He continued to struggle with Leppo, but now it looked like he was fighting off the older man—like Leppo was the aggressor. Odessa only now truly processed that Leppo held the knife. He was wielding the assailant’s weapon. Peters, however it happened, was unarmed.

“WALT!”

All he had to do was shove Peters down. He had the advantage. Odessa had Peters at point-blank range. It was over.

“BACK OFF, I GOT HIM!”

If she fired now, the round would explode through Peters and strike Leppo. But nothing she was saying got through to her fellow agent.

Peters turned away from Odessa, losing the struggle, Leppo’s knife arm rising by his shoulder. Peters took his hand off Leppo’s chin and throat and moved it to his arm, fighting him for possession of the knife.

Peters cried, “Don’t…please!”

Odessa screamed: “LAST WARNING!”

With a burst of wild strength, Peters shoved Leppo off him, back against the side wall. Leppo was clear. Peters turned to Odessa, holding out his hand, saying, “No—!”

Odessa fired twice.

Peters went down backward, dropping hard. He clutched his chest where both rounds had opened him up, writhing on the carpet runner, arcing his back. Odessa held her shooting stance, her aim staying on his midsection. Peters sucked air, his breath groaning, his chest wounds hissing. His eyes flickered, for the briefest moment, with odd recognition—as if he had just woken and found himself lost—and then the eyes froze, a single tear streaking down his left cheek.

Odessa had shot a man. He was bleeding out. She was watching him die.

She never looked at Leppo.

Peters’s body flattened and he lay still. The agonal sounds in his chest became a high-pitched sigh like a tire going flat. His eyes glazed, became dull.

It was over.

Odessa exhaled her own breath, the one she hadn’t known she had been holding since she fired.

“I killed him,” she said to Leppo but mostly to herself. “I put him down.”

It was then that Odessa became aware of two things almost simultaneously: a faint burning smell—like burnt soldering paste—and a girl’s voice, crying and calling from another bedroom, faint under the arriving sirens outside.

“Help me! Who’s there?”

The third Peters child. Still alive—unhurt.

Odessa found it difficult to take her eyes off Peters’s body. Peripherally, she saw Leppo turn and start toward the last bedroom at the end of the hall. Going to comfort the only surviving member of the Peters family.

Odessa started to relax. She straightened and took one step forward, looking over the man she had killed.

Ahead of her, Leppo slowed a moment as he reached the doorway, before entering. Odessa looked up, and as Leppo disappeared into the room, Odessa saw the knife still in his hand.

Odessa’s first thought was that this was bad procedure. The murder weapon was evidence and must be treated as such.