Until the guards showed up, it didn't matter to Ruth whether the person she was aiming at turned out to be one of those goddamn panther cartel members or just another inmate from the prison. If she didn't recognize the face, she pulled the trigger. Once she might've hesitated, afraid of taking the life of someone innocent, but that part of her conscience had fallen silent long ago. Some folks got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was just a fact of life.
Wasn't more than two carefully placed shots before the men in uniforms started to appear amidst the chaos. Among the numbers of men and women that worked for the Capitol -- APD, patrolmen, etc -- the guards of La Quinta were the worst sons of bitches around. Lining one up in her crosshairs, Ruth steadied her aim and fired in the pause between the in and out of her breathing. The man fell, red splattering out the back of his head and across the shirt of the figure behind him. Another guard. He was looking around with his steely-eyed gaze, trying to get a fix on where the shooting was coming from. And that just wouldn’t do. Ruth fired again.
Fuck, fuckity-fuck. Bastard moved.
The guard staggered with a bullet in his shoulder, and Ruth smoothly set up another shot. Adrenaline pumped through her veins, followed by that indestructible I-can-do-anything feeling. But all that led to was sloppy targeting and wasted ammunition, so she stayed focused only on the figure below, determined that this would be the shot to take him down. Ruth fired again.
No time for celebration as the guard fell. There were more of them coming every minute, so she simply moved onto the next in line.