Re: [Gala: Cat, Flash, Frank]
Oh, our little sniper friend? He thought he was good. But, Cat? Cat had been trained in Hell, and you didn't walk away from Hell without learning a thing or two about the devil. Perhaps it was a combination of things, actually. Perhaps it was five years at her padre's knee. Rex called her his little lion, and Cat remembered briefly. Perhaps it was the Egorovs, fifteen years and a different kind of Hell. Or, perhaps, perhaps, it was the docha. The docha, and the brainwashing, and the nanite bomb at the base of her skull. Whatever it was? Cat wasn't as blind or as dumb as our little sniper friend believed her to be.
Which is to say that she saw the first Russian go down. Silent, sure, but come on. She had toys strapped to her thigh, and she knew when a bullet was fired in her vicinity. The device in her ear whispered information on the bullet, and she knew it would let Madison know as well, and the fact that the sniper thought he was clear? That gave them a little bit of an advantage.
She acted entirely unaware. At the end of the day? Cat didn't actually care if every Russian in the room died a bloody death. Worrying about the hired help? That had always been more Eddie's forte than her own. She kept on smiling at the Italian, asking after her padre's health, and she watched for trajectory as she continued her harmless conversation.
Ah. There.
She caught Madison's gaze across the room, interrupting his attentions to some pretty thing or another, and she let her mossy green eyes do the rest, sweeping them in the direction of the bullet's entry point, and all while Russian No. 2 went down.
And then she waited. She waited for the panic, and she reacted along with the rest of them. She helped the most well-placed Family members out. She flirted competently with their sons. She ingratiated herself, and she asked questions - who and why? - and all without cowering. After all, the heir to a mob fortune didn't cower.
And by the time she stepped outside, she was really counting on Flash having caught their little sniper friend's trail.
She rounded the building, trading red for black as she went, and her voice in the earpiece was quiet. "What've you got for me?"