“There,” she said, setting the gun down. “I think he’s dead.”

A moment later, Marcus’s mouth was on hers, their shuffling feet scattering the spent cartridges as he took her up against the back wall.

The sex was brief, and rough, her nails leaving lines beneath his shirt, but Marcella’s attention kept sliding past her husband to the ruined target, hanging like a shadow at his back.

Marcella didn’t shoot any more that night. But she went back to the range alone, week after week, until her aim was perfect.

VII

THREE WEEKS AGO

VIII

THE HEIGHTS

THE elevator doors opened, and Marcella stepped out, one hand resting on the gun inside her bag. Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a man walking casually toward her. He looked innocuous enough, dressed in a pullover and slacks, but black combat boots showed beneath the hems.

“Marcella Riggins?” he asked, continuing his slow advance.

She turned toward him. “Do I know you?”

“No, ma’am,” he said with a smile. “But I was hoping we could talk.”

“About what?” she asked.

His smile stiffened, set. “About what happened the other night.”

“What happened . . .” she echoed, as if wracking her memory. “Do you mean when my husband tried to burn our house down around me?

Or when I melted his face off with my bare hands?”

The man’s expression stayed steady, even. His steps slowed, but didn’t stop, each stride closing the gap between them.

“I think you should stay there . . .” Marcella drew the gun from her bag, not all the way, just enough to let him see the chrome polish along the back of the barrel.

“Come on, now,” he said, lifting his hands as if she were a wild animal, something to be corralled. “You don’t want to make a scene.”

Marcella tipped her head. “What makes you think that?”

She swung the gun up and fired.

Her first shot took the man in the knee.

He gasped, buckled, and before he could even reach for the weapon holstered at his ankle, she fired a second shot into his head.

He collapsed, blood staining the runner.

She heard the steps behind her too late, and turned in time to see a dark figure, a soldier, armored head to toe in black tactical gear.

Turned in time to see the arc of electricity leap from the end of a baton with a static hiss. Marcella’s hand shot up and caught the weapon just as it skimmed her shoulder. Pain tore through her, sudden and bright, but Marcella tightened her grip, fingers flaring red. The strange light wrapped up over her wrist, a perfect mirror of the rot spreading through the instrument, then the hand holding it.