like the heat didn't bother him and bullets couldn't touch him. Like there wasn't a cop dying at his feet. Angelique Monnet stood by his side, her revolver pointed to the ground, a bag of stolen cash in her other hand. The gun was a Colt Peacemaker, the name as ironic as they came, long-nosed and gleaming dully in the sun. Monnet looked indifferent to the violence, her sharp eyes flickering up and down the street, cataloguing witnesses and potential threats, before settling on Walker. His tommy gun rested against his shoulder, his hat set at a smart angle to keep the sun out of his eyes, but it did nothing to hide his face.

Eugene froze, his fingers locked around the camera. Johnny Walker met Eugene’s gaze through the lens as Eugene pressed his finger to the trigger and snapped the shot. It was over in a fraction of a second, but his heart stuttered and skipped a beat at the look they shared, as if Walker knew him. He didn't. They had never set foot in the same town together, before Baton Rouge.

Johnny Walker and Angelique Monnet had been declared public enemies months ago. Together they had mapped a trail across America, zigzagging back and forth across state lines all through the South and Midwest, leaving a wake of bodies and stolen cash behind them. They were a handsome couple, Walker in his sharp suits and Monnet in her flashy black dresses, both of them with smiles like razorblades for the cameras. They took up residence in the public consciousness like they belonged there, and Eugene, pale-faced in his ill-fitting suits, was pulled to them like a moth to the flame. They made trouble at every turn, always skipping just out of reach of the law, like stones over water. They couldn’t keep it up forever, the authorities promised, grim and mirthless. They would burn bright for a few months and then die hard, the same as all the others before them.

Eugene wasn’t so sure. There was something almost preternatural about the way their luck ran, like they had God or the devil on their side. They had a wildness about them, something beyond the guns and the way they laughed in the sweltering heat, their teeth white like animals’.

Walker broke into a slow smile, his coal-dark eyes still locked on Eugene's, before he turned and murmured something to Monnet. As one, they broke away from the scene of the crime, piling into a dusty black car and tearing off as the mournful wail of city sirens closed in.

Eugene stayed where he was for a second longer, his heart thudding as a solid lump in his throat. Soon, reporters would swarm the site like flies over a carcass, and he didn't want to be present for that. He had wanted to report on the rumored bank robbery, not a shooting, and he no intention of being questioned as a witness. There were other people who must have seen the whole thing from the windows, people who would gleefully expound on the cop's heroism and his tragic, unnecessary death at the hands of two ruthless criminals. Eugene wanted no part of that. The hostages from the bank were already flooding out the doors, not a single mark on any of them.