In the elevator Amy tore a part of the boa off the robe and rolled it into a wad to absorb the fresh blood filling the inside of her mouth. Chino would find the mouthful of blood she had spat on the elevator floor when he decided it was time to come looking for her. He had said he would: I’ll settle with her later. And she was still thinking about that last momentary flicker of fear in his eyes, too. Looking at the dust-covered gob of spit and blood, he might feel anything from mirth to pity, but Amy doubted it would occur to him that she asked herself just a moment too late why she hadn’t let it fly onto the elevator control arm itself. Whatever it took to intensify his appreciation of his own handiwork.

If such a thing were possible.

By what she could find at the tip of her tongue, the cut was on the inside of her cheek, about three-eighths of an inch long, where Chino had driven the soft tissue into her incisor. The teeth themselves felt sound. She only had to keep the wound clean and relatively dry until the bleeding stopped, and she would be fine. She had good clotting time. Having his tongue in her mouth shortly before he had gone out of his mind was not terribly reassuring, given her suspicions about Gregory and him, especially Gregory. There was nothing she could do about that now, except go out of her mind herself — and she could do that very well without worrying about something that might be years down the road, if at all.

Could she believe Sam had gotten free again? Was she supposed to wait for him? Or, if she had the opportunity to drive away from the bank in the getaway car by herself, would that amount to abandoning him to the insanity to come? And what did she really know about that? What was the work downstairs that still had to be done? She was still too rattled to assemble her thoughts. Why was she so willing to weigh what she thought was one risk against what she thought was another when she knew her understanding of all of them was so incomplete?

Gregory’s expression became a mask of ill-concealed glee as he focused on the bloody boa and satin robe. “What is the American expression? ‘You forgot to duck?’”

“Suck an egg, lovestain, and get me a bag of ice.”

“Under the circumstances, I think you could be more respectful —”