Chino hit her again, this time with his palm, on the other side of her face, hurting her worse. She kept her balance this time, letting him see her eyes, seeing a hint of fear suddenly cloud his eyes, fear of the consequences of the stupidity of his acts. It lasted only a moment. He feared her? He knew he’d fucked up. Fucked himself. A split-second of sanity that proved his madness. He dared not forget the moment. Without hesitating, she turned and started to walk toward the ramp. She heard a sudden rustle behind her.

“Ah, let her go,” Chino growled. “I will settle with her later. You people still have to get out of here. Six o’clock is going to come up quickly, and there is more work to be done than you realize.”

Merrill moved closer to the car as the two men who had arrived in the taxi continued to argue in the middle of the road. He wasn’t sure he recognized them; he had seen his captors only a few minutes before they had stuffed him in the trunk. He could hardly hear their voices, much less identify them as those he had heard from the trunk, but the men’s body language made their meaning clear, after they had looked in the trunk and then quickly had drawn their guns and checked under the blanket behind the driver’s seat.

Merrill had watched most of this from deeper in the woods, where they had not been able to see him. One did not want to return the car to Chino. Merrill knew this because the man had drawn his finger across his throat in the classic slitting gesture. And he did not want the other to use the cell phone in the car to report to Chino that Merrill was loose again, and armed. Merrill knew that because the man had pulled the handset out of the other’s hands.

Merrill had had to move forward, lugging O’Malley’s bag of toys, going as quietly as he could while the sound of the Mercedes’ idling engine muffled his movements. He had to get as close as he could; the men he’d shot already hadn’t really tested his shooting skill. Or lack of it. The drainage ditch gave him all the cover he needed. The men were at the front of the car, out in the open, their guns in their hands. Merrill pitched his voice to a high falsetto.

“Ro-sa-rio!”

The men ducked down, back to back, guns drawn. Merrill pursed his lips and made the chirping sound the fat whore had made in the back of the battered old taxicab he had hailed at the airport.

“Ro-sa-rio!”