Chango, was I going to go quietly to the slaughterhouse? My side had the gun. If my side was still on my side. I wanted out of here. She wanted… something.

“I don’t understand,” I said in as conversational a tone as I was capable of. I wasn’t sure what I was hoping for, besides a change of subject. “Why did you decide you had to bring me in?”

Tom paced slowly to the other couch, and sat down. He was at right angles to me now, and his right knee brushed my left one. A smile grew on his face, in increments. “Because Mick said you were a good fit. He and Franny must have told you all the fun we used to have? I wanted a taste.”

“Take a bite of this, then,” said Frances calmly. She raised the pistol in both hands, firing position. The silencer had a perfectly round black eye that looked into mine.

I wanted to scream. I moved instead. Before I knew I meant to, I found myself rolling over the back of the couch and breaking for the door that Cassidy guarded. The gun made an ugly, flat sound. Cassidy reached the door first — and yanked it open. “Go!” he mouthed. His hollowed-out face was twisted with anguish, like a man facing the medusa. I’d have to take him with me. Otherwise Tom Worecski would dissect him alive, and Cassidy knew it. I grabbed his arm as I hit the door.

It turned into a snake, strong and contrary. No, still an arm, but twisting through mine, jerking it up until my shoulder joint blossomed with fire. His other arm closed around my jaw. He giggled next to my ear.

I couldn’t see him, but I could see the part of the room I’d just left. Frances stood with her gun not quite aimed at us, wearing a near cousin to Cassidy’s expression. Dana, half crouched on the sofa, stared wide-eyed at us. Albrecht had pressed back against the wall, his hands over his face. Mick was still in the office door, one arm reaching, as if he could stop whatever was about to happen. And Tom was sitting, empty, on the couch.

Empty.

Cassidy’s voice said, beside my head, “I told you, Franny, I could snap the kid’s neck. Wanna watch?” Then he sucked air in through his teeth, as if something struck him.

I pulled and pulled, and only hurt myself. I didn’t stop trying to pull away. If I could have torn off the arm he was holding, I would have.

“You know what I want, you say,” Frances said in an unattended way, as if she’d sent the words to her lips and tongue with no instructions for tone of voice. “After all these years — all this overly long and self-indulgent life — there’s only one thing I want. And the most unnatural circumstance on the face of God’s creation is that I might be here, with a gun in my hand and you in front of me, and still be denied that one thing.”