I flew out of the now stationery car, only to be confronted by Jack, who stood, huge and smug and immobile, a few metres away from me, the shotgun gripped in his right hand and levelled at my belly.
"You don't learn, do you?" his smoky voice rasped through my head. His icy eyes narrowed. "I'm going to enjoy teaching you to lie down and take it."
I took an involuntary step back, my eyes drawn in dismayed fascination to the gun in his hand.
"Consider this your first lesson, bitch." he said as he shot me again.
I watched as the shotgun jerked in his hand, and saw the spray of blood as those pellets buried themselves in the flesh of my abdomen, but this time I felt nothing. I didn't flinch, my legs didn't buckle. I just stood there as blood flowed down my legs and watched the incredulity grow in his eyes. I tilted my head sideways and considered him coldly. My arm snaked out and I grasped the barrel of the shotgun. I grinned humourlessly. And then all the frustration and rage and fear of the past week rushed from the depths of my soul and into my arm and through that gun. Jack crumpled to the ground, his eyes rolling back in his head.