Ten seconds of tense silence lapsed.

Then, a familiar voice.

"You still tickin' down there, Marty?"

Martin and Sheila turned to each other, both of them recognizing the twang of Barclay's voice from the rooftop.

"We're alive," Martin called back. "I'm guessing not for long."

"Well, that all depends."

The shooter and scout got to their feet, silhouettes against the moonlit sky.

A flicker of yellow light illuminated them. Impossible to tell who was who from the distance and low light, but the shooter appeared to be a woman. She brought the flame to her face for a moment, then let it die. The subsequent red glow indicated she'd been lighting a cigarette.

"Depends on what?" Sheila shouted.

"On if you can get us inside the lion's den without getting' all four of us kilt," Clarabelle Leigh said, the cherry on her cigarette bobbing as she spoke.

Before they could ask the woman what she meant the two shadows retreated.

In a few minutes or less they would be face to face with the man who'd murdered three or more innocent women and their unborn children without remorse or pity, who'd terrorized them and run them to ground for his own petty amusement.

Martin squinted out at the empty street—the perfect setting for a showdown. Most of the crowd had returned to their homes, likely as confused as they were frightened. He wondered what they would take away from tonight. If any of what was said or what happened here would be remembered in the morning.

"So this is it, huh?" Sheila said, only loud enough for Martin to hear.

"I guess it is."

"What do you think she meant by 'lion's den'?"

"They mean my house. They plan to kill Ruby. And I don't know if we should try to stop them."

Sheila looked out at the street as the rooftop shooter and the serial murderer stepped out of the alley. Clarabelle held a high-powered rifle, shuffling on the leg where her dog had bit her. Barclay held a bowie knife, glinting under the streetlamps, moseying toward them like a cowboy in an old Western.

"I don't know either," Sheila said, watching their provisional saviors. "But I don't think they'll give us much of a choice."

Barclay gave Mavis's prone body a solid kick in the ribs with his pointy-toed cowboy boot. The old woman moved easily and made no sound when her face hit the ground again with a solid smack.

"Always kinda figured they'd turn to dust," Clarabelle said, the cigarette bobbing between her lips. "Somethin like that anyway."

"If it'll make you feel better, sweetcheeks, we can come on back here when all's said and done and set these old bitches ablaze."

She nodded, still looking at Mavis's corpse. "I'd like that. Which one was it you said got in my head?" She directed the question to Sheila.

"It was Ethel. I recognized her voice."

"Makes sense," Clarabelle said, eying the woman whose head she'd nearly blown clean off. "Old bat's always had a keen eye even though she was blind as a... well, a bat."