Head low, eyes focused on legs, she placed a playful, drunken hand on the guy’s chest and, before he had a chance to speak, pushed past him into the apartment. She tossed her jacket on the couch as if she belonged there, and kept right on going for the kitchen, talking the whole way, as if the man who’d opened the door was her friend or lover or roommate, as if the second guy didn’t exist, babbling nonsense about the night in a psychological maneuver so brazen, it bought her a few confused seconds and let her cross the room and round the corner for the kitchen.

She opened a cupboard and slammed it shut in an ostensible drunken search for a water glass. The man who let her in trailed behind her. She met him with a breadboard to the face and followed him to the floor with a needle to his arm. She depressed the plunger, rammed her shoulder into the wall, faked a cry for help, and was up and moving toward the second guy before he reached her.

He rounded into the kitchen.

She swung that board with every pound of force she could muster.

She clipped him beneath the jaw.

His head whiplashed back, and he went down, crumpling like a test-drive dummy in a high-speed head-on collision. She stomped his balls and got no response, pulled handgun from thigh holster beneath her tunic blouse and paused, waiting, listening.

The radiator rattled.

A siren in the distance wailed.

She stepped aside, pieing the corner into the living room and then into the hall, quick checked the bedrooms, and ascertained that the place was empty. If this were one of Clare’s setups, there’d be a body or two rappelling in through the balcony doors right about now, maybe another through the kitchen window, and after she took them out, she’d still have to fight her way down the stairwell to get free.

But this wasn’t Clare.

She shoved the handgun back into place.

The absence of more made it hard not to feel cheated and sad, and for a brief moment she actually missed Clare and wanted to punch herself in the face.

She tugged industrial zip ties from a pocket and dragged the second guy deeper into the kitchen. She’d clipped him hard. He wouldn’t need anything else. She secured his hands to the radiator, grabbed his partner’s shoulders and pulled him in close, pushed the two of them together so they were nice and snug and nearly mouth to mouth, and secured the second set of hands. She checked pockets and shoes, looking for electronic devices and identification, and used the punch knife to slice shirts and pants to check for tattoos or distinguishing markings, and for all that trouble, the only thing she got was the apartment key.