The hardest thing—no, second hardest—I ever did was get up from beneath Silvina’s balcony. The agony of it, the painkillers Vilcapampa’s men had given me wearing off. The bullet wounds burning eyes that stared out from my body. Every time they blinked, I winced. And they wouldn’t stop blinking.

The way I landed, half in the bushes, half on concrete, bruising ribs, destroying my shoulder, some weakness in one ankle. Fractured fingers. I felt like a corpse trying to rise. Like the ground was pulling me down again.

Yet I did rise—and quickly. I ducked or rolled under the awning to the walkway, so they’d have to come down to end me. Helped that they stood up there for a while trying to get a bead on me. It was dark. I’d bumped my head, and my night vision was for shit. A wash. A blur, like I needed glasses. I tried to remember the area, headed in the direction of a wooded park.

The fall had gotten me free of one restraint, but the other had gotten twisted into the snapped-off plastic arm of the chair and looked like a weird, gangrenous bone dangling from my wrist.

My ankle wasn’t right. I kept tripping, feeling something give. I didn’t yet know how bad my leg was, or maybe what did the deed was walking on it after. I remember thinking these might be my last moments. Panicked that there was no time, no time left.

A person jogging past ignored me. I remember that, too. The utter banality of it. Was I clueless or was he? Except only one of us was a hulking, shambolic figure awkwardly clutching a dead salamander.

“Drunk,” I muttered to ward off evil. “Drunk,” I kept muttering when someone appeared on the sidewalk. I didn’t look back, kept waiting for a bullet in the back of the brain.

I reached the park. Heard sounds of pursuit, but something else had happened. Sirens rose, but not for me. No, of course not. The police weren’t looking for me. Yet. Vilcapampa’s men were. But I heard nothing that sounded like they were closing in. Even confused, disoriented, I found that odd. Hillman didn’t seem the type to give up like that.

At the back of the park was a shallow, overgrown creek littered with plastic bags and bottles and used needles. A sharp smell like chemicals. I followed it until the onrushing pain caught up and I lost consciousness.

I woke at dawn to a stray cat licking my face. I nudged it away, so thirsty I drank the rancid creek water. I knew I needed medical help. That parts numb felt as bad as the parts I knew were going to kill me. Soon enough, I’d be bruised all over.