"I don't know what's worse," said Rita conversationally. "Being pinned down by a single goon with plenty of time and ammo, or being pinned down by said goon without having breakfast first."
"Most important meal of the day," Kate muttered, tucking away her empty sidearm. She had been checking their opponent's position with the bits of detritus lying nearby - a broomstick handle, a piece of cardboard, a thrown pencil. All she'd accomplished is confirmation that their goon was fixed in position and a crack shot.
He'd hit everything she'd shown him.
"I think by now he's just angry," said her companion. "We did take out his boss, after all."
"That's the one thing keeping me going right now," Kate replied. "I'm not going to fall to this guy after what we've been through."
It had taken too long. Not just today, but for weeks, but finally, finally she had come face to face with her nemesis. The one who had calmly caused and ordered slaughter of her friends - and a few of her enemies - and God knew how many others, in the course of running a drug kingdom.
She and Rita had started the dominoes falling, seen the result of that one death spreading through the underground network. From the lowest lackeys to the top-level sergeants, they were scattering like roaches in a spotlight, betraying and killing each other on the way.
"Guess I can die happy now," she said under her breath as their unseen foe chipped off the corner of a wooden crate nearby. Probably just to show off, she thought, and turned to Rita to say so, only to find the older woman glaring at her.
"Happy or not, you're not dying today," said Rita. "You're going to live, and somehow we're going to get you and Castle back together. In this life, not the next."
Kate had been trying, more or less successfully, to put Rick out of her mind, knowing that a moment of nostalgia or pang of regret would throw her concentration.
"I bow to your superior judgment," said Kate, only a little sarcastically, "but I don't see how that's going to happen. He - " she jerked her head in the direction of the goon - "can outwait us. For all we know, he has backup."
"For all we know, there might already have been three guys swapping shifts up there," Rita agreed. "You think I haven't considered that? No, we have something he hasn't got. Something neither he nor you are expecting, something that will turn the tide in our favor."
"If you're talking about your husband - "
"I'm talking about yours."
Kate was completely derailed by this statement, but before she could reply a shot rang out in the blind alley that was the current battleground. A shot that had not come from a rifle, or from the place where the goon had last been spotted.
"Hand gun," she whispered. "From...two o'clock?"
"Good ear," Rita said just as quietly. There was another shot, this time from somewhere near their left, and this time there was an answering shot from their sniper, which appeared to chip off some mortar from the crumbling brick wall on that side.
"Two of 'em?"
"I don't think so," Rita said. "I think one's real, and the other is a decoy. No one could have entered the alley without being seen either by us or by the sniper."
Kate's gaze raked over the truncated landscape. Their enemy was shooting from a broken, blacked-out window near the mouth of the alley, which was in an industrial area not frequented by, well, anyone, especially at night. There was a dumpster with no wheels, behind which Kate and Rita were hunkered, and a variety of other trash and broken crates scattered between them and the street.
Not a creature was stirring, not even the usual rat specimen.
The sniper fired at the wall above where they were hidden, and bits of brick rained down on them. Rita grimaced.
"You've been in standoffs before, I presume," she said to Kate. "So you know what happens. Fatigue, distraction, you start wondering what the hell you're doing here."
"Been wondering that for a while," Kate said. "Like, since last April."
Rita flashed a grin, then went on, "Sometimes you get so far inside your own head, you start seeing things. Things you wish would happen, imagining positive outcomes for the situation. Sometimes, even negative outcomes."
"Fascinating lecture," said Kate, still sneaking peeks around the dumpster. "Your point?"
"Don't make a sound," Rita warned. "Look to your one. The cement wall."
Kate didn't see anything but poorly-covered graffiti - for a solid minute - then - She clapped her hand over her mouth even as another shot rang out, this time from the mouth of the alley. At the same moment, the uneven paint on the wall seemed to fluctuate momentarily, then went still again.
Kate turned to stare at Rita, speechless.
"Wish I still had my cell," said that lady. "I'd take a picture of your expression."
~tbc~