Charlie’s cool front is gone. She sobs at Herkimer. She tells him that I don’t know. That she doesn’t know. It could be anywhere. Pink steam rises out of the ham rump. The hole makes cap-gun explosions of burning fat. The iron in my mouth starts getting warm. Azar wheezes in delight.

“Where is it?” Herkimer says.

My breathing is labored and wet and snarfing and nostrilly—cattle-breathing—and my nose floods with the apocrine stench of fear. On my cheeks, prolific tears dilute the blood. The world around me herringbones. Charlie wails that she doesn’t know where it is but swears she’ll do anything to get it if he will let me go. Herkimer doesn’t care.

“Where is it?” he repeats.

It is then—with the furnace-heat of the moment on me, with Herkimer’s hands on Charlie’s throat, with Charlie sobbing—that I see Azar’s joy pull up short. He presses a hand to his ear and speaks into his mouthpiece. He thinks I can’t hear, but I can. There has been a breach of security at the south entrance—the farthest point from here—but the cameras can’t locate the intruders. Manpower is needed. And with everyone else out in the city, searching for Starks...

Azar produces a throaty sparge of displeasure and signals to his men to come with him. Herkimer, however, is to stay and finish his work.

So much for that plan. It was a good try, Kong.

The iron is unbearably hot. I shake my head violently side to side, but it accomplishes nothing. Then, as the door closes and we are alone with Herkimer, Charlie bolts upright.

“All right,” she says, suddenly very businesslike. “Take it out and I’ll tell you where it is.”

“Tell me first.”

“If you hurt Otto I’ll never say one word about the sword, Jimmy. You know I won’t. Take it out now.”

Remarkably, he does. For the second time in as many days, duct tape is ripped from my mouth. I move my tongue around the vault of my mouth, making sure it’s still there. It is, but it’s not happy about it. It feels as if I’ve been gargling firecrackers.

“Talk,” he says.

“It’s here,” she says, downcast. “In this building.”

Herkimer brandishes the curling iron at me angrily.

“I’m not kidding,” she says. “It’s here. I stashed it when I came for my father.”

“Why would you bring it right to Azar?”

She looks at him as if his ignorance defies credulity.

“Because you’d never look for it here.”

He thinks about that for a second.

“Where exactly?”

“Room 331. Near the west entrance. Above a ceiling tile by the door.”

“Is it rigged?” he asks.

“No.”

“Is it rigged?” he repeats, again threatening me with the iron.