It hardly takes a second. Ben does not see who fires first. He glimpses the feral violence gripping Germaine’s features, and the sudden vicious rage that possesses Striper’s face. He hears a series of reports: the barking of a handgun, a rapid rattling like a machine gun. Germaine staggers, blood splashing her chest, and topples over backwards. Striper turns, twisting, crouching, sheltering the child, bending over it, even as her head snaps toward her shoulder and the side of her head becomes a gory mass streaming down her neck.