Tinsley looked through the open doors of the SUV to the other man, who glanced back at the same instant. For a moment, they stared each other in the eye. Then the man was twisting, trying to bring his rifle to bear, but it was unwieldy in the cramped space between the door and vehicle.

Tinsley lowered the knife and asked the time.

“What?” the man asked as if he hadn’t heard Tinsley correctly.

It was a strange question under the circumstances, and that strangeness slowed the man a fraction. It was enough. Tinsley shot him in the neck, the suppressor sounding a hollow rattle in the SUV’s interior, and the man went down clutching the ruins of his throat.

Tinsley checked to see if the exchange had drawn unwanted attention, but all eyes remained on the standoff unfolding on the porch. It was tense, like unlit kindling. It needed a spark to make it catch. Tinsley took up the dead man’s rifle and fired several bursts over Jenn Charles’s head.

The effect was instantaneous.

Charles reacted first. She slid to her left, dropping as she fired twice at the man claiming to be FBI. The man tumbled backward and stayed down. His partner returned fire, but Charles disappeared behind the car. There were gunshots from the open doorway of the house, and the second man threw himself to the ground and crawled toward his fallen partner.

Automatic-weapons fire erupted from all sides. The rifles were all suppressed and, judging by the sound, loaded with subsonic ammunition. Charles was correct. These men were not the FBI.

The car Charles was hiding behind exploded in a firework of broken glass and metallic shards. Bullets crashed into the side of the house, battering the front door of the house and flinging it wide. Tinsley heard a man yell in pain.

Tinsley watched the partner of the fallen man circle the car and take his partner by the collar, dragging him back behind a large elm in the center of the circular driveway. Charles returned fire as best she could but was effectively pinned down. There was no other movement from the house. Tinsley wondered if she had sacrificed herself to buy her compatriots time to flee out the back.

That would not be ideal.

Movement drew Tinsley’s eyes. The man flanking Charles had spotted him. Bullets laced past, and Tinsley threw himself into the SUV, scrambling low across the seats as the armored door absorbed a burst of rounds. The sound of the running engine stopped him. He sunk down below the dashboard, shifted it into drive, and stomped down on the accelerator. The SUV leapt forward. Rounds thudded into the engine block. White circles like cigarette burns popped in the windshield above Tinsley’s head. He held the accelerator to the floor.