A muscle stood out in Theo’s jaw. “You gonna do what I tell you, or you gonna stay and chat?”

It wasn’t quite right, and I thought Theo knew it. Did Dusty?

He lowered the gun. “Sure thing, boss,” he said, and went out into the hall. Theo let his breath out.

From the hallway door, I heard Dusty say softly, “Hey, Sonnyboy!” and I turned and saw him framed in the doorposts, sighting down the gun at Theo. I had just enough time to take the step that put me in the line of fire.

I heard three shots as Theo knocked me down from behind. Dusty wavered in the doorway and dropped the gun. I saw his face, an interesting mix of bafflement and annoyance, before he fell into the hall and was still.

Myra Kincaid now stood at the door to the next room. She wore a raincoat loosely belted over, I suspected, nothing, and her dark cherry hair fell untidily in her eyes. She looked relaxed, half awake, and held a pistol in a negligent grip, settling as I watched to point at the floor. Santos, I thought, with an upwelling of hysteria, where were they finding all these damned handguns?

“My brother was a mad dog,” she said. “But I expect I’ll miss him, anyway.” She sounded appallingly like Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. “Tom’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” I said before Theo could perjure himself. I slid out from under him, and he sat up with a lurch. I got to my feet and managed not to sway too much. The pain in my shoulder was like a blunt-ended hammer that shook my whole body, and it felt as if adrenaline had raised blisters on my nerve endings. But all the while, my eyes never left Myra. The gun made her master of the room; she didn’t behave as if she knew it. “I hope you don’t feel you have to avenge him.”

“If Tom couldn’t kill you, I surely couldn’t. Dusty, not being very bright, hadn’t figured that out.”

Innocuous voice, but something out of alignment in it, in the very air. I looked into her eyes and knew she was a good deal more than half awake. Why had she just killed her brother? What was I supposed to say? Here was a cobra, out of her basket. What could I possibly play to make her dance?

“Worecski’s gone,” I said at last, “and Albrecht’s finished. The market for bravos and assassins just dried up. Where will you go now?”

Her eyelids lifted a fraction. “You’ll let me go?”

Attitude, I thought, gathered mine around me, and replied, “I think you’d better.”

“I want safe conduct.”

Good grief, who did she think I was? What did she think was happening here? “Going fast will be just as effective. Never coming back will be even more so.”

Myra shook her head and smiled. “I’ll do that. Honey, you haven’t got a clue, have you?”