What was the crack the bitch made about American Hero? She deserved to get her eyes shoved down her throat for that. But Mollie could do even better. She hurled herself on the smaller woman. Pinned her to the ground—easy peasy, Mollie outweighed her, let’s hear the little shit make fun of her weight now—and clamped her teeth on Joey’s eyebrow ridge. She craned her neck. Flesh tore with the sound of a wet bedsheet ripping in half. Joey screamed. Mollie swallowed warm rubbery flesh stippled with bristles.

Joey’s remaining fingers tore a furrow in Mollie’s face while an ice-cold hand reached around from behind to clamp on her throat. Squeezed. Mollie couldn’t breathe. Needed air. Mollie clawed at the arm but couldn’t loosen its grip. The vise on her throat squeezed harder. The room got darker.

Thwip. A bee stung her in the ass. Thwip, thwip. Then two more followed suit, one in the small of the back and the other just under her left breast. The opportunistic motherfuckers.

Spinning shadows engulfed the warehouse. The last things Mollie saw before it all went black was a severed corpse arm falling free of her neck; Joey clutching one bloody hand to her chest and the other to a hamburger-raw spot over her eye while more blood sheeted down her face; and a gang of toe tags shambling through the portal as it closed on them.

The Russian goon leaned against the wall, his chair canted onto the back legs while he picked his teeth with a well-chewed toothpick. He gave Franny a casual nod of greeting reminiscent of the nods he’d received from his fellow cops who ringed the clinic. It bothered Franny that this criminal treated him with the same acceptance and familiarity.

Before he reached the hospital door it was opened and five men in expensive bespoke suits walked out. They all carried briefcases that cost as much as a year’s salary for a lot of people. Franny recognized two of them—they were the top criminal defense lawyers in New York and they only represented high-profile, high-dollar clients.

He couldn’t help but contrast his appearance with these men. Franny might have a law degree, but that’s where the resemblance ended. He was dressed in blue jeans and a T-shirt and instead of a twenty-thousand-dollar Lederer de Paris briefcase he carried a bag of take-out Chinese food. They probably thought he was the delivery boy.

And wasn’t that exactly what he was? He’d delivered Baba Yaga to New York. Delivered Babel. Delivered Mollie.

He almost tossed the food into a nearby trash can. Food he’d brought for the old lady because … He tried to analyze why he had brought her a late-night dinner and realized it was because he felt a strange bond to the old bitch and if he was honest he had no place else to go.

The back of the hospital bed was elevated and the old woman was flicking from news channel to news channel.