We stared at each other angrily. Then Dox snorted. I did, too, and then we were laughing so hard that for a few seconds we couldn't speak. That's just the way it is. When the danger's past, hilarity likes to fill the void.

'Tell me one thing,' Dox said, moving the goggles so he could wipe his eyes. 'I couldn't be sure without the goggles on, but did I see you jump onto that man-mountain's back or what?'

I was still laughing. 'Yeah, I did. I just…'

He started slapping his thigh. 'Goddamnit, partner, that was no shit, straight up, the stupidest thing I've ever seen a man do in my life. I mean, if that boy had figured out all he had to do was flop down on his back, I'd be scraping you up with a spatula right now.'

'I guess I shouldn't have tried to choke him.'

'Yeah, no shit you shouldn't have tried to choke him. You should have just climbed up his body and levered him over by the head. A little guy did it to me once, and I'm lucky I'm here to tell you about it.'

We laughed more. When it subsided, Dox said, 'Thank you, man. I won't forget it.'

'Forget it? I'm worried you're going to keep reminding me of it.'

'Oh, you can count on that.'

'All right, come on, before they wake up again.'

'Partner, if they show any signs of wakefulness whatsoever, I'm going to empty my HK into both of them, reload, and do it again.'

'I know. So let's just finish up and get out of here. Can you carry those bags?'

'Yeah, I'm just sore. I don't think anything's busted.'

While Dox loaded the bags into the van, I retrieved the transmitter from under the Cadillac. Then I went back to the Chinese. They were all lying facedown. I turned them over on their backs and shot them each in the torso. I wanted it to look as though the sumos had ambushed them and then finished them off with the head shots I had started with,

I went back to the sumos. I could see they were breathing. With some trepidation I placed the HK in each one's hand and fired a few shots into the water. I was probably being more thorough than necessary, but I wanted gunshot residue on their hands. They still had the tranquilizer darts stuck in their necks and belly. I pulled them out and pocketed them.

Dox was already waiting in the van with the engine running. I got in and we left.

While I drove, Dox checked the cargo bag. 'Damn, partner, I ain't gonna count it now, but there is a whole lot of cash here.'

'Good,' I said, smiling. I wanted him to get a big payday out of this. He deserved it.

We found a deserted stretch of coast, parked, and waded in. We started emptying the duffels into the water and in no time were standing amid a small sandbar made of hundreds of thousands of pills. We kicked them around under the surf to make sure the salt water had plenty of access to dissolve them. 'Going to be some mighty jumpy fish in here,' Dox observed when we were done.

We drove back to the inn. I didn't want to stay, but if I left in the middle of the night it would have looked suspicious.

I parked in the same spot I'd been in before and shut off the engine. We stowed the goggles and the tranquilizer rifle, but kept the HKs close at hand.

'You think those boys will come back here?' Dox asked.

I considered. 'They might stop by, just to pick up their stuff and begin their new lives as fugitives. But they've got no way of connecting anything to us. They couldn't have made out our faces in the dark, and anyway, they never saw me inside the inn.'

We were quiet for a moment. Dox said, 'Engine's still warm, though. Ticking a little, you hear it?'

I nodded. 'That's a good point. All right, let's give it a little while to cool down. Better to know if they come back and notice.'

He patted the HK. 'And to be awake and armed.'

We sat quietly in the dark for about an hour. I was tired, and I knew Dox was, too. After the adrenaline rush of combat, there's a powerful parasympathetic backlash, and the body craves rest so badly that you can fall into a kind of stupor. That's why Napoleon knew the best time to counterattack was immediately after the battle, when the other side was still drugged with victory.

Gradually the engine's ticking slowed, then stopped. The little wisps of steam that had been coming off the hood disappeared.

'All right, I better get in,' I said. 'The staff will be up soon, and I don't want to be seen. Sorry you've got to spend

another night in the van.'

He patted the cargo bag and grinned. 'I'd say it's worth it.' Yeah, so far it had been. But it wasn't over yet.

Delilah sipped a cappuccino at Chez Prune on the Canal Saint-Martin, one of her favorite cafes in Paris. Ordinarily, a solitary hour here people-watching or with a book or just looking out on the water relaxed her body and emptied her mind, but today the effect was lacking.

The few days she'd spent in Manhattan after seeing Midori had been much the same. She'd visited the Neue Galerie and the galleries in Chelsea and shopped in the boutiques in the meat-packing district and run for miles in Central Park, but none of it had been any good. She was glad to finally abandon it and just come home, and now here she was and this didn't feel right, either.

The thing that was bothering her was the recognition that she probably hadn't needed to go to New York at all. At the time, she'd been frustrated and jealous and angry, and all of that had clouded her judgment. But now, having confirmed that Rain had killed Midori's father, and that the woman knew it, her perspective had changed. People didn't get over things like that, not even for the sake of a child. Midori might have felt 'confused' at the moment, and maybe whatever passion she had once shared with Rain had temporarily reignited when her former lover suddenly reappeared in her life. But shacking up with your father's murderer would be a betrayal of blood. It would violate everything Delilah understood of human nature, or at least human nature as it continually manifested itself in the violent little corner of the world from which Delilah derived.

Yes, she probably would have been better off just letting Rain and Midori realize on their own that what Rain had done would forever poison the ground they stood on. Probably over time they would have worked out some accommodation for the sake of the child, but that was to be expected and in itself wasn't undesirable. People had children from previous relationships all the time. They divorced and remarried but of course were still involved with their offspring. Why would Rain be different? And why would she want to deny him the opportunity?

So what had she gained by visiting the woman? Just some knowledge, really, but nothing that would change the route things were going to take anyway. And the knowledge came at potentially high cost: if Midori mentioned Delilah's stunt to Rain, he was going to be understandably upset. She didn't know where things would go at that point.

She was worried, too. The woman said Rain cried when he held his child. That was exactly the kind of thing Delilah had been afraid of when Rain left Barcelona. Afraid that it would cause him to gravitate toward Midori, yes, but also that he wouldn't be himself, that these new emotions would impede his ability to protect himself. She wondered what he was up to in Tokyo. Whatever it was, she doubted it was smart or well thought out.

But there was something else bothering her beyond all this. When she really thought about it, she had to admit that what she'd done was run an op on the man she professed to care about so deeply. At the first sign of trouble, her first doubts and fear, she'd defaulted to the professional tools and tactics that in their proper context divided the world into operators and assets, assassins and targets. Ironic, too, because Rain had gotten through to her precisely by bypassing her operator's persona and somehow accessing the person beneath it.