Chapter 18: Room Service

The shots came through the door before the voice finished the word service.

Declan hit me in the ribs with his whole body and we went down behind the bed.

Plaster dust rained on my hair.

The door burst inward, and a man in a hotel uniform stepped through it with a pistol held out in both hands.

"Stay down," Declan said, and fired twice from the floor.

The man's gun went off again, and Declan jerked sideways with a grunt.

A red stain spread across his left shoulder.

A second man came in behind the first, in a grey coat, looking for the bed.

Feet apart, I thought.

Elbows soft.

I stood up from behind the mattress with the pistol in both hands and breathed out.

I shot the man in the grey coat through the thigh.

He folded onto the carpet, screaming, and the gun skidded out of his hand and under the dresser.

The first man had stopped moving.

Then the stairwell door banged, and Declan's captain with the hearing aid ran in with four men and a shotgun.

One of them kicked the screaming man quiet.

"Ma'am," the captain said, staring at me. "That was the finest shooting I've seen in this country."

"He's bleeding," I said.

Declan was sitting against the bed frame with his hand pressed on his shoulder.

"It's through and through," he said, in a voice that tried to be calm. "It looks worse than it is."

"You're white."

"I'm Irish."

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