There was no shout of gunfire. Just a snap, like a spent fuse, and a hole punched through the target’s chest. “See that?” he said. “Easy-peasy. No noise. No lead.” And the bullets could be reused if collected. “It’s not pure omnimetal,” he said. “It’s just a thin shell. What it’s cored with, I don’t know. Chewing gum and dog shit. Doesn’t matter. Just telling you in case you think you can take this down to the pawnshop to feed your coke habit.”

A few laughs.

“This stuff is powerful. Maybe too powerful. Punches through concrete. Punches through steel. Probably capable of traveling all the way around the world and zapping you in the ass if you shoot straight and stand still long enough. So be careful. Got that?”

Nods. Shuffled feet.

“Because you’re all a bunch of responsible assholes, you each get a seventeen-round magazine. Hopefully you’ll stay holstered, but if you do by chance fire your weapon, in addition to the usual rigmarole of pain-in-the-ass paperwork, we’ve got to fill out some data sheets for Nosler. Okay? Okay. Now get the hell out of here.”

Now she was finally done for the day. And bed was calling. Her job was chaos, so as an antidote, her time at home was ritualized. At 9:45 every evening, she takes a hot shower and scrubs herself until her skin prickles. By 10:00, she has rubbed her body with lotion and taken her 30 milligrams of Abilify and 40 milligrams of Paxil with a full glass of water, and by 10:15 she has softened her hair with coconut oil and slipped on a bonnet and her pajamas and tucked herself under the covers. In bed, propped up by two pillows, she reads a mystery novel for forty-five minutes until her preferred bedtime of 11:00 p.m. Before shutting off the light, she studies the photo of her daughter that she keeps on the bedside table, the last thing she looks at every night and the first thing she looks at every morning. In the photo, Mia is sitting in the grass, squinting in the sun. She is wearing a white Easter dress with a lavender pattern, and a golden crown of woven dandelions perches on top of her curly fluff of hair. A smear of chocolate edges her smile.

But tonight, just as Nora cranked off the water and the showerhead dribbled and she reached for the towel, her cell rang.

It is currently 10:17. Instead of pajamas, she is wearing a black pantsuit. Instead of reading in bed, she is hurrying into the mudroom and collecting her badge and pulling on her shoulder harness and scooping up her car keys.