She swallowed. “I will cooperate. As much as I can.” Which wasn’t very goddamn much. As they would discover, soon enough.

Haupt held up the necklaces. They swung and glittered in the dim light filtering through the dirty, cobwebby windows, the sapphire N, her ruby A. “Tell me the secret of the necklaces,” he commanded.

She winced. “I don’t know. I only saw an incomplete draft of the letter you took, and it said that only the three of us working together, using our love of art, could open some sort of key, but we never figured out exactly to what. I’m sure she meant to tell us more before she—”

Crack, another slap. Her nose was dripping blood.

“Do not lie!” Haupt screamed. “I know you know more! We have researched you, Antonella. The bitch Contessa had you study Italian and Latin. You were being groomed to take over the search! Admit it! Why else would you study a dead language? Have you seen the map? Have you read it? What does it say?”

“No! I-I-I haven’t s-s-seen…” She floundered, stammering. Her imagination was failing her, utterly. How could she describe a passion for language and literature for its own sake to subhuman monsters? They wouldn’t understand it. They didn’t even know what beauty was.

John stepped up, with a businesslike air. His next blow knocked her chair off balance. It teetered on one leg, tipped. The room swirled as she tumbled backward, onto her tied hands. Crunch, wood splintered beneath her, and oh, shit, oh, dear God, her hands, oh, that hurt—

A long broken shard of wood from a piece of junked furniture had stabbed into the pad of her thumb. She wrenched her thumb loose from the shard, again, groping with her fingers feeling blood flow, slippery and hot. Felt for the shard. There it was. Her hand closed around it, and clenched.

Snap. She broke off the tip. Small, but hers. Hidden in her fingers.

John hooked the back of her chair and heaved her upright. “Let’s try that question again, Antonella.” He leaned down, the whites of his eyes showing all around his irises, and slid the point of his knife under her blouse. A few sharp jerks, and the fabric gave, gaped. Buttons flew, skittering on concrete.

He dug the knife tip under the crossed silk cord that held her bra cups together, flicked the knife. This time, he nicked her skin. Blood welled up, trickled down her belly. Blood dripped from her wounded hand, as well. She clutched the splinter, hard enough to hurt, to ward off the squirming nausea, the waves of shimmering dark faintness.

The knife gleamed in front of her wide, hypnotized eyes.

“Now, Antonella,” he said, companionably. “Let’s talk about art.”

“Right on Connemara Drive, four point two miles. Hard left onto a dirt road, half a mile after you cross a creek. Her signal’s three hundred meters ahead of me, perpendicular to the main road and ten degrees to the right. I’m leaving the car. Tell the cavalry to hurry the fuck up.”

“Dunc! Hold on! Don’t just—”

He killed the phone and took off running. Glad for whatever instinct had prompted him to put on brown and olive drab. Her signal had been stationary for twenty minutes. Plenty of time to hurt her, if that was their intent.

He felt cold, his emotions flat-lined. A virtual figure in a video game, sent out to earn points, defeat goblins, gargoyles, basilisks, defeat the evil sorcerer. If he scored enough points, and made no wrong moves. But in the vid game, the player’s life wouldn’t be gutted if he fucked up. There would be no “game over” flashing on the screen. No invitation to try his luck again.

One chance. One.

He ran onward, darting from bush to tree, until the building came into view, and then the car. He hoped there were no infrared alarms. He doubted it. This was an improvised, last-minute snatch. This place wasn’t their turf. He hoped.

The building looked like an abandoned, crumbling barn. He spotted the first sentry, and sank down into the bushes. He recognized the tall black guy from Lafayette. Duncan dropped to his belly and slithered around the guy, keeping beneath his line of vision. When he spiraled in closer, the guy was turned, pissing against a tree. Good.

Duncan leaped up behind him. The guy spun around, mouth dangling, dick still in his hand. He sucked in air to yell, and took the heel of Duncan’s boot to the point of his chin. Crunch.

He toppled, eyes rolled back. Hit the tree, slid to the ground on his ass, slumped. Penis still drooping out of his opened pants.

Voices. He followed them, slithering toward the hushed murmur in the clearing around the barn. It was the blond dickhead from Lafayette, smoking a cigarette and talking to a stocky shorter guy. The blond guy had bruises beneath both eyes. Duncan crept closer, recognizing his reedy, whining tone before he could make out the words. He pulled out a couple of drugged throwing stars.

“…with this kind of shit! It ain’t worth the fuckin’ money to get treated like fuckin’ dogshit,” he bitched. “All I say is, they better let me take my turn with the bitch after John works her over, because I mean to teach that cunt nobody messes with Curtis, man—ay!”

His monologue choked off to a shriek. He pawed at his buttock, and held up the throwing star Duncan had lobbed. “What the fuck?”

The second guy howled. A star protruded from his shoulder.

Curtis spun, and sprayed the woods with bullets from his Uzi. “Who the fuck are you, you fuck?!” he shrieked. “I’ll waste your ass!”

So much for stealth. Curtis was wavering, toppling. The other guy went down even faster. The points of the stars were treated with a high-power, quick-acting sedative. He waited for some reaction from the barn. Sure enough. The door opened. A man poked his head out.

“What the fuck is going on?” he snarled. He saw the unconscious men collapsed on the ground, and his face twisted with disgust. “Fucking jerk-offs,” he muttered, and lifted his automatic pistol.

He pumped a short burst of bullets into them both. The sprawled bodies jittered on the ground and then lay still.

Duncan stared through the foliage. The men were torn apart, lying in pools of blood. The Fiend lifted his gun and sprayed the woods in a wide arc. Bullets sliced through grass and leaves, right above Duncan’s head. Splinters of bark and earth flew, bullets thudded into the ground.

The Fiend laughed, hysterically. “Fuck off and die, shithead!” he howled. “It’s your turn, now! I got her! Go fuck yourself!” Another spray of bullets punched into the forest, rat-tat-tat-tat.

The guy ducked back inside. In the distance, police sirens started to wail. Duncan flew like a bolt from a crossbow across the carnage in the clearing and flung himself at the door. “Nell!” he bellowed.

“Duncan?” she called back, just as bullets pumped through the door.

One of them grazed Duncan’s hip like a lick of flame. Another caught his pocket above his knee, ripping the fabric. She screamed, a wrenching cry that curdled his blood.

He sprinted around the building.

“They’re coming,” John said to Haupt. “We have to cut loose. Curtis and Turturro are meat. Didn’t see Gerard. Probably dead, too.”

“They’re coming? Who is coming? How did they know where to come? How is it possible?” The man’s voice rose to a shrill, querulous squawk. “You stupid, incompetent—”

“You want to berate me on our way to jail, or save it for later?” John snarled back. “Move it!”

He slashed the ropes that bound Nell’s arms. Her arms fell free, numb and tingling. John yanked a handful of her hair, jerking until she cried out. “Be good, bitch,” he hissed. “Or I’ll gut you like a steer.”

He hoisted her up and flung her over his shoulder, letting her head and arms dangle down over his back.

Something banged against the door. “Nell!”

Duncan. Oh, God. Oh, God. “Duncan?!” she yelled.