Randi looked at what was left of the windows on the far side of the room—not much more than a few loose shards clinging to the frame. A hot breeze blew through them, strong enough to swirl the smoke hanging in the air but not enough to dissipate the overwhelming stench of gunpowder. Zellerbach was lying on his stomach still absorbed by his keyboard, though there was little point to what he was doing anymore. Not that she saw any reason to tell him that. Better to just let him stay lost in his digital world until one of the Dresner’s storm troopers got lucky and took his head off.

She scanned right again, finding it much harder than it should have been to look at Smith. His plan had been too convoluted from the start—an ungodly Hail Mary with a thousand paths to disaster and only one path to success. But they’d been in similar jams before and somehow always managed to walk away.

Not this time.

She stared at him for too long, eyes clouding with a sensation so unfamiliar that it took a moment for her to decipher it. Tears.

Pull it together, Randi!

She forced her left brain back into gear and calculated that she had only one round remaining. Options for survival were limited—but limited wasn’t the same thing as nonexistent.

First order of business was to get Smith’s gun—he still had a full clip. With his body stacked on top of de Galdiano’s they would make a functional shield that she could drag along with her to the shattered windows. The building’s facade was too featureless to climb, but it was possible she could shoot out the windows of the floor below and swing down.

Even if all that worked, her chances of getting out of the building alive were still slim. At least it would be a running fight, though. A hell of a lot better than lying around waiting to catch a bullet.

She felt uncharacteristically sluggish as she moved forward. It was easy to ignore the burning wounds in her back, but ignoring the image of Smith lying so still in front of her was less so. She’d lost friends and team members before. Why did this feel so different?

The steel behind her took another hit from the big-caliber weapon security had found and a pile of soccer balls in front of her burst and scattered around the room. The sudden chaotic motion created the illusion of Smith’s head moving. Or maybe it wasn’t the soccer balls at all—maybe she was just seeing what she wanted to see. Randi blinked hard, trying to clear her vision. Her mind wasn’t normally prone to playing tricks and now wasn’t the time for it to start.