Mannie ignored me and swung the table again. This time, when the legs of the table struck the glass, the mirror gave way and burst apart, raining shattered glass shards into the observation room.

Then, Mannie tugged his hands to the side, parallel to the top of the table, and, seemingly with no effort at all, snapped the manacles free from the chains.

With impressive grace, he vaulted through the opening and into the adjoining room. The agent who’d been seated at the control panel drew his Glock, but Mannie responded by simply yanking and twisting the man’s forearm and relieving him of his weapon.

I heard the crack of bones and the agent cried out in pain and clutched his arm.

I followed Mannie through the empty pane and positioned myself between him and the door to the hallway. “You’re not leaving here, Mannie.”

I’d left my gun with DeYoung, but he wasn’t taking any aggressive action with it.

“Drop that gun, Mannie,” I said.

“That’s not going to happen.” Mannie pointed with the barrel. “Back up and no one gets hurt, no one dies. But if you try to stop me, it’s gonna get messy.”

“You don’t want to do this.”

“It’s already done.”

The agent whose arm hung limp and useless clenched his teeth in pain. The spiral fracture in his forearm had left his broken radius protruding cruelly through the skin.

Instead of aiming the agent’s gun at me, Mannie targeted the man with the broken arm. “Maybe you don’t care if you die, Agent Bowers,” he said to me. “But do you care if he does? Get out of my way, or I squeeze the trigger.”

I stood my ground. “You’re never going to make it out of this building.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about. Phones and weapons on the floor in front of me. Now.”

When I was slow in complying, he slid his finger to the trigger. “Do it.”

“Please,” the agent begged. “Don’t let him kill me.”

I set down my phone and nudged it toward Mannie. DeYoung gave up the weapons, and he and the lawyer kicked their phones to him as well. I kept my automatic knife in my pocket.

“Collect the phones,” Mannie said to the man he had the gun pointed at. “I want yours too.”

With his foot, Mannie slid the guns out of reach beneath the console, then stuffed the phones into his pants pockets, tore the landline phone off the wall, backed up to the hallway door, and opened it.

Holding the gun steady in his right hand, he swung his left wrist mightily down, smashing the manacle that still encircled it against the doorknob with enough force to rip the knob from the door. Then he ducked into the hall and closed the door behind him, sealing us inside.