Franny changed into the clean clothes the woman had brought. Fatigue dragged at every muscle and his eyes felt like they’d been washed with sand. He settled in a sagging chair to wait, pistol in his lap. He checked to make sure he didn’t have a round in the chamber in case he fell asleep again and dropped the damn thing but the grinding pain from the gunshot wounds kept him awake. Almost two hours later the woman returned with a short, fireplug-shaped man with pronounced epicanthic folds and iron-grey hair.

“Someone is hurt,” he said. He spoke English with a decided British accent.

Franny nodded. “My, my grandmother. She’s … poisoned. A snake. I think she may have a broken shoulder, too.”

“Big snake,” the vet said.

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“Let’s look.” He moved to Baba Yaga’s side and studied her left hand where IBT’s tongue had given her a glancing blow. It was horribly swollen, blackened with red streaks sweeping up the arm toward Franny’s makeshift tourniquet. The vet drew in a hissing breath between his teeth. “This is bad. How long ago did you apply the tourniquet?”

Franny rubbed at his forehead. “I don’t know. Twelve, fourteen hours?”

“The circulation’s been cut off for too long. The arm needs to come off.”

“Shit.” Franny ran an agitated hand through his hair. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“It was the right thing. Old lady like this, the poison would certainly have killed her.”

“How many questions are there going to be at a hospital?” Franny asked.

“A lot. I can do this. I amputate legs off cats and dogs, but we have to go to my office.”

“How much?” Franny asked.

“Five thousand—American.”

“Could she survive to get to New York?”

“Probably not.”

“Will she survive the surgery?”

“Maybe.”

“Not a lot of certainty either way.”

“She’s got a better chance if we get the arm off. I’m going to need help. Are you squeamish?”

“I’ve watched autopsies,” Franny answered.

“Then you’ll probably do.”

It took a day to fix the hydraulic cutter. Mollie kept a periodic eye on Baba Yaga’s apartment in the casino. Nobody showed up, though, so after Dad and Brent managed to clean spilled lubricant from the compressor valves and replace the shorted wiring, they were ready to try again.

As Mollie’d expected, the safe was welded to beams inside the closet walls. But the cutter, designed for chewing through broken farm equipment, made short work of the studs. Mollie had managed to get the safe half pried out of the wall when the shrieking started.

The cutter was so loud that at first she thought it was her imagination. Then she heard it again, so she momentarily switched off the cutter in order to listen. She leaned out of the closet, cocked her head toward the portal to Idaho.