living room. Don’t worry about Dominic, worry about you. His cousin was FBI—at least officially—so he needed no lessons on this stuff.
Jack changed the gun to his left hand, dried his palm on his pants leg, then changed it back again. He took a breath, took a short step back, then peeked his head around the corner. Kitchen. Refrigerator to the right; avocado-green counter, stainless-steel sink, and desktop microwave to the left; dining table and chairs down a ways, past the end of the counter, beside the back door.
Jack scanned for movement but saw nothing, so he stepped out, gun raised to near shoulder height, eyes scanning, gun barrel following, then crept into the kitchen. Ahead and to the right was an archway, this one leading to the living room, he assumed, picturing the layout in his head. Dominic should be coming through the other room on the right to link up with him—
“Jack, rear bedroom window!” Dominic shouted from somewhere deeper inside the house. “Got a runner! Out the side window! White male, red jacket, armed . . . I’m on him!”
Jack resisted the impulse to charge ahead, instead moving slow and steady, clearing the remainder of the kitchen, then peeking around the corner into the living room. Clear. He stepped to the patio door, body aligned to the left of the doorjamb and hopefully behind the wooden 2×4 studs under the drywall that would, in theory, stop or slow down any bullets meant for him, then ducked down to peer out the porthole-style window into the alley beyond. To his right he saw a figure moving down the alley: blue windbreaker, yellow letters. Dominic’s FBI windbreaker. Jack opened the door, looked again, then pushed open the screen door. Directly across from him was a darkened doorway in the brick wall; to his left a green Dumpster. He moved that way, gun up, tracking for targets. He saw a shadow moving in the doorway and pivoted in time to see a man-shaped silhouette appear on the threshold.
“Freeze! Don’t move, don’t move!” he shouted, but the figure kept moving, left arm coming into the light, hand holding a revolver. “Drop it!” Jack shouted again, gave him another beat, then fired twice, both shots striking center mass. The figure fell back into the doorway. Jack turned again, back toward the Dumpster, moving until he could see around its corner, looking for—
And then something slammed into his back, between the shoulder blades, and he staggered forward. He felt the blood rush to his head and thought, Ah, shit, goddamn it . . . He bounced against the Dumpster, left shoulder taking the brunt of the impact, and tried to pivot on his heel toward the source of the gunfire. . . . He felt another round slam into his side, just below his armpit, and knew it was too late.
“Hold!” a voice shouted over a bullhorn, followed by three rapid whistle blasts that echoed down the alley. “Cease exercise, cease exercise!”
“Ah, man ...” Jack muttered, then leaned back against the Dumpster and exhaled heavily.
The man who’d just shot him—Special Agent Walt Brandeis—stepped out of the doorway and shook his head sadly. “My God. To die like that, son, with a green paint splatter in the middle of your back ...” Jack could see the half-smile playing across Brandeis’s lips as he looked Jack up and down, then clicked his tongue. “It’s just a plain shame, that’s what it is.”
Down the alley, Dominic came jogging around the corner and stopped in his tracks, then said, “Again?”
Here’s the problem, Jack: You were—”
“Hurrying, I know.”
“No, not this time. It’s more than that. Hurrying wasn’t your real problem—it was part of it but not really what got you killed. Care to take a guess?”
Jack Junior thought it over a moment. “I assumed.”
“Damn right you assumed. You assumed the target you saw in that door was the only one in there. You assumed you’d put him down, then stopped worrying about it. It’s what I call Ambush Relief Syndrome. You won’t find it in the textbooks, but it goes like this: You survived an ambush, a real near thing, and you feel like you’re golden. In your head you subconsciously relabeled that door and the room inside from ‘uncleared’ to ‘cleared.’ Now, if this was real life and there had been two of them in there, your average dumb criminal probably would’ve opened up on you the moment his partner did, but there are always exceptions out