The Malibu’s window was already rolled down and the driver, a young Hispanic male, was waiting for him. He could see the kid was trying to decide whether to speak in English or Spanish.

“Lo siento, yo no pensaba que iba a alta velocidad,” the kid said. Sorry, I didn’t know I was going that fast. “Ni siquiera te vi allí”—I didn’t even see you there—he added, glancing to his passenger, who was a young female in thick, nerdy glasses. She was terrified, staring straight ahead, and might not have been half bad-looking without the glasses. They both looked like they went to UTEP or University of Texas Permian Basin. Johnnie smiled big, one of the good guys just doing his duty, letting them know it was no big deal at all.

“Oh, you weren’t speeding, and you weren’t supposed to see me hidden back there. Hell, I was betting on that,” he said, still all smiles. If the kid was nervous, or even suspicious, and paying close attention to Johnnie’s movements in case the whole thing was about to go bad, his eyes were focused on the wrong thing: Johnnie’s hand hovering over his duty Glock.

Not the smaller throw-down Smith & Wesson that Johnnie had been hiding down low against his leg, pressed against his jeans.

The kid probably never even saw it.

Johnnie brought it up in one quick, smooth motion, firing eight rounds—seven plus one, until the slide locked back—right down into the open window, right into the kid’s face, right through the girl’s glasses. Thick, fresh blood fantailed all over the windshield, and the two of them bucked up and down and made some sort of awful noises or cries and grabbed for each other, before falling in an ugly pile and going very, very still.

It was a goddamn mess.

Johnnie took a long, deep breath, listening to the engine of the idling car and searching the stretch of road for other headlights, before tossing the tape-handled Smith & Wesson into the window with the bodies.

He stood for a moment longer, chewing the matchstick, looking at all the blood.