Slowly, Nabler started to turn his back to Harry, who had pulled a set of handcuffs from his jacket and reholstered his weapon so that he might grab first one arm and then the other to link Nabler’s wrists together.

The roof of the gray boxcar split along a center line, then the two pieces slowly retracted down the side of the car. From inside, a small red projectile rose up on an angle. Ready to fire.

A missile car.

And suddenly it launched with the swiftness of a dart thrown at a wall-mounted board, but it was not aiming for the wall, it was aiming for Harry.

He never saw it coming, not even when it struck him in the left eye.

“Jesus fuck!” he shouted, dropping the cuffs before he’d had a chance to attach one to Nabler’s first wrist and throwing both hands over his injured eye. “Goddamn it!”

Nabler moved very quickly.

He went into his pocket for the scalpel-like instrument that had served him so well, but this was not the time for a precise incision. Gripping the knife as firmly as he could, he drove it into Harry’s stomach.

Harry screamed. And continued to scream as Nabler thrust the knife into him a second time, and then a third.

Harry moved his hands to his gut, blood already seeping through his clothes and between his fingers. He looked down with his one good eye and saw what was happening to him. In a moment of clarity, realizing he had very little time to get out of this alive, he reached for the gun that seconds ago—had it even been half a minute?—he had tucked back into the holster at his side.

But when he reached for it, he discovered it was gone.

“Looking for this?” Nabler asked, waving the gun in front of Harry’s face, taunting him.

“You son of a . . .”

“You have a mighty fine bone structure, Chief. A true model train enthusiast will tell you the layout is never finished. You think you’re done, but then you go back to a completed section and think, I want to take another run at that. I think I can make it better. Kind of like highway projects. You think that stretch of the interstate is done, and then they rip it up and do it all over again. The layout is always evolving, always hungry, if you will, for new material.”

The train to which the missile car was coupled began to move once more. Soon it was keeping pace with all the other ones that continued to race around the room.

Harry was slowly sliding toward the floor, clutching his stomach. Nabler knelt, synchronizing his descent so his mouth stayed close to Harry’s ear.

“They will never find you. The parts I don’t use I will burn. I was careless with Tanner, but I won’t be with you.”