“Let’s hope you’re smart enough to cooperate. If you do, everything will stay precisely this pleasant.”

“Pleasant,” Evan said.

“Pleasant is relative as well,” René said. “Do you have a name?”

Did he really not know who Evan was, or was this an act? Evan watched him closely for any tells. “I do.”

“What is it?”

“Evan.”

“Your last name?”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

René remained several steps back, safely tucked behind Chuy, who was still dumbly holding the stainless-steel domes. The cart, pushed up against Evan’s legs, had the added advantage of pinning him to the bed. Evan took a croissant from the tray and set it on the bedspread beside him. He removed the napkin from the slender bamboo ring. Dex watched him carefully, flat eyes peering out from their doughy recesses.

René said, “I don’t know who you are, but we saw the wreckage you left behind at that house in Fullerton. Were you a client of Hector Contrell’s?”

His tone, Evan noted, held no judgment.

“No.”

“You had a business conflict with him?” René asked.

“No.”

The steel gaze appraised Evan. “You’re too skilled to be an angry relative or the like,” he said. “So what were you there for?”

Evan stared at him.

Realization dawned, excitement asserting itself across René’s features. “You just didn’t like him. I respect that.” He wet his lips. “Who are you?”

Evan stared at him some more.

René said, “Your driver’s license appears to be real, but it’s not. No other identification on you. Your fingerprints turned up nothing.”

Evan rubbed his thumb across his finger pads, only now noticing the faintest trace of blue ink among the whorls. Another violation.

“We looked at the registration of your 4Runner,” René continued. “The vehicle is owned by a shell corp in Barbados. We kicked over that rock and found that shell corp held by another in Luxembourg. I have a feeling that the more rocks we kick over, the more rocks we’re going to find.”

Evan picked up the bamboo napkin ring, peered through it like it was a telescope. It was about two inches long, which was long enough.

“I think I understand,” René was saying, “this thing you’re playing at.” He circled a hand at Evan.

Evan slipped the bamboo ring over his forefinger and middle finger. The hollow stem fit snugly, locking the knuckles.

Turning the fingers into a weapon.

“I’m not playing,” Evan said.

He leapt to his feet and drove his sheathed fingers through Chuy’s eye, straight into his brain. Blood spurted over the white linen. As Chuy tumbled back, quivering in his death throes, René recoiled in horror.

Two dogs, four guards, and counting.