I managed to raise my head long enough to identify Deadly Ninja Guy of the Three Stooges. He hadn’t changed much since he and his cohorts had broken into my apartment the other morning. “Mr. Chao,” I said, utterly surprised. “How did you guys find me?”

“Mr. Chao and I traded numbers a while back when I busted him tailing you,” Garrett said, struggling with the ropes. He gave up and brought out a wicked-looking knife.

“You mean, when you were tailing me, too?”

“Yeah. He’d been tailing you for days.”

“Mr. Chao,” I said, my voice admonishing. “I do have a nice ass, though, huh?”

“Should we go after him?” Mr. Chao asked, a soft Cantonese accent flowing from his tongue.

Garrett cut me free, and I fell forward into his arms like a ragdoll. “Where the hell did my bones go?” I asked. This whole upright thing had me stumped.

“You and your buddy can,” Garrett said, answering Chao. My question had been fairly rhetorical anyway.

I looked up to see Frank Smith, Mr. Chao’s boss, his charcoal suit impeccable. He had a grin on his face, as though he lived for such events.

“I just want to get Charles to safety,” Garrett continued.

“You wearing your Juicy underwear?” Smith asked, clearly humored.

“How did you find me?”

Smith gestured with a nod. “Mr. Chao noticed two men loading something large into their trunk in the alley behind your apartment building.”

“Large?” I asked, suddenly offended.

“He called me,” Garrett said, trying to help me stand, “to come check out your apartment while he followed the vehicle, just in case. Sure enough, you weren’t home.”

“By the time we figured out they had kidnapped you, Mr. Chao had called me as well, and we all met behind that hill over there.” Smith pointed out the shattered window. All I saw was a stark brightness.

“The cops are on their way,” Garrett added.

“Charley,” Angel said with a startled voice, a split second before a shower of bullets rained down on us.

* * *

Garrett shoved me to the ground behind a rather disgusting mattress and box spring, and both the other men took a dive as well. The sound was bizarre. Gunfire from a fully automatic weapon echoed and zinged around us as bullet after bullet punctured the Sheetrock, the paltry furniture, and dinged against the ancient sink. Then it stopped for what I assumed was a reloading. Mr. Chao grunted in pain. He’d been shot, but I couldn’t tell how bad.

“We have to get help,” I said to Garrett as I tried to stand.

“Charley, damn it.” He jerked me back down behind the broken and rusted bed. “We have to figure out what to do first.”

“We could, I don’t know, take Mr. Chao and get the f**k outta Dodge.” The spike in adrenaline must have de-fuzzed my tongue. I was suddenly having no problem articulating my opinion.

Garrett wasn’t even paying attention to me. For real? We were pulling this shit again? “If we wait it out, the cops will be here any minute,” he said.

“If we grab Mr. Chao and head for that back window, we could get the f**k outta Dodge and wait for the cops out there.”

Another round of gunfire blared around us. “Son of a bitch,” Garrett said as bullets ricocheted in every direction. “Who the f**k is that, anyway?”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that he told me his name. It’s Let’s-Get-the-Fuck-Outta-Dodge Redenbacher.”

“Here, take this.” He reached behind his back.

“Is it a get-the-fuck-outta-Dodge-free card?”

He placed a small pistol in the palm of my left hand.

“Dude, I’m totally a righty.”

“Charley,” he said, exasperation filling his voice.

“I’m just sayin’.”

“You stay here,” he ordered. He climbed onto his knees, apparently readying himself to do something heroic.

The first bullet that found its mark inside Garrett’s body sent me into a state of shock. The world slowed as the sound of metal meeting flesh hit my ears. He stared at me, his face a mask of disbelief. When a second bullet convulsed through him, he looked down at his side, trying to find the entry point. By the time the third bullet hit him, I knew what I had to do.

As a line of rounds paraded across the wall behind us, the gunman’s spray stopped and reversed, careening back in my direction as he did a standard sweep pattern.

So, I climbed to my feet, locked my knees, and waited.

Garrett collapsed against the wall, his jaw clenched in agony as each incoming round ripped chunks of Sheetrock out of the threadbare walls, ricocheted against the metal sink, and slashed through the rickety furniture as though it were paper. The room looked like the hapless victim of a Friday-night pillow fight.

Where was a son of Satan when you needed one? Maybe he was still mad at me. Maybe he wouldn’t be there this time—he didn’t show up when the parolee intent on cutting out my heart attacked, a first—but it was a risk I was willing to take, for Garrett.

I waited for one of two things to happen. I would either be shot dead right then and there, or Reyes would come. He would save the day. Again. And all of this, all the noise and chaos, would end. I felt the concussion of gunfire ripple over my skin, the heat of an object moving faster than the speed of sound vibrate along my nerve endings.

I closed my eyes and whispered softly, unable to hear myself over the gunfire. “Rey’aziel, I summon you.”