“Explain. Yourself. Now. Because Jack I liked Rex and he trusted you and so did I so do you see where his fate and your decision not to tell me things I needed to know might affect our relationship going forward?”

This time she does not kick me or hit me. She just puts her hand on me. Just that. Like just the gentlest touch in this particular place on my skin. She puts—

Her fingers

All the way around my windpipe

So that they meet without breaking my skin.

I can feel the hole in my trachea pushing against the glue.

But most of all I can feel her fingers in a place they absolutely should not be and I know she can keep me still like this forever. I will do anything she says.

And then I realize I can’t breathe.

“Doc—”

(Disgust.)

“Can’t breathe—”

“Shit fuck fine.”

I can’t because I am bleeding into a lung somewhere. It has gone wrong and I wonder if she meant that. Did she mean that? I cannot talk. What am I if I can’t talk? I’m just meat.

Doc looks at me and at the strange shape of my chest where her boot went and she spits and drives an empty hypo into my lower ribs like WHAM and I feel the lung reinflate and I start to say—

But by then I do not have to because there is a dog barking.

Doc says:

“Tycho?”

But it is not Tycho. Tycho is back home safe and that is not his bark. That bark belongs to Marta, who belongs to Mrs. Van der Zee.

She is just over there like a hundred meters back down the road maybe a bit more.

Because that is where the trail of aniseed leads. I had the kids from the Kircheisen school create a very distinct track from the Kircheisen Palast hotel.

So that is where she came to when she went out for her walk.

Because a dog like that will walk through fire for aniseed. It is like cocaine for them.

Doc says:

“O shit Price—”

Mrs. Van der Zee says:

“MARTA! MARTA WHERE ARE YOU?”

I look at Doc and I say it again:

“I got a new client Doc and she told me to make a horrible plan and I did. Eiger’s gone down Doc there’s just two left. The dog—I’m real sorry about the dog Doc.”

“MARTA!” yells Mrs. Van der Zee. “MARTA WHERE ARE YOU O YOU ARE HERE YOU BAD GIRL WHAT ARE YOU DOING ALL THE WAY OVER HERE—”