And again, a volley, even louder.

More than one person, and they were closer now.

Back outside, the drapes blowing idly, stroking her as she passed, and everything hyper-real, sharpened by panic. Fast along the patio, silent on tiptoe and sock feet, dancing around glass. Breath short, and a blood-pounding chug in her ears like a train, the black force of it about to hit her.

Another shot, and then a bang—duller, like a door being kicked. They were close, upstairs—

At Vincent’s room now, and she got that flash of memory: Vincent in the car this morning, calm but far away. The sliding door was unlocked, and she stepped in with a weird feeling—no place in this moment—a hotel flashback: coming in off cool tiles to a shadowed room, and the pool lapping behind her. Now juxtaposed to that, the danger of gunmen.

Too dark, before her eyes adjusted. There—the remote in its wall cradle, a fumble, and she grabbed it, button-mashed, and the lights came on bright. A rush of LED, stark and clinical. The stereo kicked in, too: HELLO scrolling on a narrow screen, and then music: ‘Girl, you’ll be a woman soon.’ Even running, even panicked, her brain knew it: that song from Pulp Fiction. Uma Thurman dances to it, and then ODs.

Past the kitchen, and she heard a crash through the wall, someone in her apartment.

Into his bedroom, everything neat and square, the bed made. A book on his nightstand—Hitchens: A Long Short War, and a stack of paper underneath: CIA seal on the top sheet, long strings of text redacted. What?

A slam from the living room, probably the sliding door. She ran to the bathroom and pulled the shower handle. A rush and a cold mist as the water spluttered. Anything for a distraction, anything to buy her time. She should have grabbed a kitchen knife, but there: scissors on the shelf above the basin, and she held them like a dagger, overhand, point raised above her shoulder as she waited by the bedroom door, and in the room beyond: swift footsteps and panting, the thrill and the urgency of murder.

He was just outside the door—she knew it—and with the shower water like white noise, like brain-static in the total horror of the moment, she stepped out.

And saw she had mistimed her move.

Because the black-clad man with his pistol and his mask was still twelve feet away, and there was no time to adjust, nothing to do but clench her teeth on the scream.