I looked through the gap alongside the stall door and saw Manny. He walked over to a urinal. His back was to me.

I opened the stall door. I took two silent steps forward.

Dox, in my ear: “Shit, partner, the woman and the boy are back. The boy’s heading toward you. Must have told his mom he needs to take a leak.”

Shit. Shit.

I started back into the stall. I heard no sound, but adrenaline was closing down my hearing and there must have been some noise of which I was unaware, because Manny turned his head and looked at me.

In the moment before the kill, I never look at the target’s face. My gaze tends to focus on the torso, the movement of shoulders, hips, and hands. Doing so offers the advantage of spotting defensive movement, and of avoiding having to see the target’s eyes, his expression, his fucking humanity.

But this time I looked. Maybe it was morbid curiosity. Maybe it was misplaced instinct, something that would have been noble in other circumstances, a desire to face the consequences of my deeds. Regardless, I looked.

Our eyes met. In his I saw earnestness, perhaps some surprise. No recognition. Not yet any fear.

The door opened. It was the boy.

And then I froze.

There’s no other way to put it. My thoughts were clear. Likewise, my perception. But I couldn’t move my body. I seemed rooted to the spot. I thought, absurdly, Move! Move!

Nothing happened.

I felt beads of sweat popping out on my forehead. Still I couldn’t move.

Manny looked at me, his surprise fading into concern, then to fear, then to resolution. He pulled himself back into his pants, and his right hand dipped into his front pants pocket. The word knife! flashed in my mind, but still my limbs were locked.

But it must have been some sort of panic button, not a knife. Because a second later, I heard Dox in my ear: “Shit, partner, something’s up. The bodyguard’s heading in fast.”

I couldn’t answer. I heard him say, “Are you there, man? Say something!” Then, “Fuck, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I guess you can’t answer. All right, I’m coming in.”

Manny started backing toward the door. He turned and swept the boy up in his arms. A moment later, the door flew open and the bodyguard burst inside, nearly running into the two of them. He saw my face and pulled up short, recognizing me, realizing he’d been wrong to dismiss me earlier, knowing now that he should have listened to his gut.

He shoved Manny and the boy to his right and reached behind and under his own jacket. Sweat was running down my face but I still couldn’t move a muscle.

The door burst inward again and Dox barreled into the room. The bodyguard turned, his gun coming out.

And then, finally, when I saw that he was going to get the drop on Dox, my paralysis broke. Roaring something unintelligible, I took two steps forward and grabbed the gun with both hands as it came out and around. My decades of gripping and twisting the judo and jujitsu gi have given me abnormal hand strength, and once I had gotten ahold of the guard’s gun I knew it was mine. I twisted hard, keeping the muzzle pointed away from me and Dox. The guard cried out and his hand gave. The gun went off as I took it away from him, the small room suddenly reverberating with the report.

Dox slung an arm around the guard’s neck from behind and yanked him off his feet. The man’s hands flew to Dox’s massive forearm and his feet kicked wildly. Manny and the boy slipped past them. I looked for a shot at Manny, but Dox and the guard were in the way. Manny yanked the door open and he and the boy spilled out of the room.

Dox transitioned to hadaka jime, a sleeper hold, and the guard’s struggles intensified, his body twisting and his legs churning the air.

The door crashed inward again. Two men, both Caucasian, burst into the room. Both had guns drawn.

“Down!” I shouted at Dox. But he was still struggling with the bodyguard. Still, he did the next best thing: he spun, pulling the guard in front of him like a shield.

Both men dropped to one knee, reducing the size of the target they offered, the smoothness of the move demonstrating training and experience. Dox and the bodyguard were between us-in what was about to become the crossfire.

A crazy thought zigged through my brain: How the fuck are they getting these guns in here?

His considerable muscles no doubt supercharged with adrenaline, Dox dropped one hand to the back of the guard’s belt and heaved him into the two men. He used the force of the throw to hurl himself to the floor in the other direction.

Both men tried to get clear of the oncoming mass of the bodyguard. Only one succeeded-the one nearest the door, who jerked away just in time. His partner took the impact. But in avoiding the bodyguard, the first man had been forced to momentarily give up his focus. And in that moment, I put two rounds into his chest.

The other man was on his back now, he and the bodyguard hairballed up against the wall. He was trying to reacquire me, but too late. I swiveled and squeezed off two more shots. The first hit the bodyguard in the back of the neck. The second caught the downed man in the shoulder, jerking him partway around. He recovered, started bringing the gun toward me again.

No way, shitbird, it is not your turn now. You don’t get a turn.

I moved in, keeping the gunsight on him, and pressed the trigger back twice more. The first shot caught him in the sternum, the second in the face. I tracked to the bodyguard-Pause. Breathe. Aim-and put one in the back of his head, then a final one in the head of the man I’d shot in the chest.

The room was suddenly, eerily quiet. My ears were ringing. The air was acrid with gunsmoke.

Dox was looking up at me from the floor. His eyes were wide. “Damn, man, where did you learn to shoot like that?”

I stepped over to the bodyguard and felt along his belt. There, a spare magazine. I pulled it free, ejected the current magazine, and popped in the new one. I stuck the gun in the back of my pants where it would be concealed by my shirttail. The used magazine went into my pocket. There was no time to wipe these items down and otherwise ensure that none of my DNA or anything else incriminating had adhered to them. Besides, from where we were to where we needed to get, the gun and the rounds left in the first magazine might prove handy.

“Come on,” I said, myself again. I would think about what had happened to me later. “We’ve only got a few seconds. Follow my lead now.”

“Your lead?” he asked, coming to his feet.

I struggled not to get impatient. It seemed so obvious to me. “Look, some nutcase was in here shooting up the place. Security guards are going to be converging any second. We’re running from it, same as anyone would.”

“Okay, you’re persuading me now.”

We each pulled a hat from a pocket. Mine was a baseball cap; Dox’s was for fishing. Witnesses tend to remember gross details only, such as shirt color or the presence of a hat, and elementary precautions like ours can save a lot of grief later.

We moved to the door. “Ready?” I asked.

“Right behind you, partner.”

I looked at him. He was grinning.

“Goddamnit,” I said, “we were the victims, remember? You need to look scared.”

“Man, I am scared!”

“Try to show it better,” I growled.

“Fuck, man, I’m telling you this is how I look when I’m scared!”

Our eyes locked for a moment. His grin didn’t budge.

I shook my head and said, “Here we go.”

I opened the door. The corridor was clear. No sign of Manny or the boy. Just outside the corridor, though, the mood among the dining crowd had clearly been disrupted. The people with good sense and experience with the sound of indoor gunfire were wisely heading down the escalators. The curious, the deniers, and the simply stupid were lined up and gawking. For their benefit, I turned my head back toward the bathroom and shouted, “They’re shooting in there! Somebody call a guard!”