"There," Jack said, grinning. "It's better when you help." Which was the line that Bacall gave Bogart in To Have and Have Not.

Sara didn't smile. "I've got to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back, okay?"

Jack watched her walk unsteadily toward the toilet. A sinking feeling was beginning to envelope him. This was playing too much like his second marriage.

He took off his jacket and poured himself a whiskey. He could hear water running in the bathroom, then silence. Maybe she was fixing her hair or makeup. Maybe she was sitting on the commode, reliving the death of her friend.

Jack lit a cigarette and thought about the first time he'd seen violent death, when his company was caught in a German counterattack down Highway 90 between Avellino and Benevento, and he remembered that the experience hadn't made him feel very sexy, either.

Damn, he thought. This had the potential to be a very depressing night.

The bathroom door opened and Sara gave him a brave smile as she came into the room. She'd fixed her hair and makeup and looked quite different from the scarecrow who'd sat opposite him at dinner.

Jack stubbed out the cigarette and walked toward her. He was about to take her in his arms when a young hunchback in a leather jacket walked right through the wall behind her, grinned, and lunged forward with a hand thrust out like a spear.

Without thought, Jack picked Sara up, made a half turn, and tossed her gently onto the sofa behind him. The air burned with Jack's golden light. There was the shrieking sound of a buzz saw hitting a spike buried in a tree, a sound that brought Jack's hackles erect and sent a surge of adrenaline pouring through his body. Jack turned back to the intruder and saw a look of shock on his young, pale face. Jack flipped a fist at the little man, a gentle backhand strike, and in a flare of yellow light the leather boy was flung against the bathroom wall with a bone-breaking crash. The boy dropped to the floor like a rag doll.

Sara screamed as she turned and saw the assassin. Jack jumped involuntarily.

"I got him, Sara," Jack said. She'kept on screaming. He heard the sounds of her struggling to her feet.

Jack stepped forward toward the leather boy and leaned over him. The boy's eyes snapped open and his hands sliced out, flashing as if they were knives, and when they connected with Jack there was a flare of golden light, the screaming buzz saw noise, and bits of Jack's clothing flying like the fur of a fighting cat.

Jack didn't even feel the blows.

He picked up the boy by his leather jacket and held him at arm's length. The hunchback, as if he couldn't believe what was happening, kept hacking at Jack's arm, cutting the paleblue Givenchy shirt to ribbons.

Apparently, the little guy hadn't ever come up against an invincible opponent before.

"Kill him!" Sara's voice. "Jack, kill him now!"

Jack thought not. He wanted to knock this character out and find out who he was working for. He aimed a slow open-hand slap at the boy's head, one that would maybe put him out for a few hours.

The slap went through the hunchback's head without connecting. His other hand, holding the boy's jacket bunched up under his chin, was suddenly holding nothing at all. A dazed, triumphant grin passed across the boy's face as he drifted-drifted slowly, not dropped-toward the floor.

"Jack!" Sara wailed. "Jack, oh JesusJesusJesus."

An edge of fear grated across Jack's nerves. He flicked out punches, one-two, and both passed through the boy without touching him.

The boy's feet touched the floor. His grin twisted and he dove forward, his body passing right through Jack, heading for Sara.

Jack spun and went after him. Sara was stumbling backward toward the door, holding her shoulder bag out protectively. The boy's hands sliced forward, hacking the bag in half with a ripping noise, like heavy cardboard torn by a buck knife.

Jack grabbed the hunchback's leather collar and jerked back with all his strength. The boy went insubstantial before his feet quite left the floor, but Jack had managed to impart a certain momentum and the boy sailed upward and back. Jack saw the pale face redden with fury as it disappeared through the ceiling. The lower part of his body remained visible as it shot back, then down.

"JesusJesus!" Sara was clawing at the hall door, trying to unlock it. "Oh, fuck!"

Jack had worked it out. The boy had to become substantial in order to use his buzzsaw hands. He was most vulnerable when he tried to kill.

It had been so much easier when all he had to do was grab cars full of fugitive Nazis and turn them upside down.

Sara got the door open and disappeared screaming into the hall. The leather boy soared back, his head appearing now, and Jack swiped at him a few times just in case he tried to turn himself solid again.

The hunchback kept sailing, went through the wall into Jack's back bedroom. "Hell," Jack said. He contemplated going through the wall after him and decided against it-he might get hung up partway through. He ran for the bedroom door and smashed through it in a bright flash of light. He saw the leather boy solid and on his feet, racing for the wall that led to the corridor outside. The assassin went insubstantial and dove through the wall head-first.

"Hell," Jack said again, reversed himself, ran for the hallway door.

The boy was just ahead of him. Sara wasn't visible, had probably run out onto the atrium balcony by now.

"Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" soared up from the ground floor.

Jack accelerated, swung a fist, missed the back of the boy's neck by inches. The momentum of the punch threw Jack off course and caromed him off the wall, and the boy drew ahead.

He must have heard Jack behind him, because as he reached the atrium balcony he turned, grinning his crazed grin. One buzz saw hand, just for demonstration purposes, sliced a chunk of concrete out of the balcony wall.

Jack was still moving forward with considerable momentum. He planted his feet in front of the kid and used his forward motion to torque his upper body forward, his right hand punching out toward the hunchback's chest with every ounce of strength he possessed.

The assassin went insubstantial.

The power of Jack's punch carried him over the balcony rail in a blaze of golden light.

She ran out the door and down the hallway because the stairwell had been closing in around her, about to grow an arm that would slice her in two. The terror was a solid lump in her throat.

She had no idea where she was going. A distant part of her mind observed that just now panic was her friend. Because she had no place to go, logically, and panic was better than despair.

I should just go back and offer my throat, she thought wildly. But her legs kept pumping.

And the wall did sprout a hand, and it did fasten about her wrist.

She screamed. It was as if her heart was exploding and the sound came out her mouth. She slumped in terror.

"Get up," a voice said, soft but peremptory. Accented. She looked up into the face of the old man who had accosted her after she bolted Tachyon's breakfast. Instead of his Mickey Mouse shirt he wore a lime-green leisure suit.

"Get up," he said again. "You know now what I told you is true."

She let him haul her to her feet, nodded. There were no words in her. She had lost her shoes.

"Then come with me. I'll take you to a place of safety." She came.

As the Marriott atrium yawned out below, Jack had all the time in the world to think of how stupid he'd just been.

He tumbled, arms and legs flailing. Balconies spun past. Vertigo and terror tugged at his belly.

He gave a yell, just to give people below a chance to clear out.

"Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" floated upward toward him.

It occurred to him to do something to stop the tumbling. Jack stuck out his arms and legs like a skydiver and tried to stabilize and slow his fall. His stomach lurched again as his body took a wild swing, but then the technique took effect. His vertigo lessened. The ruins of his Givenchy shirt fluttered out behind him like a flag, the remains of the sleeve snapping out little sonic booms close to one ear. His punch had carried him clear out into the atrium, there didn't seem to be a chance of guiding his fall so that he'd hit a balcony rather than fall all the way to the floor.