In the moment Kazimi had given him, using reflexes he had mastered in the ring under Cap’s guidance, Lou pushed up from the floor and threw himself at Bacon. The rotund man did not have the reaction to respond. Closing the gap between them with startling quickness, Lou slammed his left fist into Bacon’s doughy abdomen. The pain rifling down his right arm went virtually unnoticed. The director of One Hundred Neighbors doubled over and splayed backward, flailing as he tried to regain his balance.

“Combinations,” Cap had preached. “Always think in combinations and never rely on one punch when you can get in a second.”

Lou struck again, this time hitting Bacon with a vicious jab to the chest, followed instantly by an uppercut that connected full force with the underside of his jaw.

How’s that for a fucking combination, Cap?

Bacon’s head snapped back. Lou saw a white tooth shoot from the man’s bloodied mouth and land on the floor. The cane tumbled away and bounced within Lou’s reach like a dropped baton.

With his eyes glazed over, Bacon actually managed to stagger to his feet, blood flowing from his flattened nostrils. Pivoting now, Lou delivered an explosive kick to his face. The older man dropped like a sack of sand. From the corner of his eye, Lou could see Harris cowering by the windows, and beside him, the screens.

Kazimi was crumpled on the floor, blood expanding from the wound to his chest.

Process.

Lou’s mind calmed as it so often did in the ER.

Easy does it … First things first … Deep breath … Focus.

The scientist was unconscious, but still breathing, albeit shallowly. That observation was step one. Step two was ensuring that the resilient Bacon was neutralized, but not so permanently that Vaill’s friends at the agency couldn’t use him to dissolve the Neighbors.

Ignoring the tearing discomfort in his shoulder, but aware of increasing light-headedness, he retrieved the cane and used it to help himself over to Bacon, who was on his back, moaning and dazed. Lou stepped on the heavy man’s meaty throat and retrieved the cell phone from his breast pocket. Then he fumbled with the ten-thousand-dollar cane, aiming the muzzle at the mogul’s thigh, at the exact spot where the spear of Cap’s femur had thrust through.

Irony. This one is for you, buddy.

“That’s enough, Lou!” a voice from the doorway cried.

It was a woman’s voice.

It can’t be.…

Lou whirled. The woman standing fiercely in the doorway looked like the demure, fascinating researcher he had been attracted to from the moment they met, but her eyes were ice.

The pistol held comfortably, professionally in Vicki Banks’s hand was pointed at Lou’s head.

“I told you that night in the Blue Ox I was damaged goods,” she said.