He lifted his hand. His shirt had been torn just above his navel. Blood was flowing freely and, when he tried to move his arm, the blast of pain was sudden and debilitating. Gut shot. That wasn’t good. He leaned back against the counter and tried to gather his strength.

“Who are you?” she called out across the room.

“Chase Baxter,” he grunted.

“And am I supposed to know you?”

“You killed my old man.”

“Did I?”

He held his gut tighter, not that it made much difference. “In Las Vegas.”

He heard her chuckle. “This again? Who would have thought one old man would be worth so much aggravation?”

“Yeah, well, he was a cantankerous old bastard and he’s gonna haunt you from beyond the grave.”

He clenched his teeth against the pain, took a moment, and, with his back still pressed against the stainless-steel counter, he shuffled on his backside until he could look around the side of the unit. She saw him, brought the pistol around and fired.

A stack of plates exploded, china shards falling all around him.

She cursed.

“You’re gonna pay for what you did,” he said.

“No,” she said. “I don’t think so. You’ve been shot.”

He gripped the pistol more tightly, but it slipped in his hand. His palm was slick with blood. He wiped it on his shirt. He started to feel woozy. He had seen gut shots before. He remembered a Marine with whom he had served in Kandahar. A sniper had picked him off and pinned them down, preventing medevac. The man had lasted an hour and then bled out.

He blinked hard, trying to clear his head. He had to do something. He had to figure out a way to—

“Don’t move.”

He turned his head and saw that the woman had come around the other side of the counter. The pain had distracted him. He hadn’t noticed. And now she was pointing her pistol down at him.

112

Chase knew there was no point in struggling. The blood was still running through the fingers of his left hand and he was weak, with no strength in his right. He wouldn’t have been able to bring his gun up to shoot before she pulled the trigger. She was ten feet away and evidently comfortable with the pistol in her hand; she wouldn’t miss from there. The fatigue rolled over him in waves. He didn’t even have the strength to try to shuffle away.

He heard the sound of footsteps approaching along the corridor. He looked up at La Bruja and saw the wariness on her face. She took a step back and a quarter turn to the right so that she could see both him and the doorway; the gun was still trained on him.

“Don’t shoot,” a voice said, in accented English.

The fear on her face was replaced by uncertainty. “Eidur?”

“Yes. Are you okay?”