Confusion and mayhem roiled through the ballroom, catching like a flame. Sark had someone by the lapel—a Somalian warlord?—his drawn-back fist restrained by one of the narcos. Dex staggered out leaving a jagged trail of blood, another narco at his side. Candy and Orphan M had appeared. They alone looked composed, leaning against the grand piano in the rear of the room, a nightclub act between sets. Candy caught Evan’s eye.

And she grinned.

Behind her beautiful teeth, there was hunger.

René gestured frantically for the guards to get everyone under control.

Evan sat calmly on his chair watching the show.

As the commotion built to a crescendo, Xalbador swapped out his less-lethal shotgun for an AK-47. Standing on a chair, he swept the barrel across the crowd. “¡Cállense!” he shouted. “Shut up!”

It took some prodding from the other narcos, but at last a version of order had been restored.

“I can sell him, box and all,” René said, addressing the crowd of bidders. “You can buy him and starve him to death, like a lizard in a jar. Savor every minute.”

“This is not our agreement,” Sark said. “I want it to be worse than this for him. I want access to his soft flesh.”

The Widow Lakshminarayanan made a throaty sound of agreement. The others voiced their displeasure.

“He has a gun,” the Somalian said.

“He’s locked inside a bulletproof box,” René said.

“What if he—”

“If he so much as opens that door, he’ll be looking straight down the barrel of an AK-47.”

Evan made eye contact with Candy in the back of the ballroom. Though he couldn’t be sure from this distance, it seemed she was enjoying herself almost as much as he was. The clamor grew, and René waded into the group to make assurances.

A debate raged over what to do. No simple solution was forthcoming. Evan had taken René’s biggest strength, his ingenuity, and turned it against him.

Lexan is bullet-resistant, impact-resistant, heat-resistant up to 212 degrees and cold-resistant down to 40 below. And that’s at normal thickness. The vault walls were a solid foot deep. René had thought he was building Evan a cage.

But he’d made him a suit of armor.

Evan relaxed in his chair. He wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon. And the customers were growing increasingly displeased.

“—sarin nerve gas through the rear vent,” the Serbian was recommending.

“How does that get him in hand?” Sark said. “We must hire a crane. Drop this box from a great height and shatter him free.”

The Hong Kong gangster’s translator was working overtime to keep his employer in the conversation. “—get the entire unit offshore on one of our crude-oil tankers. We can slide him off into the sea and watch him sink.”