WREN

I jolted away in my bed, blinking in the darkened room. What had woken me? Turning, I glanced at the clock, trying to focus my blurry eyes on the digits on the digital readout. Was that one o’clock —in the morning?

Bang, bang, bang!

Someone was at the door.

Opening up the drawer on my side table, I pulled out my Beretta 92FS and got out of bed. It was still in the high nineties in my non-air-conditioned apartment, so I’d slept in a shirt and panties. But this was Boyle Heights, and there was no way in hell I was answering my apartment door in the middle of...