“How much? Just tell me. Please.”

“Why did you have to kill her?” Rune asked viciously.

Schmidt leaned forward. “Why do you think I killed her?”

“Because she tried to blackmail you into giving her the part.”

Schmidt muttered angrily, “And you're going to do what? Go to the police with that story?”

There was something about the sweep of his skittish eyes that warned her. Twice now he'd glanced at an adjoining table. Rune followed his eyes and saw that two men were sitting in front of plates of fancy sandwiches that neither had touched.

Jesus, they were hit men!

Schmidt'd hired hit men. Maybe the skinnier of them was the man in the red windbreaker. They didn't give a shit about being in public or not; they were going to rub her out right here. Or follow her and kill her in an alley. Blasting away at her as if she were Marlon Brando in The Godfather.

Schmidt swung his eyes, forced them back to her face. The two men shifted slightly.

“Now, tell me how much you want.”

Oh, hell. No more games, time to leave.

Rune stood up.

Schmidt glanced at her pocket, the tape recorder. His eyes were wide.

The heads of the two hit men swiveled toward her.

Then: Schmidt pushing back, sliding to the ground, yelling, “Get her, get her!”

The diners gasped and pushed back from their tables. Some ducked to the pavement.

The hit men stood quickly, the metal chairs bouncing to the stone ground. She saw guns in their hands.

Screams, people diving to the pavement, drinks falling, salads spinning. Lettuce and tomatoes and croissants flew to the ground.

Rune sprinted to Columbus Avenue and ran north. She glanced behind her. The hit men were closing in. They were in great shape.

You two assholes are surrounded by witnesses! What the hell are you doing?

Her chest was screaming, her feet stung. Rune lowered her head and ran full out.

At Seventy-second Street she looked behind her and couldn't see them any longer. She stopped running and pressed against a chain-link fence around a vacant lot, trying to fill her lungs, her fingers curled tight in the mesh.

A bus pulled into the stop. She stepped toward it.

And the hit men, waiting behind a truck, ran toward her.

She screamed and rolled to the ground, then crawled under a gap in the chain link. She staggered to her feet and sped toward the building across the lot. A school.

A vacant school.

She ran to the door.

Locked.

She turned. They were coming at her again, trotting, now looking nonchalant, trying to be inconspicuous. The guns in their hands at their sides.

Nowhere to go except down a long alley. There'd have to be an exit to the street. A door, a window, something.