“’E will not be unkind to ’er, if you are worried. Not that she deserves kindness,” Archie growled. “And if she dies, and ’ero makes it to a doctor? I think it will ’ave been worth the risk, non?” Winslow cringed. “Winslow, you are exhausted. You should get some rest before we leave. If Travers went all the way to the dam, we ’ave at least an ’our before he returns. I will pack. You sleep.”

“No, no,” Houndstooth said, looking up at her with urgency. “I don’t want to sleep, Archie. And I don’t want to leave. I want to finish the job we came here to do.”

Archie looked at Houndstooth as though he’d claimed to hear a hippo singing a French lullaby. “What? ’Ounds-tooth, you . . . you aren’t in your right mind. I know you’re worried about ’ero, but—we can’t do it. We don’t ’ave any way to set off the bombs, and even if we did, we ’ave no way to know ’ow to do it, and even if we did know ’ow to do it, we don’t know when to detonate the charges, and—”

Houndstooth shook his head. “You’re wrong, Archie. For once in your life, you’re completely wrong. I’ve never felt so clear about what we need to do. We need to do the job. I promised Hero that they’d be a hero—that their name would be in children’s history books for decades to come, as the mastermind behind the bombs that cleared the hippos out of the Mississippi.” His eyes had taken on a wild gleam. “And we’re going to do it. We’re going to get Hero’s name in the history books, goddamn it. Whether the job is legitimate or not. When Hero wakes up, I’m going to go and tell them about how their plan worked. And as for the bombs?”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a slim black device: Hero’s detonator.

“They gave me this before they left to set up the bombs. ‘Just in case.’ Just in case something happened.” He laughed, a lost, wild laugh, and Archie’s brow furrowed further.

“’Oundstooth,” she murmured. “I ’ave to tell you something. I should ’ave told you before, but—” She took a deep breath, then rushed through her excuse. “But you ’ave spent so many years hating Calhoun, and when ’e died, it seemed like maybe you would be able to let this go. Like maybe you would be able to stop chasing revenge.”

Houndstooth looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “You sounded like Adelia for a moment there.”