The dogs howled and scratched, but the door held. Already Evan could hear their handlers closing in, boots smashing through the wreckage of the dining-room chairs. They were steps away. He looked around. If he ran through the rear doors, he’d be an easy target in the bare expanse of the ballroom. The pantry was spoken for. The island provided scant cover.

There was nowhere to hide.

*   *   *

The two handlers burst through the doors and scanned the empty kitchen over the tops of their shotguns. The first man gestured at his partner to check the ballroom.

He waited, sweating, while his partner crept across and knuckled one of the swinging doors open. He turned back, shook his head. “Nada, Ángel.” Then he did a double take at the knife block, pointing at the empty slot. Both men’s mouths firmed.

The dogs howled and scraped at the inside of the pantry door. Ángel walked over and jiggled the locked doorknob. Then he opened a cabinet next to the pantry and slid the key off the bottom shelf. He tried to insert it into the keyhole, but it wouldn’t go.

Crouching, he studied the doorknob.

Taking his eyes off his partner.

Who was walking backward along the rear counter, his raised shotgun rotating between the sets of doors. He faced outward, sliding one hip along the marble ledge as he passed before the mouth of the wood-fired oven.

As he eased by, two arms appeared in the dark chamber of the oven behind him, reaching slowly through the bricked arch. A boning knife glinted in one fist.

The handler kept on unsuspectingly even as the hands crept forward on either side of his head.

The arms seized him in a lightning strike.

Evan braced the handler’s head forward so the slicing motion of the blade wouldn’t nick his own forearm once it passed across the throat.

It did not.

He crawled out of the dome of the oven, cradling the still-shuddering body. He kept the head tilted forward so the lungs wouldn’t make a sucking sound through the slit and alert Ángel, who was still squatting by the pantry with his back turned. Sliding soundlessly off the counter, Evan lowered the corpse to the floor.

Ángel rose, frustrated. “La pinche cosa está atascada.”

He turned.

A moment of horror.

He shouted for help even as he raised the shotgun. Evan ducked behind the island before the shot, realizing too late that Ángel had wisely aimed not at him but at the pot rack hanging above.

The crash was thunderous. Pans pelted down over Evan’s upraised arms, knocking the knife from his grasp. He spilled onto his back.