“I’m not here to kill anyone,” I said.

“Liar,” said Cherie. “He said you’d disappear us.”

“Perhaps we should let them,” said Peggy.

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” said Cherie and her knife nicked my throat by accident—thank God it wasn’t sharp.

“Yes, we have,” said Simone. There were tears on her face, and when she saw me looking at her she turned away.

“Who said we would kill you?” I asked.

“This man,” said Cherie.

“Did you meet him in a pub?” I asked. “What man? Can you remember what he looked like?”

Cherie hesitated and that’s when I knew.

“I can’t remember,” she said. “It’s not important what he looks like. He said that you worked for the government and all the government was interested in was eliminating anybody who isn’t normal.”

What could I say? I was pretty much here to tell them the same thing.

“What color were his eyes?” I asked. “Was he white, black, something else?”

“Why do you care?” shouted Cherie.

“Why can’t you remember?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” said Cherie and relaxed her grip.

I didn’t wait for her to remember she was supposed to be holding me hostage. I grabbed her wrist and twisted her knife hand up and away. The rule for fighting a person with a knife is to start off by making it point away from you and then ensure that it hurts too much to hold on to. I felt something crack under my grip, Cherie screamed and dropped the knife. Peggy tried to hit me but I was already twisting away and she ended up smacking Cherie in the face.

“Stop it,” yelled Simone.

I shoved Cherie over toward her sisters. She stumbled into Peggy and they both tripped on the edge of the mattress and went down. Peggy came up spitting like a cat.

“Wait up,” I said. “I’m trying to do you a favor here. There’s a real evil man out there that you don’t want to be messing with.”

“You should know,” spat Peggy. “You work for him.”

“It’s not our fault,” said Cherie dejectedly. Simone sat down beside her and put her arm around her sister.

“I get that,” I said. “I really do. But whatever you think about my governor there’s another total evil bastard out there and by the way—why the fuck are you still here? Everyone knows where you live.”

I figured I might just have another ten minutes before Nightingale and Caffrey turned up to demonstrate the military version of the hard target entry, followed by a unique close-up view of their search-and-destroy procedures.

“He’s right,” said Peggy. “We can’t stay here.”

“Where can we go?” asked Cherie.