As the woman watched, still amused, Hailey drew something from a pocket in her skirt. It was the necklace that Nick had tried to take from the display case in the Tea Party Museum. Hailey had grabbed it from him, meaning to return it to the case. Whatever else she was, she wasn’t a thief. She was a mathematician, a card counter. And just maybe, a Mechanic.

She took the little bell that flashed like gold at the end of the necklace in her hand, and held it over the opening of the cannon.

The woman with the dark hair smiled, the blood from the wound beneath her ribs seeping through her fingers.

“It’s not a real cannon,” she said. “None of this is real. It’s history. It’s an illusion. And Katie—even if it was real, you can’t get fire from gold.”

Hailey smiled back at her.

“My name’s not Katie. And this isn’t gold. It’s pyrite. Any idea where it gets its name?”

With a flick of her fingernail, she shaved a tiny segment of the pyrite from the miniature bell. The second the flake touched air, the oxygen reacted with the iron sulfide in the pyrite and a tiny ember fluttered down into the opening in the cannon.

The woman with the dark hair had barely enough time to widen her catlike eyes before the packed charge within the refitted cannon ignited, the 40 mm signaling shell exploding through the barrel with immense force. The blast from the cannon hit the woman direct center, a cone of fire mangling the bronze eagle and crashing into the woman’s chest like a balled fist. She staggered backward, screaming, flames leaping from her clothes. Then she reached the opening in the railing behind her and toppled backward—plummeting to the water below.

*  *  *

Hailey’s ears were ringing as she rushed toward the two men lying on the deck. Nick was stirring, rubbing at his head where it had hit the copper tying post. She went to him first, helping him up to a sitting position, checking his eyes, the wound on his head and shoulder. He looked reasonably lucid, so Hailey turned quickly to the other man. He was in much worse shape. The FBI agent’s eyes were wide open, staring straight upward. His arms and legs were rigid, and his chest was barely moving as he struggled to breathe. His lips opened as if he was trying to speak.