And then the light exploded around her, as if her world suddenly became an overexposed video in which she heard her voice shouting, screaming, with glaring light everywhere as she spun into a wild 180-degree pan, stopping at a fire hose and chemical extinguisher recessed in the wall. Her hands pulling open the glass door, grabbing the canister and turning, swinging it at the man, watching him duck but not soon enough, catching him on the side of his head, watching him try to stumble in one direction as Kanessa ran in the other, following him, beating him on his head, his back, beating him down, and then bludgeoning him until—

“Alicia! Alicia, my God, you’ll kill him!”

She felt hands grabbing her arms, restraining her, but she didn’t want to stop. She wanted to kill him. She wanted him dead.

“Alicia, please!”

Raymond’s voice. She stopped struggling. She looked down at the bloody man, cowering and whimpering beneath her. And suddenly she wanted to be sick. She stumbled back but did not release her grip on the fire extinguisher.

“Call 911!” she gasped.

“Why?” Raymond said. “What happened?”

She glanced at Raymond and saw the shock and concern in his eyes. He’d never seen her like this. Of course not. No one had. She’d never been like this. And it wasn’t over. Blood lust still pounded in her ears like a war drum. Alicia didn’t know who was more afraid—the creep on the floor, Raymond, or herself.

“Get the cops!” she said. “I want this perv out of here and locked up! Now!”

“Okay!” Raymond said, backing away, “but just be cool, okay, Alicia? Just be cool.”

“And find Kanessa Jackson. Have one of the nurses check her over. Make sure she’s all right.”

As Raymond moved off, she turned back to the creep. The sick feeling waned as rage flared again.

“And you,” she said through her teeth. It took all her restraint to keep from taking a few more swings at him. “You stay right where you are, or so help me God, I’ll kill you.”

7.

After leaving Jorge—they’d come to an agreement on how they’d approach Ramirez and on Jack’s split of the proceeds—Jack walked east, crossing Fifth Avenue into Murray Hill.

The area reminded him a little of his own neighborhood, with its brownstones and occasional trees. But Murray Hill was a lot older. Robert Murray’s farm used to sit here back in revolutionary times. And when Jack’s neighborhood was still “the country,” this area here between Park and Fifth had been home to the highest of New York’s high society.

Murray Hill seemed to be changing. Jack noticed a fair number of the stately old brownstones sporting discreet plaques engraved with Whatever, Inc. Through the windows he could see bustling offices belonging to architects, designers, and boutique ad agencies.

He found the address Alicia had given him and checked it out from the other side of the street. A three-story brick front nestled in with others of its type on Thirty-eighth Street, but even without the unsightly plywood sheets bolted over the windows, this building stood out. It had a yard.