It was his turn to shrug. “Okay.”

“And the baby in my belly will die as well.”

He said, “Knocked up again, are we?”

“Sì.”

She stared at him, her eyes wide and dark as always. She ran a hand over her belly. “A life lives in me.”

“Uh-uh,” Danny said. “Try another one, honey.”

“I don’t have to. Bring me to jail and the jail doctor will confirm that I am pregnant. I promise you, I will hang myself. And a child will die in my womb.”

He locked the cuffs over her wrists and then yanked on them so that her body slammed into his and their faces almost touched.

“Don’t fucking play me, whore. You pulled it off once, but twice ain’t going to happen in your time on earth.”

“I know that,” she said, and he could taste her breath. “I am a revolutionary, Danny, and I—”

“You’re a fucking terrorist. A bomb maker.” He grabbed the cuff chain and pulled her close. “You just shot a guy who spent the last nine months looking for a job. He was of ‘the people.’ Just another working stiff trying to get by and you fucking shot him.”

“Ex-officer Danny,” she said and her tone was that of an elderly woman speaking to a child, “casualties are a part of war. Just ask my dead husband.”

The metal shot from between her hands and into his body. It bit his flesh and then hit bone and chiseled through that and his hip caught fire and the bolt of pain shot down through his thigh and reached his knee.

He pushed her back and she stumbled and looked at him with her hair in her face and her lips wet with spittle.

Danny glanced at the knife sticking out of his hip and then his leg gave way and he dropped to his ass in the alley and watched the blood sluice down his outer thigh. He raised his .45 and pointed it at her.

The pain came in bolts that shook his entire body. It was worse than anything he’d experienced when he’d been shot in the chest.

“I’m carrying a child,” she said and took a step backward.

Danny took a bite from the air and sucked it through his teeth.

Tessa held out her hands and he shot her once in the chin and once between her breasts and she fell down in the alley and flopped like a fish. Her heels kicked the cobblestones, and then she tried to sit up, taking a loud gulp of the air as the blood spilled down her coat. Danny watched her eyes roll back in her head and then her head hit the alley and she was still. Lights came on in the windows.

He went to lay back and something punched him in the thigh. He heard the pistol report a half a second before the next bullet hit him high on the right side of his chest. He tried to lift his own pistol. He raised his head and saw a man standing on the fire escape. His pistol flashed and the bullet chunked into the cobblestones. Danny kept trying to raise his own pistol but his arm wouldn’t follow commands, and the next shot hit his left hand. The whole time, he couldn’t help thinking: Now who the fuck is this guy?