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  “If I’ve bumped you, then pardon this.” Beanpole put a hand on his shoulder and used it to push himself up. The other man practically writhed in pain.

  Kristen watched the entire pathetic spectacle. She didn’t think she’d seen anyone so sore since Brian had tried out for the football team in ninth grade.

  “Are you as beat as us?” Keith asked her once he had his whining under control.

  “Not really, no. But I guess you have to be shot for it to hurt, right?”

  Butters laughed at that. Keith and Beanpole smiled indulgently at her, but either they didn’t have the energy to laugh or they simply didn’t find her overwhelming victory very funny.

  Sergeant Drew entered the lounge, frowned at the grown men on the couch, and grabbed a donut. “What the hell happened to all of you?”

  She raised an eyebrow at the team, eager to hear how they’d spin this one.

  “Rough night,” Keith managed as if that explained anything.

  “Did you have a good time at the airsoft course?” Their leader appraised their welts and bruises. “Were other cops playing too or something?”

  “We definitely faced a cop.” Butters glanced at Kristen.

  “You should’ve seen these fuckers.” Jonesy burst into the room, his grin wider than she had ever imagined was possible. He swooped in front of Beanpole, who still hadn’t managed to hobble to the pot of coffee despite it being literally across the room.

  “Is this your work, then?” Drew asked.

  “Ha! I wish.” Jonesy fixed his coffee languidly while Beanpole tried to get past him.

  “Pardon me,” the tall man said.

  “Just a moment, my man.” Jonesy slapped his teammate on the back in what might have passed as a friendly gesture if the man hadn’t gasped as if he’d been stabbed.

  His reaction seemed to be what the sergeant had wanted as he stepped out of the way of the coffee maker and leaned against the counter to grin at his boss. “These three numbskulls tried to triple-team Red. It was fucking epic. She fed them their asses on a goddamn silver plate.”

  “Is that right?” Drew looked impressed.

  “I wouldn’t put it that way,” Beanpole hedged.

  “She’s played before,” Keith protested.

  “We were beat pretty bad, yes,” Butters admitted.

  “She strung them along like fish on a line.” Jonesy laughed. “It was like watching Wonder Woman—no, wait, more like Captain USA or whoever the fucker it is with the shield. She picked up this pallet and pop, pop, pop.” He mimed using a shield to block gunshots. “It was fucking wicked.”

  “She was with you and Hernandez, then?” The leader’s eyes didn’t leave Kristen. He seemed to be appraising her.

  “No fucking way. Hernandez blew shit up in the first round and was DQ’d. She’s probably gonna be pissed about that today, by the way. Anyway, me and her sat the second round out. It was literally Red—fresh out of the academy, first week on the force, look-at-my-beautiful-fucking-hair Red—versus three of Detroit’s finest. Well, two of its finest plus the fucking rookie.”

  “I’m not the rookie.” Keith protested, but his heart wasn’t in it. Last night had proven he still had far too much to learn.

  “She peppered them more than Butterball’s famous white gravy.” Jonesy laughed.

  “There is such a thing as too much pepper, by the way,” the sniper added.

  “I’m surprised you got them all so bad,” Drew said, but he didn’t look surprised. He looked impressed.

  Kristen tried not to let herself smile too broadly. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Are you paying for it in bruises today?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Not really. I was only hit once.”

  “Yeah, but the day after my first time playing airsoft, I felt like someone had remodeled my thighs with ice cream scoops,” Butters said.

  “Eh, I do squats and all that every day. My legs are fine.”

  “Plus, you were diving around. Aren’t you bruised?” Keith asked.

  It was as if the memory of her dodging him and getting back on her feet flitted across his face like a replay. It was a different dynamic but a satisfying one—to be in the station and see these people’s work faces and yet know she’d whooped them all in a sport they had far more experience in.

  Kristen took a sip of coffee. “I heal quickly.”

  “You don’t seem to have a mark on you,” Drew said.

  “I don’t. I took a shower, had some sleep, and I’m as good as new.”

  “That’s good. But I guess we haven’t pushed the training hard enough. Today, we’ll—” He fell silent when the radio on his shoulder blared to life.

  “We have a ten-forty-five in progress at a pawn shop. Three hostiles and four civilians reported. One officer is down.”

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  The radio operator gave him the directions.

  “We’re on it, but isn’t someone else closer?”

  “They have firepower beyond what the police are equipped to handle. The building is locked down and officers are maintaining a perimeter until SWAT arrives.” The radio crackled.

  “On our way,” Drew said. Jonesy was already running to the parking lot.

  Keith and Beanpole dragged Butters to his feet. The three men groaned as they did so but not one of them complained.

  “I hope you’ll do as well with real guns as you did with toys last night because you’re coming too,” their leader said to Kristen.

  She nodded. Her confidence from the night before had evaporated like a cup of lemonade spilled on a sidewalk in July.

  They hurried through the station toward the parking lot to find Jonesy and Hernandez already there and suited up.

  “Get the fuck in,” he said.

  “Everyone, armor up. Even you, Butters,” Drew ordered. “Apparently, the hostiles have heavy-duty artillery. I want helmets on the whole time unless your eye is pressed against a scope.”

  Kristen snatched a bulletproof vest up.

  “Dress as we drive. We have potential hostages.” The team leader climbed into the passenger seat in the front of the van.

  “There’s no time to make yourself pretty, Red.” Jonesy took the driver’s seat.

  She ignored him and climbed into the back of the SWAT van with Keith, Hernandez, Beanpole, and Butters. This one was in noticeably better shape than the decommissioned vehicle the team had used the night before.

  The tires screeched and they lurched into motion before she’d had time to buckle up. She barely managed to snap the clip in place and avoid being hurled off the seat. Safely strapped in, she heaved a breath. They were on their way.

  “Are you all right?” Butters asked as soon as they’d cleared the parking garage.

  Kristen shook her head, then nodded. “I’m fine,” she blurted.

  “You don’t look fine. You look chicken-shit scared,” Hernandez said as if they were about to go on a particularly exhilarating rollercoaster ride rather than face people who would try to kill them with advanced weaponry.

  “Do you really think that’s appropriate right now?” Beanpole asked as they jolted over a bump.

  “There’s nothing wrong with being scared.” The woman made herself sound casual. “I was scared my first time out—so scared I nearly pissed myself. That reminds me, Kristen, did you use the potty before we left?”

  “Oh, hush,” Butters said.

  “I’m fine. This is what we’ve trained for,” Kristen said.

  “A good point.” She loved Butters. Despite only knowing him for a week, he always seemed to have her back.

  That was a welcome change from Hernandez, who seemed determined to get into her head. “Yeah, but we trained in an empty building, not a pawnshop. There might be a perp waiting in there with a chainsaw.”

  “Girl, hush.” The sniper huffed his irritation.

  “Don’t listen to her. They’ll have guns, exactly like they always do,” Beanpole said as i
f that was supposed to make her feel any better.

  “I remember my first time,” Keith ventured.

  “When was that exactly—last week?” she quipped.

  “No, not that. Last year. I had been on the force for about two weeks.”

  “Oh, so we’re not talking about sex?” the woman yelled over the screech of the van’s tires as they took a turn.

  He turned bright red, which inevitably made Kristen wonder what exactly Hernandez was referring to.

  Kristen wanted to learn how to channel the demolition expert’s energy. Despite them being moments away from armed combat, she looked calm and in control. Although maybe she could learn to be that way without putting everyone else on edge.

  Keith looked distinctly uncomfortable, but like her, he seemed to try to force himself to stay calm. “It was a liquor store hold-up. The hostile had a shotgun. You’ll never guess the value of the whiskey this guy blew to pieces.”

  “A tragedy.” Butters nodded.

  “I didn’t get hit, though. I managed to dodge a shot and the guy’s gun jammed. That was plain luck. I bashed his head in with a liquor bottle.”

  The sniper chuckled at the story. “The mountain of paperwork on that one.”

  “What about your first time?” Kristen asked Butters. She hoped the man’s sense of calm would also apply to combat stories.

  “Now there was a lesson to be learned there,” he started to reply. But before he could begin the actual story, the van squealed to a halt and Jonesy yanked the back door open and yelled at everyone to get in position.

  “Places, people—on the double!”

  For a moment, Kristen thought Jonesy and Drew had set this all up as some kind of elaborate drill. When everyone poured from the van like ants, though, she knew this was the real deal.

  They were parked in the back of a strip mall’s parking lot. Housed within were the typical businesses of low-income neighborhoods—liquor store, dollar store, a payday loans place with barred windows, a pawnshop at the end, also with barred windows, and a row of bicycles with a chain threaded through their wheels.

  Butters and Beanpole immediately jogged away from the pawnshop. It occurred to her that they were panicking like she was, but then she remembered—duh—that one was their best sniper and the other his spotter and they would obviously move to higher ground—presumably on the roof of the fast-food burger joint across the street.

  “Hernandez, I want you at the door. It’s plate glass, so they’ll see us coming. We’ll need a plan for that. Keith, you have my back,” Drew ordered.

  “Where should I go?” Kristen asked, but that only earned a glare from him.

  “Jonesy, take Kristen around back. See if there’s another exit and check if they have a getaway vehicle. I don’t want any heroes, you understand? You find an unlocked door, you let me know. Take it slow, everyone. I’m not sure what kind of firepower they have in there, but we know it's big, whatever it is.”

  As if those inside had listened to his orders, gunfire erupted from the pawnshop. In less than a minute, a hail of bullets had obliterated the front of the store and the police car the Detroit Police Department had left parked there.

  Kristen was amazed at how well the gun disassembled the barriers in front of it. In one moment, there was a plate glass window and in the next, it was full of holes. Spiderweb fractures raced out from the punctures before it all shattered and fell in a spectacular shower of glass.

  A part of her doubted the criminals’ wisdom in destroying this wall of glass, but there were two reasons this wasn’t the tactical blunder she first thought. The first was that bars still blocked the entrance across the front of the store, where the glass had been only moments before. The second was what happened to the police car.

  She would later be unable to describe the destruction of the vehicle without using the words ‘chewed up.’ To her, it looked like the car was simply devoured by bullets. Its wheels deflated and paint and glass flecked away in a fountain of destruction. One of the bullets found a home in the engine as well and steam began to spray from the now-demolished vehicle.

  Its utterly wrecked state seemed to suggest that it should, by rights, have exploded.

  “Consider that your warning to not go inside. These guys are packing heavy heat,” Drew said and nodded for them to go around the back.

  Jonesy nodded impassively as if he’d been sent for water refills instead of possibly to his death. Kristen nodded as well, but she was shaking. Suddenly, her bulletproof vest seemed less than adequate. She tightened the strap holding her helmet on and jogged after Jonesy.

  They hurried around to the back of the strip mall—fortunately, the pawnshop was on the end—and only then did her companion stop.

  “That’s a baby-blue mint condition 1971 Dodge Charger parked out back,” he said.

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Do you know who would rob a pawn shop with a mint condition Charger?”

  “Someone who’s not trying to steal much big stuff?”

  “The Breaks.”

  “Who?”

  “A local street gang. They mostly boost cars, tear ʼem to pieces, and sell the parts. Last time I heard, the Breaks didn’t have weapons like what these fuckers have.”

  “Yeah, well, last time I checked, they actually obliterated the front of a building. Should we check the door and tell Drew about the car?”

  He nodded and approached the door, hugging the wall of the back of the pawnshop. Fortunately, there was no plate glass there, only good ol’ one-hundred-percent opaque brick.

  As they edged forward, her teammate turned his radio on.

  “Drew, we have a fucking mint baby-blue Charger back here so it’s probably the Breaks inside. We’re checking the back door now.”

  He inched his hand toward the back door to the pawnshop. To both his and Kristen’s surprise, the handle turned.

  It wasn’t locked, not even from the inside.

  “Drew, the hen house is not secured,” he said into his radio. There was no response, only static. “Drew?”

  Jonesy took his radio from his shoulder and smacked it with his hand. Obviously, he wasn’t an engineer. He seemed to know this as well and when his plan to simply thump the technology didn’t work, he turned to her and told her to try her radio instead.

  Hers didn’t work either.

  “Something’s jamming the system?” she asked, as weird as it sounded. Criminals jamming radio signals was not something they ever touched on in police academy.

  “We’re on our own here.” Jonesy smiled. He didn’t look half as nervous as she felt.

  “Should we go out front?” she asked and immediately wanted to kick herself for sounding like a coward.

  Fortunately—or unfortunately depending on one’s perspective—he didn’t pick up on her fear.

  “No way, Red. We have an unlocked back door. What we do is wait for the next round of assault rifle fire, the sound of breaking glass, and we go in. They’re obviously focused on the front.”

  “But what if one of them is back here?”

  “Then we eliminate the fucker. This is the Breaks we’re talking about. If we were driving, I’d advise caution, but these assholes don’t know a firecracker from a firefight. I don’t know where they got these guns, but there ain’t no fucking way that whoever gave them the arsenal trained them on how to use it properly.”

  More gunfire erupted from inside the building. Jonesy glanced at her. “Are we ready?”

  “No!”

  He ignored her and flung the door open, waited for a heartbeat, and stepped into the opening with his shotgun raised.

  She regretted that she only carried a pistol, but she followed him all the same.

  It took a moment for her to adjust from the bright sunlight and drab tan paint of the outside of the pawnshop to the dim fluorescents and crowded space of the interior.

  They were on the other side of a freight door that opened into the back of the showroom—or what
ever the hell one called the makeshift corridors made by shelves crammed with guitar amps, yard equipment, TVs, and microwave ovens. From their position, they could see out the damaged front of the shop but didn’t have visuals on any hostiles.

  Her teammate motioned for her to stand beside him so that when they reached the end of the little aisle they were in, they could look in both directions and cover each other. Kristen—extremely pleased with herself for reviewing the SWAT operations manuals and therefore able to understand his hand signals—moved into position. Her training and the fact that they weren’t under fire yet both helped her to feel a little calmer.

  She was still definitely freaking out but was now maybe at a nine thousand, five hundred percent level instead of her earlier ten thousand.

  More gunfire erupted. Inside the pawnshop, it was deafeningly loud but also confirmed that the hostiles had absolutely no idea that the two of them had infiltrated the building from the rear.

  Their advantage was short-lived, however. One of the gang members spun into the front of the aisle that the two used to sneak forward and leveled a massive handgun at Jonesy.

  Kristen didn’t have time to think, only to act. She felt a wave of protectiveness wash over her—this was her partner, her mentor, and maybe even her newest friend—and she body-checked him into a shelf.

  “Damnit, Red!” he said as he bounced into the shelves and fell.

  The hostile didn’t seem perturbed about missing his original target. He fired his cannon of a handgun into her chest instead.

  She fired her weapon and in the same moment, felt the force of the hostile’s bullet strike her in the chest and tumble her forcefully.

  A splash of blood confirmed that she’d hit her man, but one of the shelving racks sagged and overturned above the SWAT duo.

  Not that she really noticed. The bullet felt like a freight train had pounded into her lungs. It was hard to think, let alone breathe.

  “Cover your head, Red!” Jonesy shouted before he immediately disregarded his own directions and crawled on top of her. Instead of simply power tools and musical instruments falling on her, it was those plus him.

  The shelves themselves connected painfully with his back and he grunted at the collision.