Gunshots never sound like gunshots; they sound small, like firecrackers. They don't sound real and that's the kicker. People are so conditioned to the booms of television gunfire, when they hear the real thing, they don't believe it.

Until they see the blood.

POP! POP!

Two more. Nowhere near her. He was just searching. Firing blindly through the wall. It reminded her of the old "You Sank My Battleship" game she and Teddy used to play. A-15 . . . miss . . . C-21 . . . hit! He had her pinned down and there was no reason to risk coming in after her, not when a lucky shot would do the job. But he didn't have all the time in the world. A restaurant that serves bullets fills up with cops fast.

POP! POP! POP!

Lucy had her back to the fridge. It was cold and solid and it made her feel safe, even if she wasn't.

He shouted to her from the nearby room. "You're not getting out of here. Ya gotta know that! You ain't getting past me!"

She wasn't so deaf that she didn't catch the "stupid bitch" trailing off at the end or the fact that he'd said "me" and not "us", which meant he was alone.

Say what you want about women, no one is more "gabby" than a common thug. They'd just as soon talk you to death as shoot you.

She blamed television, of course, where everyone died with a witty remark ringing in their ears.

Back in the old days, men were men, thugs were thugs, and either one might whap you upside the head with a meat mallet or shoot you in the face with a smile. But at least you died hard and quick and mean, and with dignity, if there was such a thing. The old killers weren't about torture with chainsaws or sticking your tongue up your dead asshole just to send some bizarre "message" through the mafioso gossip network. What the fuck was up with that?

Didn't killers have any pride anymore? Didn't any of them ever just stop and say, "You want me to stick his what in his what? Fuck no! I'm a killer not a bulletin board!"

Under her breath, she muttered, "Goddamit, Teddy. Where are you?"

To pass the time away, she counted bodies in her head. Four in the car. One dead near the door. The second dead on the sidewalk. The bullet could've clipped his collarbone, which meant he might still be alive. Shit like that could come back to haunt you. The third was almost certainly sneaking up the alleyway, trying to cut off her exit. She glued her eyes to the door, fixed them on a narrow stream of daylight leaking through the crack. Waiting. . . .

Last but not least, the asshole taunting her from the dining room. He was standing behind the checkout counter. She wasn't sure how she knew that, but the image was crystal clear in her mind.

POP! POP!

She assessed her environment.

Blue flames danced on the stove top. The hood vent filled the room with a roar like a jet plane. A large pot began to boil over onto the floor, a wok spewed hot garlic smoke out across the ceiling. A duck was quickly becoming charcoal in the oven. The stink of burning oil, onions and soy infiltrated her nostrils.

She would never eat Chinese again.

Her only two exits were cut off. If her would-be killers were smart, they were on their cells, planning a simultaneous entry. Her only hope was to stay low and use their crossfire against them, which meant she'd probably take a hit or two.

Goddammit . . . she didn't feel like getting shot today!

Small golden circles of light appeared on the cabinet doors before her. She followed the light up through an array of bright, narrow beams all sparkling with dust, up to the bullet holes in the opposing wall, through which Sunlight was flooding. It was so beautiful it almost made her cry.

She heard whimpering from the dining room. A handful of customers were still curled into fetal positions beneath their tables too afraid to move, their Kun Pao Chickens with side orders of dumplings congealing and growing cold.

"Trajectory."

She sighed when she saw him, her lifelong friend, her savior, his red bow tie loose around his neck looking like some ultra-cool, brat-pack crooner after a Vegas show, a cigarette dangling from one paw.

"Where the fuck have you been?" she whispered.

POP! POP! POP! POP!

She was showered with sheetrock and splitnered wood. There was a fresh bullet hole three inches from her ear. Fucker had shot through the fridge. She slumped down.

His voice was low and full of gravel. "I was busy."

"Busy doing what?"

Teddy raised a thick eyebrow, his normally sharp eyes full of hurt. "Thinking! I was trying to think of a way out of this mess YOU got us into!"

She glared at him, past the brown eyes, past the soft brown threadbare nose. He blanched as much as his corduroy complexion would allow.

"Okay, I was masturbating."

She sighed and slid further down until she was practically laying on the soy stained floor.

He defended himself before she could even gripe. "Hey, you think how you think and I'll think how I think!"

The light leaking the alleyway door flickered. It flickered again. It went out. Someone was there. With people screaming in the streets, sirens in the distance and gunshots in the dining area, no normal person would dare get so close. It was either a cop or a killer. She was betting on the latter.

She put one high and one low.

Whoever was behind the door let out a moan and went down. Hard, by the sound of it. Skull on concrete hard. She had her exit. She crawled towards it. She wrapped her hand around the knob and started to twist.

POP! POP!

Two shots punched through the door. The next thing she knew, there was blood. It took a second to realize she'd been hit, and that was only because her arm was leaking. There was no pain yet; there wouldn't be. Just shock. But it was gonna hurt like hell in the morning.

"Shit!" She pulled a dish towel from the counter top and wrapped it around her arm, clenched one corner in her teeth and pulled it as tight as she could manage. She could see the fucker in her mind's eye, too hurt to come through the door, but not too hurt to park himself in the alley and wait.

She was cut off until he bled out, and with her luck the fucker was probably a slow bleeder.

She had an urge to put a few more rounds through the door, fire blindly at him like his buddy was at her. She checked the clip; it was almost empty. She couldn't afford it.

"Anyway," Teddy continued, grinning; there was fire in his eyes, "like I was saying. Trajectory."

Her friend from the other room spoke up. "You stupid fucking bitch! Don't make me come in there after you or you'll be fucking sorry!"

The fear in his voice made her grin despite herself. She looked over at Teddy and they shared a moment. She was seven again, prone to giggling, fighting off stepfathers and "uncles", foster parents and psychopaths, sharing secrets with Teddy. It was an I-know-what-you're-thinking moment.

POP! POP!

From the dining room again.

Bullets punched through the wall, shook it like an earthquake. New showers of sheet rock rained down upn her, but this time something went wrong. Well . . . wronger. It was bad. It was nails-in-the-coffin bad. A tiny particle of dust lit down in the white ofher eye. She felt it and shivered. It was always the small things that killed you. Like bullets. She was now half blind. She groaned and began to fish around her eye socket with the tip of her finger, pulling first on the top eyelid, then the bottom.

"You're doing it wrong," Teddy complained. "You're supposed to pull your bottom lid up over–"

"I know how to fucking do it!"

POP! POP! POP! POP!

The sound of a clip clattered to the floor in the next room. He was reloading. She repositioned herself, quietly.

But the good news was her friend in the alley had become gratefully silent.

She rubbed her eye.

"Don't scratch your cornet!" Teddy warned.

"It's cornea, okay? It's fucking cornea!"

She'd said that aloud. Very aloud. Loud aloud! There was a surreal, even serene moment of deafening silence. Then the slap of a hand on the bottom of a clip and the familiar chk-it! of a bullet being chambered.

She was in trouble and she knew it. She'd given her position away.

Teddy's words burst out in a mad rush. "The sunlightcoming throughthe walls, lookit the sunlightcoming! Trajectory! It's all about fucking trajectory!"

Lucy shook her head, dumbfounded.

Teddy sighed. "You got a laser on that thing?"

She looked up at the ceiling at the red dot from the laser sight of her pistol.

POP! POP! POP!

Sheetrock and splintering wood. Choking dust. Sparkling sunbeams flowing through fresh bullet holes. The asshole was giving his position away and he didn't even know it.

"You're a smart little bear, aren't you?

Teddy leveled her with a sober glare. "Ya think?"

He'd wanted to be known as Bob the Butcher, but got pegged with Bobby Boy instead. Never had anyone been so disappointed by a nickname. He complained about it, of course, whined, pleaded, cajoled, but he was Bobby Boy and there was no going back.

This was only his third official assignment as a made man and it had gone to shit in no time. Mike and Val were down. He'd gone through the front while Tony made his way around back, and now he was down. The word, "Fuck!" and the sound of gunfire squawked in Bobby Boy's ears before Tony's cell phone cut out.

He squinted, seeing if he could spot any movement through the bullet holes he'd just put in the wall, but they were too small.

He could hear her sliding across the floor and then her thin voice, "Hey, Pencil Dick, was that your friend back there? Because I just put two in his head."

Rage ran through him like a bull. He stood up and had nearly emptied the clip before he could stop himself. He wasn't sure how many shots he had left, but in the quiet he heard the slump of her body as it slid to the floor.

He wasn't sure whether to be excited or relieved. Everybody had been giving him the fucking Surgeon General's warning about this bitch, about how dangerous she was to one's health, and hell, she was . . . but he had just taken her out! He suppressed a chuckle. He'd nailed her. Yeah, maybe the others were dead, but now so was she. And it was him, Bobby Boy, or rather, Bob the Butcher, who'd done it. Maybe he'd finally get his Goddamned nickname straightened out.

He stood and was about to move toward the kitchen door when a funny little red light caught his eye. He traced it to a bullet hole, squinted at it for half a second before his heart sank.

His body wouldn't move! It was frozen! And when it finally began to obey, it was much too slow.

POP! POP! POP!

He was only just now forcing his body down, but it was too late. He felt three little taps on his chest and neck.

Then he was sprawled on the floor and listening to the dull intimate sound of his own wheezing, escaping breath. His pulse hammered in his ear and he felt something warm and wet on his skin, matting his chest hair and soaking the Italian silk of his shirt.

Spots on his chest and neck burned like infected ant bites. There was the sickening familiar sensation of blood leaking from his body.

He was in shock. His mind raced, half of it screaming WHAT HAPPENED!?; the other half whispering quietly, You're fucked. You're so fucking fucked!

The door to the kitchen scraped open. He heard the scatter of glass across the floor, the crunch of glass under her boots. Somewhere a customer whimpered softly beneath a table.

A red dot appeared on the floor in front of him. He managed to lift his head, managed to finally get a good look at her. Goddamn, she was pretty. Jet black hair cut into sharp bangs, pale complexion, red lips, her skin, soft and inviting. She was younger than he figured, cute, but with something sinister lurking behind the eyes. He'd seen eyes like that before. Fixers. Hatchet men. Men who did things that no one else could are wanted to do. It chilled him, inside and out.

She wasn't smiling, she wasn't frowning, but she seemed satisfied, pleased with herself.

The pistol looked huge in her small hand.

"Sorry about calling you a pencil dick." Her voice was childish and sweet, but flat.

He wanted to laugh. He wanted to say, "No hard feelings," but he spit up a wet splat of blood instead.

She squatted beside him, planted her ass on her raised heels and balanced on the balls of her feet. "Are you scared? Do you want me to take care of you?"

"Who–" He was surprised he got it out. It was choked, full of blood and spittle and bile, but he managed it. "Who were you . . . t-talking to in there?"

"Oh!" She smiled, and looked like a child with the promise of ice cream. "That was just Teddy."

He nodded, though it made no sense.

She pressed the hot muzzle of her pistol against his temple. It was such a clean shot, his head hardly moved. For the briefest second, she thought she saw confusion in his eyes.

She was right.

In his confusion, in the last few disjointed thoughts his hemorrhaging brain could manage, he wondered about the teddy bear that waddled out from behind her pale lean legs, it's button black eyes glaring smugly down at him, it's voice impish and full of gravel. "Jesus . . . he's a fat one!"

Lucy giggled. "Yes, Teddy. He is."