“It was caged with iron bars. I thought—”

“You thought wrong. I warned you. I’ve seen that thing at full strength. Iron or not, that cage wasn’t going to hold it.”

“I admire your talent for stating the obvious.”

“Where is it?”

For the first time Jack detected a trace of fear in Oz’s eyes.

“I don’t know.”

“Swell.” He glanced around. “Where’s that guy Hank?”

“Hank? What could you want with that imbecile?”

“Just wondering if he was bothering it again.”

The boss slammed a bony fist into a palm. “I thought he’d learned his lesson. Well, he’ll learn it now.” He turned and called into the night. “Everyone—find Hank! Find him and bring him to me at once!”

They waited but no one brought Hank. Hank was nowhere to be found.

“It appears he’s run off,” Prather said.

“Or got carried off.”

“We found no blood near the truck, so perhaps the young idiot is still alive.”

“He is alive,” said a woman’s voice.

Jack turned and recognized the three-eyed fortuneteller from the show.

“What do you see, Carmella?” Oz said.

“He is in the woods. He stole one of the guns and he carries a spear. He is full of wine and hate. He is going to kill it.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Oz said. “Going to get himself killed is more likely.”

Jack understood taking a gun, but not the spear; then he remembered the pointed iron rod Hank and Bondy had used to torture it. Neither would do the job. If Hank ever caught up with the rakosh, he wouldn’t last long.

He stared at the mass of trees rising on the far side of the parkway. “We’ve got to find it.”

“Yes,” Oz said. “Poor thing, alone out there in a strange environment, disoriented, lost, afraid.”

Jack couldn’t imagine Scar-lip afraid of anything, especially anything it might run across around here.

“On the subject of lost, alone, and afraid,” Jack said, motioning Oz toward his trailer, “I need to ask you something.”

Oz followed him until they were all but leaning on the battered wall of the old Airstream, out of earshot of the others.

“What?”

“Where’s Nadia Radzminsky?”

Oz’s eyes told him nothing, but the way his body tensed spoke volumes.

“Nadia… who?”

“The one Dr. Monnet paid you to eliminate. Where is she?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re—” Oz spotted the pistol Jack had pulled from his waistband.

“I have it straight from Dr. Monnet and his partners,” Jack said softly as he began unscrewing the silencer. “They say they hired you to ‘remove’ Douglas Gleason and Nadia Radzminsky, so playing dumb won’t cut it.” He lowered the barrel, pointing it at Oz’s right knee. “Now, I’m going to ask you again, and if you give me any more bullshit, I’m going to shoot you. Nothing immediately fatal, but it’s going to hurt like hell. And then I’m going to ask you again. And if I don’t get the truth, I’ll shoot you again, and so it will go.”