When I think back on that moment, I’m always amazed by how long it took me to react. Everyone else seemed to move before I did-Paula, the waiters, even the other patrons of the cafe.
Gobi took out the bodyguards from twenty feet away. I heard two quick, deafening noises-BLAM, BLAM-and saw them both pitch backwards in opposite directions, hitting the cobblestones on either side of the table. What I saw then couldn’t possibly be right-it had to be some kind of run-time glitch in the mainframe of the universe-because when I looked again, Gobi was less than a foot away, pumping another round into the chamber and pointing the shotgun right at Armitage’s chest, point blank.
Armitage opened his mouth to say something, but he never got the chance before Gobi pulled the trigger. There was a third deafening KAPOW, and the shotgun blast blew him backwards out of his chair hard enough to knock the whole table over with his knees, spilling wine and glass everywhere. Pigeons took flight and people screamed in that far-off way that voices sound after your eardrums have been assaulted by blunt-force audio trauma. My ears were used to it from years of speakers and amps, and it was still a backwards-sounding scream-the crowd almost seemed to suck it back inward-withering into a gasp, when they saw what had happened.
When I looked down again, Armitage was sprawled backwards on the pavement between his bodyguards, motionless in a huge and still expanding splatter pattern of his own blood. It spread out around him in all directions like the shadow of an object falling fast.
Without hesitating, Gobi reached down with her free hand and grabbed Armitage’s body, clutching his sagging weight under the arms, hoisting it up as if it were weightless, holding it in front of herself like a shield, all the while keeping the shotgun in her right hand. There was a distant CRACK and I saw another bullet hit the corpse in the chest. Looking around, I realized that the shot had come from somewhere far overhead, and that was when I realized there was at least one other person on a rooftop overhead, shooting down at us.
Gobi raised the shotgun one-handed and fired again, up at the top of the cathedral.
“Stand down.” Somewhere off to my right I saw Paula rise to her feet. I was expecting her to get out a phone to call the cops or an ambulance.
What came out instead was a pistol-polished, nickel-plated, and held with an expert two-handed shooting grip.
And pointed at me.
“Paula?” I asked.
Paula’s eyes stayed on Gobi. Her voice was absolutely calm. “That’s a Mossberg pump-action, isn’t it? Twelve-gauge, right? Nice gun.”
Gobi didn’t say anything.
“Only problem is, you’ve got to reload before you can shoot again. Move and he dies.”
In front of us, in front of the overturned table, Gobi stood frozen, still cradling the shotgun in one hand and Armitage’s corpse in the other. Even with my ears still ringing, Paula’s voice was crisp and totally clear, every syllable chiseled into the air. The realization came slanting at me sideways like a sudden cold rain.
My.
Girlfriend.
Paula.
Was.
Pointing.
A.
Gun.
At.
Me.
I stared at her. I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t breathe. Still.
In front of us, all at once Gobi chucked the shotgun, shoved Armitage’s body away from her, swiveled, and threw her leg straight up into the air, bringing it down in an ax-kick to Paula’s face. There was a crack and Paula went hard to the ground. Gobi grabbed her iPad, but Paula must not have dropped the gun, because through all the broken glass and blood and wine, she was already firing at us. I should know. I felt at least one of the bullets whining past my head.
My eyes rolled sideways in their sockets like overheated ball bearings, taking in everything at once. From the club across the square, I saw Linus and Norrie come running out. They took one look at what was happening and hit the ground.
That was when Gobi grabbed my arm, manacle-tight, a grip that I now knew exclusively accompanied those moments when it was either run or get shot. If I hadn’t run-if she’d still had a gun with live ammo-I think she would have threatened to shoot me herself.
“Go!”
She jerked me forward, swinging me when I wasn’t able to keep up. My feet were definitely not in charge-they were just trying to keep me from falling facefirst onto the pavement-and we cut across the piazza back in the direction of the cathedral. Vendors and tourists with no idea what was going on turned to watch us go sprinting across between the pushcarts toward a row of gondolas lined up along the water.
Up in the cathedral, bells started clanging through the square like God’s own security system. Somehow I still heard bullets caroming off the pavement behind us. They seemed to be coming from every direction at once, from up above and behind us. I felt my mind split cleanly in half, each side entertaining contradictory thoughts. On one side Armitage was still alive and I was sitting at the cafe with Paula, listening to him tell me what a genius I was. On the other side, the woman that I thought I had fallen in love with was trying to kill me.
I was beginning to detect a pattern here.
Then we ran out of pavement.