Perrie Kincaid's byline was hot. She had broken four major stories in Seattle in the past two years, and three of them had been picked up by the national wire services. Her peers in the broadcast industry were in awe of her, unable to snatch even the smallest scoops from under her perceptive gaze. And drizzle or none, she was going to break this story, too.

The seemingly abandoned warehouse was actually the nerve center of a major smuggling ring that dealt in stolen luxury autos, cars that had probably been parked in front of one of Seattle's trendy restaurants just hours before. Once stolen, they were loaded into containers and shipped to the Far East, where they were traded for uncut heroin, which was then loaded on the boat for the return trip to Seattle.

The smuggling ring was only a small part of the story. There had been blackmail and attempted murder. But the part that would nab her the Pulitzer was the trail that led right to the floor of the U.S. Congress, to the dishonorable congressman from the great state of Washington, Evan T. Dearborn.

Somewhere inside the warehouse, Dearborn's chief of staff was meeting with Mad Dog's boss, the man in charge of this little operation, Seattle businessman and resident sleazeball, Tony Riordan. For ten years, Riordan had been living on the edge of the law, always involved in something illegal but careful enough not to get caught-and using the profits from his "business" dealings to buy a politician or two. He'd snagged a big one when he'd snagged Dearborn.

Well, Riordan was about to go down, and he was going to take a whole host of his slimy friends with him, including the congressman. The police had been on Riordan's tail for almost as long as Perrie had. Perrie reached into her pocket and fingered her cell phone. Sooner or later she'd have to call in the cops. But not until she had the final piece of the puzzle, hard evidence that would link the congressman's office to Tony Riordan. And not until her story was in black and white for all to see.

The sound of a car door opening brought her attention back to the Mercedes and she watched as Mad Dog stepped out of the car. With nervous hands, she reached for the camera that was slung over her shoulder, praying the shutter hadn't rusted tight in the two hours she'd been standing in the rain. She pulled off the lens cover, then held the camera up to her eye and focused the telephoto lens on the doorway.

A moment later two figures emerged, flanked by a pair of Tony's hulking bodyguards. Perrie smiled to herself as she recognized Tony and the congressman's chief of staff in the viewfinder. Calmly, she refocused and slid her finger to the shutter. But just as she was about to snap her first photo, the sound of a ringing cell phone fractured the quiet of the night.

Startled, Perrie looked over the top of the camera, wondering who would be calling Riordan at two in the morning. But as the phone rang again, she realized that the group on the loading dock was looking in her direction. The sound was coming from her coat pocket! In a flash, the two goons on the dock pulled guns and all hell broke loose.

Perrie dropped the camera and fumbled for her cell phone just as the first shot whizzed past her head and careened off the building behind her. She slid deeper into the shadows and flipped open the phone, wincing as another bullet hissed a little too close.

"Perrin? Perrin, is that you?"

Perrie groaned at the sound of her mother's voice. "Mom, I can't talk right now. I'll call you back." She ducked her head as another shot hit the brick wall above her.

"Perrie, this will just take a minute."

"Mom, it's two in the morning!"

"Honey, I know you don't sleep soundly and I figured you were up anyway. I just wanted to let you know that Mrs. Wilke's son is coming home for a visit. He's a dentist, you know, and a bachelor. I think it would be nice if-Perrin? Is that a gunshot I heard?"

Perrie cursed out loud, then slowly worked her way along the base of the wall. "Mother, I really can't talk now! I'll call you back in a few minutes." She flipped off the phone, then dialed 911, her fingers trembling.

When the operator answered, she quickly gave her name and her location. From where she sat, huddled in the dark, it sounded as if she were in the middle of a war zone. The gunfire was coming from two directions now, and she seemed to be caught right in the line of fire.

Were the cops already on the scene? Or was there another piece to this puzzle she didn't know about? She slid over and risked a look at the melee across the street. Riordan's men were still shooting at her, but someone else was shooting at them. Her missing puzzle piece was heavily armed with semiautomatic weapons, mat much she could tell.

"Ma'am, please stay on the line. Is the shooting still going on?"

"Yes, it's still going on!" Perrie shouted. "Can't you hear it?" She held the phone out, giving the operator a taste of her predicament.

"Just remain calm, ma'am."

"I've got to get my camera," she said, realizing it was the first calm and rational thought she'd had since the shooting started.

"Ma'am, stay right where you are. We'll have a car there in about two minutes."

"I need my camera." Perrie slid along the base of the building, back the way she'd come, her eyes fixed on the camera lying near a puddle of water on the rain-slicked pavement. Stretching her arm out, she reached for the strap just inches away from her fingertips. Another gunshot whizzed by and she could almost feel its heat through her jacket sleeve. She winced, then made one desperate lunge for the camera strap.

Her fingers closed around it and she dragged it and herself back to the safety of the shadows. "A picture is worth a thousand words," she muttered as she wiped off the wet lens with her jacket cuff. "Not a thousand of my words. A picture would only be worth about a hundred of my words." Her gaze fixed on a dark patch on her sleeve and she sighed as she tried to brush the mud away.

But it wasn't mud on her sleeve. The touch of her own fingers sent a shard of pain up her arm and she blinked in surprise. "Oh, damn," she murmured, rubbing the sticky blood between her fingers. "I've been shot."

A smile curled the corners of her mouth and she giggled to herself, half out of shock and half out of disbelief. "I've been shot." She picked up the cell phone. "I've been shot," she repeated to the emergency operator.

"Ma'am, you say you've been shot?"

"I've always wondered what it would feel like," Perrie explained. "A bullet piercing your own skin. Would it feel hot or cold? Would you know it happened right away or would it take a while?" She closed her eyes and fought back a wave of lightheadedness.

"Ma'am, please don't move. We'll have a car there in thirty seconds. And an ambulance is on the way. Can you tell me where you've been shot? Please, ma'am, stay right where you are."

"I'm not going anywhere," Perrie said as she tipped her head back to rest on the rough brick wall. The rain spattered on her face and she welcomed the cold. It was the only thing that seemed real about this whole incident. "Wild horses couldn't drag me away from this story now," she murmured as the wail of sirens echoed in the distance.

The next half hour passed in a blur of flashing red lights and frantic paramedics. They had hustled her inside an ambulance and bandaged her arm, but she'd refused to be transported to the hospital, choosing instead to watch the scene unfold in the rainy night in front of the warehouse, questioning the detectives who collected the evidence of the Shootout.

"Perrie!"

She glanced over her shoulder once to see Milt Freeman approaching, his expression filled with fury. Ignoring his summons, she turned back to the detective and continued her own interrogation.

"Damn it, Kincaid, what the hell happened here?"

"I'm sure you know all about it by now," Perrie called.

The detective looked up as Milt grabbed her arm. She winced in pain and Milt frowned. "Get her to the hospital," the detective advised. "And get her out of my hair. She took a bullet in the arm."

"What?" Milt boomed.

"I'm fine," Perrie insisted, her attention on the detective. "Why don't you let me get a peek at that wallet?"

The detective gave Milt an exasperated look, then walked away, shaking his head.

"This is it," Milt said, drawing her along toward the ambulance. "Two weeks ago, they tampered with the brakes on your car. Last week, they broke into your apartment. And now you're dodging bullets in the middle of a wise-guy war. I want you out of Seattle. Tonight."

"Yeah, right. Where am I going to go?" Perrie asked.

"Alaska," Milt said, pushing her down to sit on the wide bumper of the ambulance.

"Alaska?" Perrie gasped. "I'm not going to Alaska."

"You're going," Milt countered. "And I don't want you to give me any grief about it. You were shot tonight and you're acting like it was just another day at the office."

"It was only a flesh wound," she grumbled, glancing at the bandage around her arm. "The bullet just grazed me." She grinned at her boss. He was not nearly as amused as she was. "Milt, I can't believe I just said that. This is like those guys that used to cover combat zones in Vietnam. I feel like I've finally earned my stripes. I'm not some wimpy Lifestyles writer anymore. I've actually been wounded in the line of duty."

Milt crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the rear door of the ambulance, sending Perrie a disapproving glare. "I've called an old friend of mine up in a little town called Muleshoe. Joe Brennan is his name. He runs an air charter service. I go fishing up there in the summer and he always flies me in and out. He owes me a few favors."