She stopped playing at once and stared at him with those dead-fish eyes. “When you get me out,” she whispered, “will I still be able to play solitaire?”

* * *

Charlie smiled agreeably.

Cutler, still clutching his aching knee, said, “How did you—”

“Oh, and by the way, boss,” Whitman cut in, “I’ll expect ten grand to be deposited in my account by end of business today.”

“That was just a love tap,” Charlie said in that equable, almost bland, voice that belied what seethed like a volcano beneath her shiny surface. “I could just as easily have shattered your kneecap.”

Cutler eyed her as if he had just discovered a coral snake under a rock. She went back to the buffer, drew out a small plastic bag, which she brought and handed to Cutler. It held two chilled gel packs.

Cutler waved it away. “I don’t need anything.”

“Unless you want your knee to swell up to twice its size you do.” She led them to a wooden bench, where Cutler sat and reluctantly put the gel packs on his knee. Whitman sat beside him, while Charlie stood between them.

Cutler pointed to the floor.

Charlie sat down, cross-legged, as if she might always be this obedient. Whitman had to laugh silently at that, also at Cutler’s need to regain a measure of control over the situation.

“How in the world did you get those weapons through the metal detector?” Cutler asked now.

Charlie glanced at Whitman, who dipped his head. “Go on. Show him.”

She handed him the knife and the push-dagger. Cutler studied them, turning them over and over in his hands. “They’re too light to be metal.” He peered down at her. “What are they made of?”

“A ceramic composite that’s three times as hard and a third as brittle as ceramic alone.”

He frowned. “I know all the cutting-edge manufacturers worldwide and I’ve never seen anything like these. Where did you buy them?”

“She didn’t,” Whitman said.

Cutler grunted his frustration. “Explain, please, and not both at once.”

“I made them myself,” Charlie said. “I make all the weapons I use myself. Those items I do buy, I modify until they’re no longer recognizable.”

“You modify them. Why?”

“So they can do what I want them to do,” Charlie said. “Which is a lot more than what the manufacturers had envisioned.”

He snapped his fingers. Having recovered from his shock, he was all business again. “Example.”

“You’re holding part of one,” she said. “My mobile.”

“You mean it functions as a phone, as well?” He recited a nine-digit number with an area code that, so far as the public was concerned, did not exist. He watched her like a hawk as she rose, stepped back four paces, and punched in the numbers one by one. A moment later, his mobile rang.

“Put the mobile down, face up,” Charlie said.

“What?”

Whitman rose. “Do what she says, boss.”

Cutler set the mobile down on the bench.