Piper tried to keep moving up, but I knew she wouldn't get far. Sue-Ann started whimpering as soon as she perceived one of us straying.

"Mmm-nnn. Nnnnn."

The sound seemed to come from deep in the dog's chest, pleading, pathetic.

Piper turned around. "No."

Sue-Ann dipped an ear like she hadn't quite caught that. "Mmmm?"

Yves Pomeroy and I stood in a line with Sue.

The wheeze escaping Piper's lips could be heard ten yards away, over the far-off limestone drip.

We divvied up weapons. I took the biggest pistol, black with a skinny, cylindrical cope, and Piper took the second-biggest, silver, wood handle. Both were loaded.

We weren't sure whether or not to arm Yves. Between the palsy and his split loyalties, it seemed chancy.

He argued, "If I get a shot at the Brit"—meaning Leathersby—"I promise you, my aim will be true."

We gave him a gun.

I worried Sue-Ann would run ahead to the oubliette before we'd formulated our plan—she wore no collar, I had no leash—but she seemed to sense the situation, staying out of sight in the small recess we'd found in the wall.

Piper voted to shoot first and ask questions later. "Three bad guys, three of us, three guns. Simple."

I said, "If we can rescue Quaid and Durwood without killing, let's not kill."

Squatting knee-to-knee, we talked through the options. A furious firefight or a tense showdown—which favored us? Which gave us the best odds of survival?

Voices at the oubliette door stopped the argument.

We retreated deeper into the wall recess. Sue-Ann's tail stuck out into the tunnel; I pulled it in. I used my gun at a point of balance, laying it against the ground, pointing out. Yves almost sneezed, raising up with a huff, but pinched his nose at the last moment.

"...obvious they have escaped," Fabienne Rivard was saying at the head of her group. "You disabled the palm locks—imbecile that you are—and the Americans took advantage."

The guard who was being dressed down pulling a paunchy-looking Quaid after him.

"People always complained!" He nodded to Leathersby. "He said they were a nuisance, they annoyed him, so I switched them—"

"Quit passing the buck, git," the mercenary said. "You screwed up. Own it."

He pushed Durwood ahead in a painful looking half-nelson, his hulking forearm coiled about Durwood's neck.

The group spilled out to the limestone ramp, glaring at each other, bickering. Fabienne scanned left and right. Thérèse, a step behind, parroted the movement.

Sue-Ann growled beside me.

I looked to Piper. She nodded.

"Freeze!" I said as we both burst out, aiming our guns.

Yves Pomeroy tottered out, too. "I reclaim the mantle of this once-great company!"

Leathersby rolled his eyes, giving Durwood a needless jab to the ribs.

"Stop, let them go," I said. "Right now!"

Piper rushed ahead, sticking the barrel of her gun in Leathersby's face. When he didn't release Durwood, she gripped the gun overhand and—quick as milk boiling over on the stove—drove it into his teeth.

Durwood scampered away as Leathersby spit blood and swore.

"You bitch, Goddamn it!" he roared.

"That's for touching me," Piper said. "Gimme a reason to shoot, okay? Gimme one."

As she kept her sights on Leathersby, I trained mine at Fabienne. Her hollow-cheeked face showed no sign of panic or distress. In fact, she was smiling.

"The woman will save the cowboys this time, eh?" She licked her lips. "A different script."

I flicked my gun toward Quaid and the guard holding him. "Tell your man to let him go. Let him go or I shoot."

"I think not."

"I will." I brought my off-hand onto the barrel. Every nerve in my body twitched. "And you'd deserve it, for all you've done to the world."

She sucked in, making a noise like snakes at the bottom of a pit. "Perhaps you would. But not for that reason—not for the world."

I felt my brow crimping. "You've destroyed society. You've destroyed our civility."

"Mmmmmmm yes. From you, though, I've taken more. Haven't I?"

She took a swerving, hip-jutting stride toward Quaid. Through his Caterpillar vest, she stroked his chest.

"Your man," she said. "I took your man."

"I—I don't know what you mean," I said, scrambling to understand what all Fabienne knew. Clearly Quaid's Cat cover was blown. "Er, what you're even referring to—"

"In Davos. On a couch." She ran her fingers through Quaid's wavy hair. "It was enjoyable, though not our best."

Quaid's face was hard to read—those giant false teeth didn't help—but the one-time politician looked queasy. He tried moving his head away with no luck; Fabienne continued to fondle his hair, pressing her fingers roughly about his ear and temple.

"Let him go!" I repeated.

My voice cracked. I felt like I'd been slugged in the heart, but I refused to be distracted.

To Piper, I muttered, "We could lock them up in our old cell."

In the instant she glanced away from him, Leathersby whipped his own pistol from a waist holster.

"Ah ha, there we go." He ran his thumb lovingly over its hammer. "My good friend, the Webley break-top. Finest revolver known to man."

Sue-Ann loped up to Durwood and dropped yet another gun at his boots.

Durwood grimaced retrieving it. "Could be. If that man forgets the M9 semiautomatic."

Now four people were armed, one on their side and three on ours. The two professionals were locked onto each other, wrists stiff, mouths ugly with hate.

Purple tube lights fizzed from ceiling corners. Far off, water dripped slowly.

Plop...plop...

Quaid, still in the guard's grip, was staring intently at me, his blue eyes desperate to convey some message.

I didn't care.

I looked at Piper to see whether she had any ideas.

Piper looked at me.

Fabienne said, "I am bored."

Now Sue-Ann, who alone in the standoff seemed free to move around, trotted back to her bag and picked up a clay-colored block.

She dropped the block on the limestone ramp and sniffed it thoroughly.

Quaid said, "That's no chew toy, Sue."

Sue-Ann kept sniffing. After several curious moments, her milky eyes raised to Durwood. His steel-gray eyes looked back. Some meaning passed between man and dog.

She picked the block up, carried it to a point between the two factions, and dropped it.

Leathersby said, "Control your animal, Jones. Mutt may be at death's door herself, but she don't have to take the lot of us with her."

Durwood raised a rough-skinned finger off his M9.

"I told you before," he snarled. "Sue's no mutt. Her ma and pa were Blueticks both."

Seeming to sense she was the topic of conversation, Sue-Ann approached Leathersby and began licking his boot.

"Git, git off!" the Brit said.

He kicked, missing her at first, then connecting with Sue's head.

The sound was sickening.

"You're despicable," I said.

"That's no way to talk to your Uncle Blakey," he said. "We should've spent more time getting to know each other in the oubliette."

Sue-Ann's gait, which had hitched to the right for as long as I'd known her, now zigzagged. She tried walking to Durwood but staggered, veering toward the Rivard side of the ramp, then falling, then standing weakly and turning about in a circle.

"Oh, Sue." I said, starting for her.

She fell again. When she recovered to stand, her eyes shone with new wildness. She darted away from me.

She's confused—she must see me as a threat. Leathersby knocked the sense out of her.

I stopped at the clay-colored block and raised my hands, trying to look non-threateningly.

Fabienne Rivard gave a breathy sigh. "The dog show has run its course." She gestured to Piper and me. "They will not shoot. Blake, kill them."

Durwood poised his finger on the M9 trigger. "Go on, Blake. Try me."

Leathersby bristled, clearing his throat loudly, seeming to prepare for action.

Fabienne was wrong: the dog show wasn't over.

Sue-Ann lurched and wobbled and fell again, then stood, then fell, then took three ferocious bounds—a greyhound would've been proud—and bit the guard.

"Owww!" he shrieked, losing his grip on Quaid.

Quaid sprinted to our side, his extra belly swinging. He pushed me away from the clay-colored block and toward the recess in the limestone.

Piper ran there, too. She didn't so much push Yves Pomeroy as he was just in the way and got his body bumped to the recess.

Durwood called, "Sue, come!" and, waiting no more than a two-count for her to join us, fired at the block.