Another BAM!, from the other side of the door, louder than a pistol shot. Carl staggered. She looked and saw a huge hole in the wall. Someone had shot through the other side—from the sound and the size of the hole, a shotgun. She felt a surge of fear and rage. She calculated the angle by instinct, aimed at the wall, and fired eight times in a wide pattern. There was a cry from the other side. She bolted through the door into a kitchen. There, to the right, a man with a pistol-grip shotgun. His shoulder was bloody—she must have hit him there—and his right arm was dangling. He grimaced and tried to bring up the muzzle one-handed. Livia put three rounds in his chest. He dropped the shotgun and fell backward into the dining room.
She spun. To her left were two closed doors that she knew from the Airbnb site went to a rec room and to the garage. Straight ahead were the stairs to the second floor. To her right, the dining room—
She didn’t even hear it. It was more a feeling, or an instinct. She spun. She saw a man flash-check past the doorjamb. She fired three rounds through the wall and dove behind a counter. The wood looked cheap and she doubted it would provide much cover, especially against another shotgun. She pressed against the wall, dropped the magazine, and slapped in a spare. Had she hit him? She wasn’t sure. And the angles here were bad. If she popped up, he’d know her position after she dropped back down. If she scuttled left, it would make for an awkward shot.
She heard three more pistol shots from upstairs. Then a much louder one—BAM!—from the other side of the room. In the same instant, a giant hole appeared in the cabinet next to her. Wood and porcelain shards sprayed past her.
Fuck, shotgun—
She popped up before he could rack the slide, a distant part of her mind praying it was pump-action, not semiauto—
She put the sights on center mass and pressed the trigger. She hit him. Fire erupted from the shotgun muzzle, and the cabinet to her left exploded.
Fuck, semiauto—
She kept firing, putting three more rounds into him. He got off two more shots, but he was firing wildly now, his body jerking and flinching from being hit. Her last shot caught him in the neck. A geyser of blood erupted. He tripped over the body in the dining room and went down.
She wanted to go to Carl, but she had to use whatever surprise and confusion they had left. These guys were better armed than they were. She couldn’t risk getting pinned down again—her best hope was speed and mobility.
She heard more shots from upstairs. Either Larison was having a protracted gunfight with a single shooter, or Kanezaki’s estimate of three men was badly off.
Come on, Livia, move—
She raced out into the hallway. Clear. No one on the stairs.
Where the fuck is Schrader?
The garage or the rec room. Had to be one or the other.
She turned and saw the garage door open a crack. A face peeked through it. She fired twice. The rounds hit the door and it slammed closed. She stepped offline, but before she could get off another round, a fusillade of fire erupted through the door. Rounds punched through the air to her left and slammed into the wall behind her. Shards of the garage door flew through the air. What was left looked like shredded paper.
She dove back into the kitchen, primally terrified. She heard another burst of fire. The guy must have decided it was safer to finish shredding the door instead of trying to open it.
How many rounds was that? Fifteen? More?
Must have been a magazine-fed automatic shotgun. She guessed an AA-12.
She got to her feet and dashed through the kitchen. She saw Carl coming in from the room they’d first entered.
“That’s an AA-12!” she shouted.
“I know! Go, go!”
She tore into the dining room, leaping over the two bodies. The shooter had probably already swapped magazines. These walls would be as much cover as paper.