The world narrowed to a single, impossible equation. Two guns. One pointed at me. The other, a 12 gauge shotgun, pressed into the spine of my partner. My own pistol was still holstered. A losing hand. Any move I made, she died. The math was simple, brutal, and absolute.

  I cursed internally, a silent, vicious stream of self recrimination. You got sloppy. You walked into a crime scene that was still hot, and you got sloppy. You focused on the victim, not the perimeter. Now look. Now look what you did.

  Slowly, deliberately, I let my hand fall away from my pistol. The motion was a surrender, an admission of defeat that felt like swallowing broken glass. I kept my palms open, away from my body, the universal sign for ‘I am not a threat’. It was a lie. I was the most dangerous fucking person here. They just didn't know it yet.

  The man with the scabbed face, the one from the diner, remained completely oblivious to the silent tactical battle playing out. His entire focus, what little of it his drug addled brain could muster, was on the grieving wreck at my feet.

  “What do you mean they are dead?” Jonathan asked, his voice trembling with a desperate, childlike disbelief. His eyes darted wildly between me and the blood soaked interior of the ambulance, searching for a different answer. “They’re fine! We just need to get them to the hospital!”

  The man finally looked up from Jonathan’s misery. An evil, predatory grin crept across his face, pulling at the sores on his cheeks. “Well, pig? You going to answer him? Tell him how his whole family is riddled with bullets, right Monica.” He jeered, his voice a wet, gravelly thing that grated on the ear.

  The woman beside him, burst into a cackling laugh. It was a sound like nails on a chalkboard, high and thin and utterly devoid of humor. It was the sound of a predator enjoying its prey’s suffering.

  I looked down at Jonathan, at the fragile, flickering hope still trying to live in his eyes. Damn it.

  “I’m sorry, Jonathan. They are dead.” The words felt like shards of glass as they left my mouth. I watched them shatter the last of his world. Grief washed over him like a storm surge, a physical force that crashed him to the ground as the last of the life drained from his eyes. He finally believed me.

  “No!” Jonathan’s anguished cry pierced the air. His sobs, raw and ragged, only seemed to fuel the couple’s twisted enjoyment.

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  “Look, Monica! Fresh ammo to resupply and ooh, a shiny new toy.” Roy eyed the magazines strapped across my chest and the rifle slung on my back. His gaze was filled with a greedy, predatory hunger that had nothing to do with survival and everything to do with taking what was not his.

  “Hurry up and kill him, Roy! Having two cops alive makes me nervous!” Monica hissed, her finger twitching on the trigger of the shotgun.

  Okay, new plan. She was the primary threat. Shotgun, ten feet away, pointed at Kira. Roy was secondary, but he was unpredictable. A meth head. Jumpy. I couldn't spook him. I had to separate them. I had to create an opening, any opening.

  “Wait,” I called out, my mind racing. “I have more ammo and seized drugs in the trunk of my vehicle. But it can only be accessed by my fingerprint.”

  It was dumbass action movie bullshit. The kind of line a hero says before doing something impossibly cool. But they were junkies. They might just be dumb enough, desperate enough, to buy it. It was all I had.

  Roy’s eyes ignited at the mention of drugs. He raised his gun, the muzzle a cold, dark circle, and pressed it to my head. “Thanks for the information. I’ll just kill you and take the drugs.”

  Shit. Bad gamble. A cold dread washed over me as I saw his finger tighten on the trigger.

  “Stop, idiot!” Monica snapped. She twisted her head to scold him, the shotgun still leveled at Kira. “Do you want to drag his body to the vehicle and lift him up to use the fingerprint scanner?”

  Roy paused, his face contorting with confusion as he wrestled with the simple logistics. The muscles in his jaw worked, his drug addled brain trying and failing to solve the puzzle. “No,” he grumbled finally.

  Fuck yes. Listen to Monica, you idiot.

  “Exactly,” Monica shot back, turning her predatory gaze from Roy to Kira. “But we only need one little piggy to access the goodies.”

  Fuck. don't listen to Monica, you idiot.

  Roy’s eyes roamed up and down Kira’s uniformed form, filled with a grotesque, inhuman hunger that had nothing to do with drugs and everything to do with power. He licked his lips, his voice a low slur. “I want to make this one squeal a little before getting rid of her.”

  The world went quiet. The crackle of the burning cars faded into a dull, distant roar. All I could hear was the blood pounding in my ears, a thick, heavy drumbeat against my eardrums. My muscles coiled, and my body took a single, involuntary step forward.

  I am going to kill you. The thought was not a thought. It was a promise, cold and absolute, forged in the sudden, silent inferno of my rage. I am going to take you apart, piece by disgusting fucking piece.

  “Stop, cop, or I’ll put her down now.” Monica’s voice was a shard of ice in the heat of my rage. Her sinister smile, a thin slash in her gaunt face, told me she knew she had me. She had found my leash.

  My eyes snapped to the shotgun, to her finger resting on the trigger. The rage didn't vanish. It was forced back, caged behind the cold, hard bars of tactical reality. She shot a glance at Roy. “Disarm him. If he moves, I blast her.”