The prisoner in the next cell down was older still. A thin, hatchet-faced character, Caitlin could see him straining to make her out in the gloom. He’d pinned himself up against the bars, as if he might push himself through them by sheer force of will. As she moved further down the long room, he listened intently, hoping to fix her position. Once she was within arm’s reach, he lashed out with one hand, hoping to grab her. Almost absent-mindedly, she slashed off two of his fingers with her combat knife before moving past his cage while he shrieked in shock and outrage.

Lupérico was in the third cell. He too was standing near the bars, attempting to pick her out in the gloom. But unlike the man she had just cut, her target remained out of reach, about a foot back behind the safety of the dark iron bars.

‘Stand back, Lupérico,’ she said in French. ‘I am here to get you out.’

She saw him jump with surprise.

‘You are French, then? But why . . . why would you come here for me?’

‘To get you out. Now stand back,’ she repeated, again in French rather than her native language. All the better to muddy any trail by convincing Lupérico’s cell-mates he’d been released by the agency of some meddling European power.

The former jailer did as he was told, carefully shuffling backward to the rear of his cell. Caitlin had a quick look around on the floor, on the walls, for any keys, but found nothing. She moulded a small lump of plastic explosive to the lock and retreated to the end of the hallway, warning Lupérico to shield himself.

The tiny blast still made her ears ring in the constricted space, and caused the prisoners to cry out in distress. Well, most of them anyway. The guy whose fingers she’d just hacked off had other things to worry about.

Her man was disoriented and greatly unsettled, but he responded as best he could when she ordered him – still in French – out of the cell and up the stairs. They had to get away now, as quickly as possible.

‘What about us?’ cried one of the other prisoners.

She did not answer him.

9

DEARBORN HOUSE, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

The colour did not entirely leech from Sarah Humboldt’s face when Jed sidled up to her in Kip’s office at the end of the Garage Cabinet, to gently take her by the elbow and ask for a few minutes of her time. But she did lose a few shades of colour. She had blind-sided him on the detainee question, after all, and he’d spent quite some time polishing his reputation as a man one did not fuck with.

‘Mr Culver,’ she said, making an effort to keep her voice neutral, ‘can I help you?’