EN ROUTE WITH THE TEAM. CONFIRMING COORDINATES, BUT WE LOOK TO BE LESS THAN AN HOUR OUT.

VAULT ABOUT 2 B BREACHED. THEN AUCTION WILL COMMENCE.

STALL IT. WIN THE AUCTION. ORPHAN X IS NOT TO LEAVE PREMISES UNTIL I ARRIVE.

HURRY.

*   *   *

The air tasted recycled. Evan tucked the edges of the plastic trash liner into the shock collar, making sure the buffer hadn’t slid out of place. He could hear his breaths off the Lexan walls, vibrating his eardrums, an inside-a-snare-drum effect. The folding chair pressed hard and cold into his lower back. The bidders milled about, their focus directed at him in passing, as if he were a fish tank in a crowded lobby. So many of his enemies were right in this very room. And yet they constituted only a fraction of those who wanted him dead.

With some fanfare the explosives arrived at last, a wooden shipping crate stickered with a hazmat logo and carted in by three narcos. Assim directed them to place the crate in the back of the ballroom behind the rows of folding chairs. His motor skills might have deteriorated, but at the sight of the explosives he snapped into his body differently, all simmering intensity and curt directives.

Again Candy and Evan locked eyes across the rows of chairs. She pursed her lips. Let them pop open. A good-bye kiss.

This time Evan actually found himself smiling back.

After assessing the crate, Assim walked over to the Lexan vault and measured the door, a pencil protruding from his lips. He ignored Evan, focused only on the task. Then he walked back to the crate and ordered the men to unload it. They lifted out a spool of hundred-grain detonating cord. Thin plastic tubing packed with pentaerythritol tetranitrate, det cord explodes at four miles a second, giving the effect of simultaneous detonation. A linear precision cutting charge, it can be wrapped around a concrete pylon or contoured to any outline of choice, the best bet in the world of explosives to get that Wile E. Coyote–shaped-hole-in-a-wall effect. It is ideal for rock-carving work, building demolition, dock-pile removal.

But it is best for breaching.

Before Assim was done, it would knock the Lexan door off its hinges and Evan off his feet, leaving him exposed to a firing squad of AK-47s.

The explosives and gunpowder amassed in the ballroom could take out a small militia group.

Evan had a handgun.

To be precise, he had six bullets in a Kimber .45. Given what he was facing, it wasn’t much of a weapon.

He heard Jack, perennial teacher and father, laughing at him from beyond the grave. That Kimber’s not your weapon. You are the weapon. And your finger’s the safety.

As a child, as an operator in high-threat zones, as an impostor in the ordinary-life world of Castle Heights, he moved alone. For as long as he could remember, loneliness had been his companion. But never had he felt as isolated as he did now, locked in a transparent box, surrounded by people competing for the right to slaughter him.