Sam began the last of the painting in the mudroom near the back door while Tommy started lunch preparations. He would miss his friend when he departed later in the day, but they'd accomplished much in his time there. All of Summerall's people were in hiding or in the wind, and, despite the chaos, they'd even had time to train Lydia for several hours each day. Save for the last bit of painting, renovations on their home were complete, at least for the time being, and, best of all, Sam had been relieved of KP for two solid weeks.

There was no doubt something ugly was still on the horizon, but unlike last year, they would take their time and confront it as it came. Sam Babington was never one for quailing before hard tasks, and, one way or the other, they would get to the bottom of things.

The smell of whatever Tommy was cooking in the kitchen tickled his nostrils, but he needed to at least get a start on the mudroom.

Sam checked his ringing phone and answered after seeing it was a call from his former landlord, Mr. Buc. There were armed men at Sam's old apartment.

"I just thought you should know," said the darling old man.

***

Kenny nearly stumbled over her first three opponents, who spilled through the entryway in a bunch as she yanked the door wide, but her punch caught the fourth intruder in the middle of the chest. Despite the man's heavy body armor, the blow knocked him back with sufficient force that he flew against a companion, flinging both to the ground in a cacophony of curses, screams, and grunts.

The armored and helmeted men towered over her, but she'd come too far in the last year to be intimidated by mere size. And to her shock, the fear that scant moments before had dominated her every thought and filled her every recess deserted her, as if bolting for freedom through the now open door. A sudden glee consumed her.

Snapping about, she lunged toward the last man standing, who had a weapon at the ready. She remembered what she'd learned about guns and slapped aside the barrel of the short rifle, clasping it in one smooth move as she did, and yanked if from the man's grip as several rounds exploded into the wall beyond.

Rather than kicking or punching the interloper with her fist or foot, she followed with a fluid head-stroke to his nose. It was the precise manner in which she'd struck her near-indestructible teacher many hundreds of times, so this blow into the soft cartilage of her current adversary's nose, delivered with all her might, put the man back on his heels, with rolling eyes, and he slid into a heap against the wall.

As she rounded to confront the three men who had fallen past her into the apartment, she was not quick enough to dodge the butt of a rifle that struck her behind the right ear. The blow hardly tickled. Ducking and spinning about in another well-practiced move, she grabbed the nape of her assailant's neck below his helmet with both hands and, elbows pressed against his collarbones, shoved a hard knee into his groin.

The wretch squealed and gagged before hitting the floor, but by that time, Kenny faced his two companions, both of whom had scrambled to their feet inside the apartment's broad foyer. Neither attacker had their rifles at the ready—both weapons appeared to be twisted in the harness cords at the men's sides—but the nearest yanked free a pistol faster than she could have imagined and leveled it point-blank at her face.

Something deep in her almost wanted to scream with delight. The men's arms were large and their grips no doubt strong, but they were as putty compared to that of her regular sparring partner, and, despite Kenny being a mere five-foot four (or four-foot sixteen, as Cecil often teased), she was quicker and stronger than any of her attackers.

She twisted and dropped to avoid the pistol's line of fire, and in one motion grabbed the weapon and turned it back on the man. The soldier's knees nearly buckled, and he screamed at the pain of his now broken fingers and wrist. Maintaining her cruel and wrenching grip on that hand, she spun, stepped, and planted a front kick into the belly of the second remaining attacker. The unnatural power of that blow snatched the man from his feet and hurled him against the foyer wall, after which she yanked the pistol-wielder sharply toward her and, with her free hand, struck the still-screaming man hard in the neck. He dropped silent to the floor.

Scant seconds had passed, but before she could turn back to the front door, a concussion from mere inches away nearly deafened her, and a sickening agony starting on the top of her left shoulder swept down her body. Somehow, it wasn't clear how, she knew she'd been shot, and by reflex she dropped and sprinted into the apartment, making for the nearest recess, nearly 15 feet away.

Additional shots rang out behind her, as she fled down the residence's long back hallway to a dark corner near the guest bedroom. The place gave her a moment to crouch and to regain her wits. The sudden pain of her burning shoulder was excruciating, but it was no worse than the ache she often had experienced over the last year while sparring with Tommy Haas.

Between her gasps, it came to her that at least one of her original six adversaries was still in the fight, and their companions climbing the stairs from the ground floor soon would reach the apartment. There was zero time to dawdle. Getting the door closed again was the only option for survival, even if it meant facing more gunfire. If she could dispatch the remaining men already in the apartment, and could again close the door, it would force those yet to arrive to batter their way through the door, and she could best that second wave of invaders in the same way as the first.

There was no time to contemplate a further strategy, and giving up was out of the question.

Absent the screams and curses of the men, not a single one had spoken or in any way attempted to identify themselves or to demand her surrender. None had proffered an explanation or offered them any quarter. This wasn't right. She'd mostly slept through her Con Law class at law school, but still she knew this simply wasn't right.

Anger exploded in her like a cold storm, and she darted back around the corner into the hallway, where she immediately encountered one of her opponents. The man's rifle was at his eye level, so she lunged under the weapon, grasped the large man in the best bearhug her short arms would allow, and pulled him from his feet. The moment she did, a second attacker came into view. By reflex, she lifted, pushed, and with a feral scream, drove the first man into the second with all the strength her legs could muster.

The three went down in a heap, with Kenny atop the scrum, and she began to pound the face of the nearer man with all the fury in her body. There was no room for mercy. Given a moment, either of the men could toss the tiny Kenny aside, so she punished the nearer of the two, trusting that the second intruder, pinned beneath them and against the wall, would be unable to bring his rifle to bear.

After a flurry of hard and heavy blows, Kenny managed to beat the first man into bloody insentience, but almost simultaneously she and the second opponent realized that the pistol of the man on top was easily within the former's reach.

The two scrambled for the weapon.

The second man was big and incredibly strong, but as they jumbled for the pistol, Kenny's own strength and speed again won out. Seeing the need for haste, she simply relented and allowed the man to gain possession of the weapon while clapping her hands around his wrist, spinning once until her back was on the ground, and stretching his thick arm along the length of her body in a solid armbar. In one sudden pull and upward thrust of her hips, she snapped his arm at the elbow.

After silencing the shrieking fellow with several hard heels to the face, she lunged to her feet and began peering through the floor and walls for the location of her attackers' reinforcements. To her surprise, the second wave of men had paused at the top of the stairwell, about 30 feet down the building's main hallway.

The front door had to be closed and barred if she and Rhonda were to have a chance, but as Kenny turned to race the remainder of the apartment's back hallway, something new tugged at her, and she felt another nauseating pain, this time in her right arm.

Ahead, one more of her original opponents, the man she'd dispatched with a front kick, stood on unsteady legs aiming his short rifle at her. As he squeezed off another round, she ducked her head and hurled herself in his direction. In three long strides, she reached the man and, with one enormous leap, brought her right knee into the bottom of his chin, striking her forehead on the top of the doorframe as she did.

Somehow, despite the vicious blow, the man managed to stay upright, and a screaming and half dazed Kenny grabbed the fool by his harness and blouse, spun him once, and hurled him, barroom-brawl style, out the nearest window onto the street below.

It was clear that she'd suffered at least one additional gunshot from the man. Her right arm, now warm with blood, throbbed and shrieked agony down to her fingertips. Of a sudden, she had a hard time seeing and realized a cascade of blood from her scalp had obscured her vision.

Shaking off her stupor, she dashed to the door, just in time to encounter the first of the reinforcements, a short, faceless intruder who swung a rifle in her direction. Screaming like a savage, she struck the man just above the groin with the most powerful front-kick she'd ever thrown, knocking him back into the building's common hallway.

Her attack was met by a hail of gunfire from his fellows, aimed at where she'd stopped just inside the threshold. Bits and pieces of door frame flew everywhere, and, dropping to the ground, she rolled and thrust the door closed as far as she was able amid the arms and legs of her fallen opponents, hoping and praying the thick security door now between her and her attackers would slow the flying bullets sufficiently that she might survive long enough to get the door closed when her enemies paused to reload.

The moment the firing died down, however, a hand holding a pistol snaked around the door to where she'd concealed herself. She didn't give her opponent the chance to squeeze off a round. Slapping the weapon aside, she seized the man's wrist and sunk her teeth into his forearm. The sounds of a man's screams serenaded a sudden rumbling on the far side of the door as the man jerked, kicked, flopped, and pulled to free himself from her grasp. She redoubled her efforts. As long as the man was in that position, she prayed, the firing would be delayed.

Digging her shoulder into the door from where she half-sat and half-knelt on the floor, she pushed against the door and pulled more of the man's arm into the room. The heavy door had so far resisted the bullets fired into it, and as big and strong as these men were, Kenny was stronger. With her great efforts, she soon managed to narrow the gap between door and frame sufficiently that no one else attempted to slip a weapon into the room through the opening.

But there was no way she could keep this up. She couldn't close the door completely, not without risking more gunfire. The worst of her bleeding rapidly abated, but she was light-headed from blood-loss and knew her strength wouldn't last forever. It was only a matter of time before the combined weight and strength of the men forced the door. She began mustering her courage and bracing herself for what came next, and as she did, she looked and listened.

None of the fallen men inside the room were moving, and only four of the men outside in the hallway were still on their feet. All had rifles trained on the door and spoke in short clips into their radios. To her endless mirth, it became obvious the men were frightened, deeply frightened, of whatever unknown evil resided in the apartment. She barely could suppress her laughter. If they only knew, she would have said aloud had she been able. They faced a property lawyer, a woman far more likely to file a quit claim deed than to curl a fist in anger.

She thought of Rhonda, barely 30 feet away, and in her giddiness affectionately imagined her friend laying back in her cast-iron bathtub casually reading the news and surfing the net on her smartphone. This time she couldn't suppress a laugh.

They're waiting for reinforcements. That sudden thought came unbidden, and as it did, she glanced down through the floor at the building below. Sure enough, a dozen or more men were gathered in the small lobby on the ground floor. Several were in civilian attire, apparently chattering away on radios or phones, and to one another, but most were armed and clad in the same military-style gear as those around her now. If she wasn't mistaken, they soon would be moving up the stairs to her location.

She wanted to wail. Instead, her mind began racing through the possible options. Perhaps she and her friend could attempt that climb out the window? Would it be better to hole up with Rhonda in the bath and hope for some sort of rescue? Should she rush out now and, once having dispatched her opponents, grab Rhonda and do her best to make for the roof through the stairs to Tommy's workshop?

She realized each idea was successively less tenable than the last. Despite her ebbing strength, she would have to fight her armed enemies one or two at a time as they forced their way through the door, and that was all there was to it.

The forearm into which she still had her teeth set had given up its struggles, only moving slightly as the man to which it belonged adjusted his position in the hallway. Less than five minutes had passed since her taking it and him hostage, but suddenly, there was a jostle of movement, followed by much jerking and screaming. Short bursts of automatic weapons erupted in the hallway, but without the subsequent impact of rounds on the apartment door.

Before she could focus her gaze beyond the door, there was silence, followed by several solid knocks.

"Hey, let's go ... time's a-wasting," called a cheerful voice.

It was Cecil Dykstra.

***

Rhonda had never cried so hard in her life. When the banging on the door had started, she'd run terrified to the bathroom and begun dialing her phone along the way. She'd assumed Kenny would be right behind her, but by the time she'd gotten in touch with Cecil, there'd been no sign of her friend and the pounding had ceased. That sudden cessation instantly had been replaced by a rapid series of screams, shouts, and gunshots.

With trembling hands, she'd closed the door, climbed into the tub, and dialed her man. His only reply to her blubbering had been a panicked, "I'm coming."

She knew Kenny was like Tommy, but she didn't know exactly how much like him she was, and her friend's every scream and shout of anger in the distance had been like a blow against Rhonda's heart, causing her to jolt, jump, and whimper at each. Within the first seconds, it had become obvious to her: she couldn't just stand aside while her friend fought for her life. She'd never be able to live with herself if she did.

Gathering all her courage, she'd dropped the phone, and on shaky legs climbed from the heavy cast-iron tub. A rumble and racket of banging, screaming, and cursing had told her the fight had moved to a point just outside the bathroom door. The sound of her friend's screams, so close she could almost touch, had helped Rhonda finally master her fear, and in two steps, she'd grabbed the door and flung it open, only to see Kenny atop two men, savagely pounding the face of one with her fist.

"Close the fucking door and get in the tub," her friend had screamed at her with scarcely a glance.

Rhonda had slammed the door, turned, run, and dived back into the tub. More screams, shots, and shouts had followed, but after another minute or two, the noise had subsided. For just a few minutes longer, there had been only the sound of her heart. She'd then resolved on another sortie.

Now, stepping from the tub on tender feet, Rhonda realized she could hear the street below. There were indecipherable conversations, car engines, and the occasional squelch of a radio and bleep of an emergency siren. Had the police come?

She moved silently through the bathroom door and out into the back hallway, where there were several unmoving forms sprawled along the floor. A low muttering and occasional shuffling was audible from the end of the hallway in the direction of the front foyer. As she stepped cautiously down the silent hallway, another burst of gunfire and sounds of a scuffle forced her to crouch. But the noise soon passed, and she heard a familiar voice.

With trepidation, she rose, took the last few steps down the hall, and peeked around the corner. Cecil was half in the doorway, and though Rhonda had worked at a busy ER most of her life, she nearly screamed at the sight of her lovely Kenny, half crouched against the front door, her body drenched in blood from head to toe.

Several more black-clad bodies were visible on the ground, and blood was everywhere. To her surprise, Cecil, who was now fully in the room, reached down and snatched Kenny to her feet.

"No loafing," he said. "We gotta get outta here," he continued as he scooped up Rhonda and began moving with her toward the front door. "There's more coming, and they ain't taking 'no' for an answer."

The old man knew the building and headed them down the hallway toward the stairs to the fifth floor. Feeling silly and helpless, Rhonda could only worry for her friend, who silently kept pace with the rapidly moving Cecil. The machines in Tommy's fifth-floor shop were humming as they passed through on the way to the roof, but there was no sign of Javi or any other of her man's employees. When they reached the landing to the door out onto the roof, Cecil spoke again.

"There was a few of 'em out here earlier," he said, more to Kenny than to her, "so suck it up."

The door led out onto Rhonda and Tommy's little rooftop paradise, and as they emerged, Cecil began to run. She saw several chairs had been knocked over and some of their plants squashed or uprooted.

She so far had avoided thinking of how Tommy would respond to this invasion, but that vision of their sacred little area, even more-so than the desecration of their home and the assault on her sweet friend, triggered something black and ugly in Rhonda. It passed in a moment, but for just that brief period, she wanted Tommy to kill them all.

It wasn't clear what direction they were taking, but out of nowhere, there was more gunfire. It seemed more distant than it had before, but Cecil pulled her closer, so that her head was less exposed. They ran less than a minute, when, from the corner of her eye, Rhonda saw they approached an enormous gap between buildings. Cecil didn't slow, rather, he accelerated. Soon they were sailing through the air.

Although her later recounting of the event insisted otherwise, Rhonda fainted dead away.