“What the fuck—I told you, no interruptions—” He was still searching for words when someone fired from the doorway, six shots, evenly spaced. He lived for several seconds, mouth working, eyes blank and puzzled. He reached out to Ming, where she sat frozen in the chair.

She moved her foot back an inch, out of his grasp.

When he fell sideways to the carpet, Ming turned to look over her shoulder.

“I got here as fast as I could,” Paolo said. He looked blankly apologetic as he came toward her. “I’m sorry I took so long.”

“That’s quite all right,” she said. There was something broken in her now, something not even Paolo’s violent intervention could fix. All the fear was out now, battering down her defenses, sweeping her screaming with it.

So much fear. She looked at her hands, gripping the arms of the chair, and forced them to let go; they trembled violently and would not stop.

“Paolo, you know they’ll never let us leave here alive,” she said. “You know that.”

“Yes, ma’am, I know.”

She looked at him with a sudden quiet feeling of tenderness, her ugly rabid dog, and reached out a hand. He came over to stand next to her.

Outside the window, clouds boiled like gray cotton. It was a long way down, she knew.

She took the gun out of Paolo’s hand and calmly shot him three times in the chest. He looked vaguely surprised, but there was no pain. She sat down next to him cross-legged, while the thick carpet swallowed his life, and put the muzzle of the gun under her chin.

With her eyes closed, the cold metal felt like the kiss of a dead man.

Chapter Thirty-eight

Velvet

The clothes Parriott had sent were second-rate. Velvet stood in the neon blue bedroom and stared at her image in the mirror, turned right, turned left, and shook her head.

“Just wear them,” Robby said wearily from where she sat rubbing her temples. “For god’s sake, if you’re going to do it, get it over with.”

He’d sent over a leather skirt and jacket and a full-body Spandex bodysuit, but the leather was cheap and the jacket was too tight and the Spandex felt scratchy. Velvet stripped it off and tossed the stuff on the bed, fished her own Spandex suit out of her suitcase, and yanked it on. No underwear. This was a no-underwear kind of guy.

If he wanted leather, she’d give him leather. She put on the fringed jacket, the butter-soft skirt, and modeled for the mirror.

“Much better,” she said. “First-rate. Worth the money. Hey, Robby, when I get back, you want to go out to lunch or something, just for old times’ sake? Kind of a goodbye?”