The meaningless shake of the doctor’s body after the second bullet struck her.
Then a third puff of air.
Rubio’s finger clenched on her trigger in shock or instinct or malice.
Lila grabbed her chest. Her body filled with a second rush of adrenaline, her heart pumping, pumping, pumping.
Lila looked down and spied the dart in her collar, caught in her leather jacket.
Rubio crumpled to the ground, staring at the black sky after one last, quiet gasp.
A dozen militia sprinted toward the garage from all sides, boots pounding in the gravel.
Someone grabbed Lila’s shoulder, wrenching her around. Sutton panted in front of her, eyes roving over her body, weapon pointed at the ground. “Are you hit?”
Lila shook her head, her scarf too tight around her neck.
“I had to shoot her. A dart would have given her more time to fire before the sedative hit. I had to—”
“Yes. You had to.”
Sutton licked her lips. Both women eyed the doctor on the ground, bleeding from the hole in her head and another through her neck. Sutton’s aim had been good, so good that Rubio had likely been dead before she fell.
Lila could not look away. She wasn’t a cloud this time as she stared at death, but an oozing pile of lava.
“How’d you know?” she asked, digging out the dart that still clung to her coat like an irritating scab. Sutton offered her a baggie, then sealed away what might have been.
“We found the wig and the remote for the plugs in the condo. Rubio also had the same approximate height and weight of the assassin. Oracle knows her wife’s not that dainty. Captain McKinley looked through her net logs and found some interesting things in her search history, including research on motorcycle repair. Her last searches were on poisons.”
Lila nodded, noticing that even the members of the militia could not look away from the body. They’d all seen plenty in their work, but none had been broken by a bullet.
“How’d you know Rubio was here?”
“I didn’t. I just assumed she’d be coming for you again, so we contacted the great house. Ms. O’Malley saw you leave about five minutes ago. Captain McKinley was reviewing the camera footage, but I guessed where you’d run off to. You like to drive off on your own too much, just like this morning. We still need to talk about that, by the way.”
“Later,” Lila vowed.
“I guess she thought we wouldn’t find her unless we turned on thermal imaging.”
“I hope you were about to turn on thermal—”
“You’re damn right we were.”
“I owe you my life. All of you,” Lila added, more loudly so that the militia heard her praise. The blackcoats bobbled their heads and turned back to mill around Rubio’s corpse.
Sergeant Tripp had already crouched down before the body, checking the doctor’s pulse. His pipe peeked from his front pocket.
“Sergeant Tripp, contact Captain McKinley at the security office and process the scene,” Sutton ordered. “It’s yours until she gets here.”
Sutton patted Lila’s back, leading her away from the body.
“If Tripp handles this well, I’m going to make him a lieutenant,” Sutton said, their boots crunching on the gravel trail.
“He’s due for it. Captain McKinley deserves praise for her part as well.”
“She doesn’t need the encouragement.”
Lila shrugged, happy to see the lights of the great house. “Write up your statement and take tomorrow off.”