I was too wired to close my eyes, even though I was aching with exhaustion and fear. I looked over at Chet Dobbis, who had hung his head, slumped in his seat, and started crying-turning his face away from me when he caught me watching him. With every ounce of whatever strength I had reserved, I twisted and turned my wrists, pulling the silken strips as far apart as I could.

Kehoe and Mona had gone back to sitting against the headboard of the bed, fidgeting and whispering to each other, until it must have been after two o'clock in the morning. I looked over when I saw her stand up and start to approach, probably on a command from Kehoe to check on Dobbis and me. I stopped wriggling and held my hands in place behind me.

My heart began racing faster as I saw that Mona was holding the revolver.

"You don't need that with me," I said. "I'm too scared to make trouble."

"You've caused more than enough for me and Ross already. Look what you've started," she said, waving her hand with the revolver over her head. "It's your fault we're trapped in here."

I needed to calm her down as badly as I wanted to calm myself. I had no idea whether Mona Berk had ever held a gun before and I was even more frightened to think we were in the hands of an amateur.

"Ross seems to know what he wants to do," I said, hoping she was annoyed enough to tell me what was in store.

"Maybe he did before he started drinking," Mona said, looking over at him to see whether he was paying attention to her. He had gotten up to stretch and splash water on his face from the wet bar across the room. "I should never have waited here for him. I should have left all this dirty work up to him to get done."

"So how come you trusted Ross when you first met him?" I asked tentatively. Maybe I could talk her down. Maybe I could convince her that she had so much more to live for than he did. "I mean, wasn't he working for your uncle?"

"Like that would have mattered to me? Like I thought anybody in the world would have had an allegiance to Joe Berk for longer than the first paycheck?" Mona asked me. "You know what Joe did to me? You people who think he didn't deserve to die a miserable death, you ought to know this. He paid Ross to break into my old apartment-even my office-to hook up some of his surveillance cameras so the mean old prick could know what I was up to. Not naked, not in the bedroom. Joe just needed to know who I was hanging out with, who I was seeing and what I was doing. So he'd have a reason to fuck me out of my inheritance. Any reason. That's how I met Ross."

She was seething now at the thought of the old family history and I continued to try to shake off the chill as I shivered in the face of her rage.

"What do you mean?" My wrists ached and I could feel the blood accumulating above them as I stopped moving my fingers.

"Ross felt bad for me. Listened to Uncle Joe talk all the time about how he was going to screw me out of my share of the money. Came to me and told me what was going on, that he felt guilty about being the one to set up the works-you know, the electrical stuff. Told me what Joe was doing to me and to Briggs, too."

So Ross Kehoe double-crossed Joe Berk. And did it with the perfect enemy to make it a win-win situation for himself. Could Mona really think Ross was in love with her, and could she possibly believe he wouldn't cross her, too, when the right time came? His contempt for the Berks was palpable.

"I could have killed the old bastard myself. This was all I needed," she said, patting the gun barrel with her left hand.

I hated guns. I'd been around them a lot in all the time I'd worked in the office and had friends in the NYPD, but I'd never wanted to use them. I watched Mona's hands carefully, hoping to figure out if she was familiar with this one. I tried to tell if she knew it was loaded or not, whether it had a safety, and how to use it. If she was into guns, then I'd still be at a great disadvantage, even if I could finish loosening my bonds to try to take her on.

I vowed to myself to start going to the range to learn to shoot the very next time Mike or Mercer had to be there, if I got out of this alive.

"Why did Ross break into my building last night?" I asked her, trying to distract her from the weapon she was playing with so casually. "Why was he coming after me?"

Mona Berk didn't answer.

"Really, I had no idea he'd done anything wrong. I-I still don't know why he's doing this now," I said. I could kick myself for not figuring it out earlier, but I hadn't.

"Rinaldo."

"Rinaldo Vicci?"

"Yeah. He called me this weekend," Mona said. "He thought he'd made a mistake while he was talking to you."

"Me? He never said anything to me." A sense of desperation had crept into my voice. It was way too late to convince her I didn't know anything bad about Kehoe until the confrontation just a few hours earlier. Now I couldn't look at him and think of him as anything else except a killer.

She glared at me. "Rinaldo knew that Ross had told the police he'd never met Talya. That he didn't know her. But Rinaldo said he was alone with you at the Met the other day. He said he told you that he had seen Ross in Talya's dressing room."

"No, no. Vicci never told me he saw them," I said, stammering a denial.

"Well, he thought he had told you too much about Talya and Ross," Mona said, dismissively. "Rinaldo was just trying to suck up to me, like he was doing me a favor by covering up that connection. But when I told Ross about the conversation, it made him crazy."

"Why? I just don't understand that."

"Ross figured he was a few steps ahead of the cops. He didn't think they were onto him at all. It was you he was worried about after Rinaldo made that slip."

"But-"

We both turned our heads toward the staircase because we were reacting to the very same noise. It was a low whirring sound at first, and if Mona hadn't looked that way, too, I wouldn't have been certain that it wasn't just a tingling in my ears, the result of my exhaustion.

But Mona heard it and seemed frozen in place.

I started to get up on my feet and she pushed at me, screaming Kehoe's name.

The noise was steady now and it was coming from the heavy metal door at the bottom of the stairs.

"I told you not to move, dammit," Mona said, slapping me across the face with her left hand. Her shouts scared the whimpering Chet Dobbis, who rolled onto the floor and tried to crawl behind his chair.

Kehoe was back at her side within seconds. "What? What the-?"

"It's the door," Mona yelled. "What's happening?"

I strained at the bonds, certain that the silk ribbons were shredding into strips and that I could slip my hands out now.

Kehoe reached for the gun and Mona threw her right arm back in the air, wildly discharging a bullet.

"You lied to me!" she shouted at her lover. "You told me no one could find us here."

My eyes flashed between the staircase and the gun in her hand. I could reach the bottom of the steps in seconds, but she and Kehoe- and the revolver-would get to me before anyone could get the door to open.

Whoever was on the other side of that door-theater workers who'd figured out this might be a place to explore, or better yet, the police-would be in greater danger if I drew the gunfire in their direction. On the other hand, I had no idea how they would be armed and how I could protect myself, Chet Dobbis, and them-if I didn't alert them to the fact that our captors had a gun.

Mona had gone into a panic, confirming my realization that she and Kehoe were not expecting any allies to come to their aid. I watched as she went running away from the door-from the approaching enemy-and farther into the large domed room. Kehoe ran after her, trying to overtake her so he could get his weapon back.