The woman stopped at the door to the boy’s bedroom. There was a key in the lock. Milton indicated that she should open it and stood back, covering her with the shotgun. She turned the key, pulled the handle down and pushed the door. It swung open. Milton waved her inside and, as she did, he reached around the door and found the light switch. He pressed it, waited for the bulb to flicker on, and then surveyed the room. There was a bed and a desk and a box of toys. Yamato was in bed, sitting up, a duvet pulled up to his neck.

“Yamato-tan!”

Sakura stepped around him and rushed across the room, sweeping her son up in her arms. Milton moved to the side of the room, where he could cover both the old woman and the open doorway, and gave Sakura and Yamato a moment. He did not want to dawdle, but he knew that Sakura had not seen him for months and a few seconds would make no difference.

“Stay,” Milton said to the woman.

“No,” she said, finding her English. “The fire.”

As if on cue, the alarm stopped.

“No fire,” Milton said. He nodded to the wardrobe on the other side of the bed. “Get in there, please.”

She frowned her disapproval, but her compliance was easily won with a quick wave of the shotgun. She opened the door and stepped inside, bowing down so that she fit beneath the metal rail from which a small collection of the boy’s clothes had been hung. Milton removed the rail, swept the clothes onto the floor, and then closed the door. He slid the rail through the handles, fashioning a makeshift bar.

Yamato was looking wide-eyed at him and what he had done to the woman who, Milton assumed, had been his nanny while he had been held here.

Milton looked back at Sakura and Yamato. “Is he okay?”

“He seems fine,” she said, an obvious relief in her smile.

“We need to leave,” Milton said. “Stay behind me again.”

He led the way out of the apartment and paused at the door to the stairs, straining his ears for sounds of movement or anything that might suggest that they were not alone on the floor. He heard nothing save the wail of a different siren from the foot of the building: a fire engine, he suspected.

He turned to Sakura. “Your father is on the street outside in a white van. Go down the stairs. Don’t stop—go straight outside. The lobby will be busy—there will be firemen and people who live here—and Takashi won’t be able to do anything to stop you. Don’t wait for anything or anyone. Just head outside, get to your father and go.”

“What about you?”

Milton opened the door and looked up at the stairs that led to the twelfth floor and Takashi’s penthouse.