Something dark crossed the woman’s face, but it was followed by a cruel smile. “Then I will have more questions to put to you. I only hope you will answer easily. Once I put bullets into your knees and elbows, any place else I shoot will have little effect. I’ve seen it happen that way.”

“I’m sure you have,” Tesla said with a grunt. Her eyes scanned the room around her, looking for something she might use as a weapon: a lamp, a phone, a phone cord, a chair. In truth, Tesla did not know how much torture she could endure before betraying what she knew. She supposed it was a good thing she knew so little. Apparently Charley was no longer in the suite; she had impulsively slipped out. Well, good for her. But she would be back. That was what Tesla knew or perhaps assumed. Charley would, sooner or later be back, and what would she find upon her return? Tesla’s dead body, and this assassin waiting?

Jana held up her silenced pistol. “You do not get to ignore my question without me destroying your kneecap, so I hope you are prepared to answer me. Where is Charlotte Middleton?”

Tesla forced herself to grin broadly. “Why, she’s right behind you.”

The ploy ought not to have worked, indeed it would not have worked, had Tesla not looked so supremely satisfied when she spoke the words. All of this woman’s training and instincts—and Tesla did not doubt they were considerable—failed in the presence of what seemed to be real human emotion. She turned and looked.

Though it caused her the greatest agony she had ever known, hoped she would ever know, Tesla sprang to her feet and slammed into the woman with her good shoulder, ramming into her like an American football player. She struck the assassin just below the ribs, and the pain was fierce in itself, but it reverberated throughout her body and felt as though someone had thrust a hot poker into her bullet wound. Tesla cried out, but so did the assassin.