Whitman waited for Flix to nod and return to the entrance to the room, to stand vigil. Then he approached the door.

Wait, Charlie signed to him. I have a better idea. They had learned to sign together, thinking it would be a fun way to have sexual adventures in public without anyone being the wiser.

Okay. Let’s have it, Whit signed.

Charlie pointed to the girl, and after a brief hesitation, he nodded and stood back.

“Go,” Charlie whispered to the girl. “Announce yourself. Open the door, then get the fuck out of the way. Understand?”

The girl nodded, and Charlie let her go. She picked her way to the closet door, knocked on it. “It’s Beth,” she said, her lips close to the door. “I’m coming in.”

Her hand went to the knob, turned it, and she slowly opened the door. Before she had a chance to dance away, two shots blew her off her feet.

“Shit!” Charlie said as she and Whit turned on their portable spotlights, effectively blinding whoever was in there. She held her position while Whit dragged out two figures: another girl, also Asian, this one surely not more than eleven or twelve, and a male, aged around thirty-five. He had dark skin, a full beard, and was wearing what appeared to be a caftan. He was also wearing a pair of Tod’s loafers.

Whitman grabbed the gun from him—a vintage Walther PPK, as if this guy had been reading too many James Bond novels. It could kill someone just as easily as a modern-day handgun, witness Beth, who lay in a pool of blood with two holes in her chest—one through a lung, the other through her heart, judging by their placement. Whitman frisked him carefully, but he was clean. Charlie had hold of the preteen, peering at her in the beam of her light.

Now that he was disarmed, Seiran el-Habib himself was offering no resistance whatsoever.

“There’s been a terrible mistake,” he said over and over.

“You don’t know how lucky you are, shitbird,” Whitman said. “I’ve got some surprises for you back home in America.”

They were about to move out when Charlie said, “Whit, there’s something wrong here.”

“You bet there’s something wrong,” Seiran el-Habib said.

Ignoring him, Whitman dragged him closer to where Charlie stood. “What is it?”

She was shaking her head back and forth. “This girl … Whit, this girl’s American.”

“What?”

“It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” Seiran el-Habib said. “Beth was American, too.”

Flix, abandoning his post by the door, rushed at el-Habib. Only Whitman’s intervention stopped him from running full-tilt into the Saudi.

“Why the hell should we trust him?” Flix said from around Whitman’s shoulder. “All these motherfuckers know how to do is lie—lie and kill.”

Charlie pushed her goggles up on her forehead. “Whit.”