my purse and yanking out my S&W .38.
Another gunshot. Half of the crowd still didn’t know what was happening, and stood around looking confused or oblivious. I peered through the sea of legs and spied the perp by the front door. He was white, thin, his face nearly as disheveled as his clothing. He had a semiautomatic in his hand—looked like a 9mm—and was waving it around without direction.
At his feet, the bouncer lay in a widening pool of blood.
“Looks homeless and whacked out on something. Nine mil. One person down that I can see.”
“I’ll flank him. Cover me.”
Harry scooted off to the right, heading for the far wall. I dug out my badge with my left hand.
“Stay down,” I told Latham. Then I stood up and raised my badge over my head.
“Police! Everybody get down!”
The people around me screamed, yelled, ran, panicked, and some actually listened. The rock music playing through the house speakers stopped. I slipped off my heels and drew a bead on the perp, who stared up at the ceiling with his mouth open.
“Drop the weapon!”
No response. I couldn’t tell if he even heard me. I glanced to the right but couldn’t see Harry with all of the people running around.
Three steps closer, right arm at full extension, left arm supporting it from underneath, my gun fully cocked. I aimed for his heart.
“Drop the weapon, sir!”
He might as well have been deaf. I closed the distance between us to less than fifteen feet. An easy shot. I didn’t have extra rounds, and I hoped six would be enough.
“This is your last warning, sir! Drop the weapon!”
He didn’t move. I had no other options.
Breathe in, breathe out,
squeeze, squeeze, squeeze
.
Three rounds, a tight grouping in the chest.
He staggered back, stared at me, raised his 9mm.
Harry’s cannon went off just as I fired my last three bullets.
I hit high, two in the shoulder and one in the neck.
Harry hit all over the place. His slugs were larger, faster, and ripped through the perp like stones through tissue paper.
The guy went down, hard. I moved in, kicked away his gun. There were cuffs in my purse, but I didn’t think I’d need them; he looked like chicken Parmesan with a slice of Swiss cheese on top.
I turned my attention to the fallen bouncer. Stomach wound. Pulse strong, but irregular. I heard sirens coming closer, looked around for something to stop the bleeding.
“Well, shit on my head and call me a toilet.”
Harry tapped me on the shoulder. He’d been removing the spent brass from his cylinder, and when I looked up at him he pointed forward with his chin.
The perp, our perp, was running out the front door.
I glanced at Harry. He shrugged.
We went after the guy.
I bolted out the door, barefoot, the heat pressing down on me. The blood trail went left, and I saw the shooter sprinting through traffic—a helluva lot faster than should have been possible.
Harry whistled. “Damn. You miss every shot?”
“I landed all six. How did you miss with a barrel that long?”
“All mine were sweet. That guy had more holes than a golf course.”
We jogged after him.
The pavement was hot underfoot, and little bits of rock and debris dug into my soles. For the first time in my life I was grateful for my ugly calluses.
“Jesus!” McGlade huffed next to me. “I’m not used to exercise in the vertical position.”
“Have another buffalo wing.”
The perp rounded the north entrance to Wrigley Field, bystanders giving him a wide berth. He was bleeding, but not as much as I would have guessed. Maybe the layers of filthy clothes were absorbing it all.
McGlade dropped a few paces behind me, lost to a coughing jag. I lengthened my stride. My dress clung to my legs, but the slit was big enough to give me room. I still had the gun in my right hand, where it was beginning to get heavy. With my left hand I tried to adjust my underwire, which dug painfully into my ribs.
I took a short detour to avoid a broken beer bottle, turned a
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