Moments ago, she’d been angry and filled with the bravado such anger generates. She’d threatened, the volume of her voice kept low, the intensity high-pitched.
Now, she saw it. It was a revolver. Not a big one. There was a toylike quality to it.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, her voice cracking, a tentative laugh behind the words indicating the fear that gripped her body. “No, please, don’t do this. We can …”
The gun was thrust forward, its short barrel ramming sufficiently hard into the softness of her belly to move her back a step.
“Oh, no.”
She saw the finger squeeze the trigger. Her flesh muffled the report. The bullet penetrated her, taking with it muscle and nerve, bone and skin. It tore through her back, slower and wider than when it had entered.
She was driven backward, her beautiful eyes open wide and fixed on the last sight they would ever see, the face of her murderer.