"Wish I still had my cell," said Rita. "I'd take a picture of your expression."
Her own expression froze as a voice howled from the alley entrance.
"Come out here and try that, asshole!"
The sniper fired at the source of the shout, and a piece of cement fell to the sidewalk. Kate and Rita couldn't see anyone from their spot, but Kate thought she recognized the voice.
"I took out all your backup," roared their visitor. "It's just you now, idiot. You can either pick me off, come out with your hands on your head, or sink back into the slime you came from and call it a day."
Another shot winged the corner of the building; apparently the target was extremely good at either ducking or hiding. Probably both.
"Slaughter," Kate whispered. At Rita's blank look she added, "Ethan Slaughter. NYPD's loosest cannon. What's he doing here?"
Rita grabbed Kate's arm and gestured over her shoulder. "Drawing fire away from that."
"That" was the undulating surface of the cement wall, closer now, about ten feet from their dumpster shield. It looked for all the world like the wall was bulging outward, and the bulge was moving toward them, very, very slowly.
"I'm guessing that Richard has connections with someone who experiments with cloaking material," said Rita.
Kate connected the dots (and made a note to ask Rita how she knew about cloaking technology) and drew her empty gun from its holster. Carefully she reached just beyond the protection of the dumpster and laid the weapon on the ground, trying not to move too quickly or make much noise.
The man at the other end of the alley was making plenty of noise, hollering insults in between exchanging fire with the sniper. The latter seemed to find Slaughter better sport than the two women; he spent a few minutes chipping bits off the building in an effort to hit the moving shadow of his target.
"Definitely not one of the All-Stars," said Kate, watching the motion of the wall. "A real sniper wouldn't go off target so easily."
"All-Stars?"
"The Zero Dark Thirty All-Stars," Kate explained. "Vikram's name for the hit squads."
She had no further time to think of Vikram, the hit squads, Slaughter, or even Rita. A fusillade of shots suddenly filled the alley, the sound bouncing off the bare walls, and the two women shuffled closer to the back of the dumpster in hopes to avoid getting winged by fragments of cement or brick.
A moment later, Kate was knocked on her back, winded, by an unseen force, as though someone had made a dive for cover and landed nearly on top of her. By now this bizarre action involving Slaughter and a cloaked partner was starting to make sense. Which meant that she was either hallucinating, or -
She grabbed at the place where the air seemed to warp, caught hold of fabric and held on for dear life.
"Are you all right?" gasped the warped air.
Instantly divining the exact source of the gasp, Kate flung her arms around the neck of their new comrade and hugged him tighter than she'd ever done.
"You're here," she said. "I'm fine."
"For now," Rita interjected. "Castle, what the hell?"
Rick's face appeared as he peeled the hood off the suit he was wearing. His face was red and there was caked blood on his brow, but otherwise he looked like he'd just beat Kate at Scrabble.
"Here," he panted, extracting two handguns from his invisible pockets. He handed them, along with some extra cartridges, to Kate, who passed some over to Rita.
"What about you?" Kate asked. Castle patted his side, then remembered the cloak and reached into the suit to pull out a weapon.
"How long can your partner last?" Rita asked. "Was he just covering for your moves?"
"That was his original mission," said Castle. "But as Kate knows, Slaughter doesn't always stick to the original mission. Between the squibs I was throwing and the verbal harassment, with any luck the shooter won't have noticed me. Slaughter's well provided."
"So now that you're here," said Kate, "what's *your* mission?"
"Get you two out of here," said Castle. "I don't know whether that guy's acting on orders or if he's just pursuing vengeance on his own. There were only two other guys lurking around the entrance, and neither one had a chance to call for more backup before Slaughter took them out."
"Someone might be watching from another building," Rita pointed out.
"One death threat at a time, please," said Castle, only half kidding. "Can we deal with that once we're done with this guy?"
"Do we have a choice?" said Kate, but when both Rita and Castle opened their mouths to reply, she threw up a hand to silence them. "All right, Castle, how do we get out of here?"
"Smoke and mirrors," he said. "Smoke, mostly. The suit might not be much good."
"Smoke bombs, to obscure the shooter's vision," Rita guessed, and Castle nodded. She went on, "Where are they?"
"Some here with me, some in the alley, under the room where he's set up," said Castle. "I can activate these, and Slaughter can set off the others by shooting them. Then we make a run for it, staying close to the wall under his window. Even if he saw us, he'd have to lean out the window to get a clear shot, and that'd make him a target."
"For your friend, I presume," said Rita. "We better move fast, then."