Chapter 6 - The Kill Room
Inside the Gold Room, Marcus Voss was standing up, pointing a silver-plated revolver at Leo’s forehead.
"Sign the yards, Leo, or you die in this chair," Marcus growled.
Leo didn't reach for his coat. He stayed seated, his hand resting on his silver pocket watch. "You're making a mess, Marcus."
"The mess gets cleaned by the night shift," Marcus sneered. "Now—"
The heavy oak door flew open with a violent crack.
It didn't swing; it slammed against the wall hard enough to shatter the gilded molding.
Marcus’s men spun around, their guns raising toward the doorway.
They expected Dom Russo with a shot-gun. They expected five tactical cops with badges and heavy vests.
They saw Quinn Harper.
She was standing in the low light of the threshold, her blue pea coat unbuttoned just enough to allow her arms full range of motion. The heavy Sig Sauer was raised, held not in a dramatic two-handed stance, but low, close to her ribcage—the stance of a hallway shooter who knew about tight corners and wall spray.
"Clear," she said softly.
The word was not meant for anyone in the room. It was a habit from her past—a confirmation to herself that her rear was secure.
Before Marcus’s lead shooter could depress his trigger, Quinn fired twice.
THUMP. THUMP.
Two heavy 9mm rounds struck the man in the center of his throat, his body jerking backward into the mahogany table, sending glass water pitchers crashing onto the rug.
"Kill her!" Marcus screamed, scrambling behind his high-backed leather chair.
The remaining four men opened fire.
The Gold Room turned into a storm of noise and smoke. Unsilenced revolver blasts tore through the ancient paneling, sending heavy splinters of oak and gilding flying through the air like shrapnel.
Leo dropped to the carpet, rolling under the heavy mahogany table as bullets tore through the leather chair he had been sitting in a second before.
Quinn didn't run for cover.
She moved laterally along the left wall, her body staying low, her feet sliding across the carpet in short, silent shuffles that kept her center of balance completely flat.
She didn't waste rounds.
THUMP.
The man near the bar collapsed, his arm going limp before his gun hit the floor.
THUMP. THUMP.
A second shooter, trying to step around the corner of the table, took one round to the hip and a second through the side of his skull as he fell.
The room smelled instantly of burnt powder, hot copper, and shredded velvet.
The remaining two guards panicked. They were street enforcers who had spent their lives scaring shopkeepers and beating union organizers. They had never seen a human move like this—without emotion, without sound, without the wild adrenaline yelling that usually accompanied a gun battle.
She was a machine made of cold cotton and blue steel.
One guard dropped his weapon, throwing his hands over his face as he backed into the corner. "Wait! Wait—"
Quinn didn't slow down. She stepped past him, firing once through his fingers into the bridge of his nose.
The fifth man tried to dive for the service exit near the back of the room. Quinn raised her weapon, clicked the empty magazine free with her pinky, caught a fresh thirty-round clip from her jacket pocket, slammed it into the grip, and fired twice before the slide even seemed to rest.
THUMP. THUMP.
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The fifth man hit the floor four inches from the service door, his boots kicking twice against the baseboard before going still.
The entire firefight had lasted eleven seconds.
