Dornick ignored Elton’s quavery apology. “I want those negatives, Vic.”

He ordered his crew to come into the brambles after me. “Alive: I want to search her. I don’t want her dead … yet.”

The men crashed down the bank and into the thicket. I fired and hit one of them but missed the other two. And then they had me by the arms, and I was kicking, shooting, but the end was ordained at the beginning. They held me while Dornick ran his hands inside my clothes, squeezed my nipples.

I stomped hard on his instep and kicked back at the kneecap of the man behind me. Both men cried out. They weren’t used to pain. I broke free, but Dornick grabbed me before I could start running. He wrenched my gun away and tossed it into the underbrush. An underling held me while Dornick slapped my face. Left side, right side, left side.

“You watch too many old Nazi flicks, George.” I said. “That’s always what Erich von Stroheim does.”

He hit me again. “You’re not as smart as Tony always claimed you were. Where are the pictures?”

“Freeman has them.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Slap.

“I put them in a FedEx box on Armitage,” I said.

“Take the shack apart,” Dornick ordered. “She wouldn’t even leave them with a messenger from Cheviot. She sure didn’t put them in a box.”

I had shot one man; the second man was holding me. Dornick held a gun on Elton while the fourth man dismantled his home. Elton gave little cries of misery as the walls were peeled apart, plastic bags torn open, his nest of sleeping bags ripped apart. It took a good twenty minutes, but the black garbage bag was gone. Petra must have grabbed it on her way out, determined to save Peter’s hide.

Dornick was angry now. He held his gun on me, and I could see the red triangle of the laser sight in the dark toying with my chest, my head, figuring where best to shoot so as not to hit his lackey.

I went limp in the man’s arms, took a breath—the kind Gabriella always wanted, down, down to my tailbone, shutting my eyes: “Breathe, don’t think. Breathe, don’t think”—and began my mother’s signature aria, “Non mi dir, bell’idol mio” (Say not, my beloved ).

Dornick’s gun sounded, and I flinched. I couldn’t help it, ruining Mozart’s fluid line, thinking instead of breathing. He’d missed.

“You goddammed asshole, you—”

The grip on my arms loosened. I broke free. I kicked hard against the kneecap, rolled to the ground, rolled toward Dornick. Elton had seized his legs. Dornick was flailing about, trying to get an angle where he could shoot Elton and not hit himself. He was stronger than the homeless man, but all that meant was that as he thrashed about he dragged Elton with him.