He spoke in the cold, flat voice that made the hairs prickle along my spine. “She must’ve cut her way under the fence and come in when I was out talking to the boys. I’ll get them to go take care of her car when we’re done here.”

“We’re not done here yet, Dresberg,” I announced from my nook. “Too much success has gone to your head, made you careless. You should never have tried to kill me the same way you did Nancy. You’re getting soft, Dresberg. You’re a loser now.”

My taunts didn’t move him. He was a pro, after all. He lifted his left hand from his coat pocket and pointed a large gun—maybe a Colt .358—at Louisa. “Come out now, girlie, or your sick friend here will be dead a few months before her time.” He didn’t look at me—a message that I was too trivial for direct attention.

“I listened to you and Art out front,” I called. “The two of you agreed she’s as good as dead already. But you’d better get me first, because if you shoot at her, you’re dead meat.”

He swung so fast, I didn’t have time to drop before he fired. The bullet went wide as the shot boomed in the cavernous room. Ms. Chigwell crouched, white but stern, on the floor next to me. Unbidden, she took her keys from her sweater pocket. While she moved to one side of our protective vat, I slid to the other. When I nodded she darted around the end of the vat and hurled her keys at Dresberg’s face.

He fired at the movement. From the corner of my eye I saw Ms. Chigwell drop. I couldn’t go to her now. I got behind Dresberg and fired at him. The first shot went by him, but as he turned to face me I got him twice in the chest. Even then he fired two more rounds before collapsing.

I ran to him and jumped on his gun arm with all my force. His fingers loosened on the revolver. Jurshak was moving up on me, hoping to wrestle Dresberg’s gun away before I could get to it. Fury was riding me, though, choking the breath from me, covering my eyes with a hazy film. I shot Jurshak in the chest. He gave an enraged cry and fell in front of me.

Chigwell had stood next to Louisa’s stretcher throughout the fracas, his hands flaccidly at his side, his head hunched into his coat. I went over to him and slapped his face. I meant at first just to rouse him from his stupor, but my rage was consuming me so that I found myself pounding him over and over, screaming at him that he was a traitor to his oath, a miserable worm of a man, on and on, over and over. I might have kept at him until his body joined Jurshak and Dresberg on the floor, but through the haze I felt a tug on my arm.