“Then get ready. We’re out of time. You guys are professionals, right?”

The answer to that was a rousing chorus of silence.

“Look, just do your jobs.”

He disappeared, leaving behind a limo full of shocked silence. Plum turned to Quentin.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Quentin said. “We could walk away.”

Giving up now would be hard. He’d be set back months, and that would hurt. But this was more risk than he’d signed on for.

“Oh come on,” Betsy said. “It’s just a job.”

“That’s my point. No way is this worth getting killed over.”

“Just breaking the bond alone, I’m putting us at about a fifty-fifty shot,” Plum said. “Let’s think about that for a second.”

“Let’s think about this.” Betsy leaned across from the seat opposite. She smiled as if she were confiding a wonderful, intimate secret. “If you leave now? I will hunt you down and kill you. I will never stop till I find you. I’ve given up too much, and I am too close. Do you understand?”

She stared at Quentin, not blinking.

“Not even remotely.” Quentin didn’t blink either. He didn’t like being bullied. “Why do you care? What are you close to? It’s only money.”

“Do you know what’s in the case?”

“No. Not even the bird knows what’s in the case.”

“I know what’s in the case,” Betsy said. “And I’ll give you a fucking hint: this isn’t about money.”

“Maybe you could be a little more specific.”

“You want to know what’s in the case? Freedom.” She held his eyes for another long second, then sat back against the banquette. Quentin looked over at Plum, then at Stoppard, who’d gone back to picking at the insides of the watch. The prospect of starting over again at the beginning, finding some new way in, was not appealing. If they could just get it right and get it over with he could move on with his life.

And there was the Chatwin connection, he couldn’t let that go. And there was Alice. Who was he trying to fool? He wasn’t going to walk away. He was in this much too deep already. He opened his eyes. Betsy was still watching him.

“You’d better believe,” he said, “that if this starts getting ugly, I’m going to be the first one to bolt. Then maybe I’ll hunt you down. Think about that.” Quentin put a hand on Stoppard’s shoulder, who looked up at him as if he were waking from a dream. “Better give me that back for now. You can look at it later.”

Stoppard nodded and closed up the watch and mutely handed it over, though his eyes followed it until Quentin tucked it back into his jacket.