Free Saint/Sinner by Sam Sisavath

wounds on him as he stepped in and out of the halo of lights, which meant he had survived Apollo unscathed. She just hoped the same was true for Apollo.
    For some reason, the Glock in her hand felt heavier now than when they first settled next to the window to wait for Jerry. The linen curtain that bookended her view of the front yard was very still and she wished she could open the window even just a crack to ventilate the stale air inside the house that made just breathing a chore, but that would have been a dead giveaway, and she needed Jerry to get close.
    Way, way closer than he currently was at the moment.
    Which was why she clenched her teeth when the bastard suddenly stopped about forty yards from the front porch.
    Closer, she thought, willing him to keep moving.
    But he didn’t. Instead, he went down on one knee and peered at the house.
    Had he spotted her hiding behind the window to the right of the front door? Could he make out the damaged door that she had closed back up as much as she could, using a metal shoe rack to lodge it (just barely) in place? Or had the moonlight given him an angle on her that she hadn’t accounted for or thought possible?
    Closer. Come just a little bit closer!
    Instead, he got up and started sideways, and she knew instantly he was going to try to go around the house and sneak up on them from the back. And if he did that, she’d have to reacquire him again, which would mean she would lose all the element of surprise—
    Dammit!
    She rocked backward and picked herself up from the floor, then scooted another couple of steps back from the window, lifted the Glock, and squeezed off a shot that shattered the glass, the gunshot booming inside the house.
    Jerry was running right even before the first piece of glass pelted the porch outside. Maybe he’d even seen her moving before she pulled the trigger and shot through the window. Either way, she didn’t wait to see if the first shot had hit him. She fired again, trying to track his movement. He was surprisingly fast for a man wearing all that gear.
    The ground where he had been standing erupted with dirt— another miss! —and the man was still on his feet, still moving impossibly quick—until finally he disappeared out of her field of vision before she could squeeze off a third shot.
    Allie stood up and pressed her body against the wall, staying out of view of the window even as glass continued to trickle onto the wooden deck outside. Without the window, the chilly night flooded the house and swamped her in a cool breeze that dug all the way through her layers of clothes and to the bones underneath. Next to her, Lucy, who had mirrored her movements and was now leaning against the wall, shivered against the sudden surge of cold air.
    “Did you get him?” Lucy asked. She sounded like she was holding her breath.
    Allie shook her head. “He’s going to try to outflank us, come in from the back.”
    “Can he do that?”
    “Yeah.” Allie looked around her, then, “We need to get up to the second floor.”
    “It’s dark up there…”
    “It’s dark down here, too,” she said, “but at least we’ll have higher ground on him.”
    The girl looked petrified, not that Allie was feeling so great about their chances, either. Especially against that submachine gun…
    *
    It didn’t take Jerry very long to find his way in through the back door. She could hear his boots squeaking against the kitchen’s tiled floor, the sound of his voice as he communicated with someone over a radio. The fact that he wasn’t even trying to disguise his approach was proof of how little he thought of her and Lucy as potential threats.
    Maybe he even knew she only had five bullets left. The Glock had seven remaining when she tried to pick him off through the window. She knew, because she had counted while she and Lucy were waiting for him to come out of the woods.
    Five bullets against however many magazines Jerry was carrying with him in that pouch around