"You're hurting me! Get your ."" I shut her up by digging in with my fingers until she remembered what hurting actually meant.

"Mr. Gage has another one," I informed the guard.

"There's a third at the main doors. Get as much help as you need. Lock them up. Don't open the doors until you have all three of them under control. I'm going after Bernie."

I was about to add, Are you listening? but he cut me off by wrenching himself out of his confusion. Quickly he snatched the walkie-talkie off his belt, thumbed the toggle, and demanded backup. At the same time, he took hold of the woman's wrist like he didn't ever intend to let go.

A look over my shoulder told me that Gage was close. By now I knew that he could help out if the woman gave too much trouble.

Shifting past the guard as fast as I could, I hauled open the door and left the hall.

Colder air slapped my face, but it didn't help.

Bernie wasn't in the wide hallway between the convention facilities and the main hotel. So where the hell was he? He should've been back by now. He'd had enough time to corral the drop and cook him breakfast, for God's sake.

The lobby-But two steps later, another panic hit me. Damn Posten. If he was right, if this was a diversion I rebounded for the doors like I'd slammed into a wall.

Shoving my head inside, I barked at the guard, "Don't leave the chops alone! No matter what else happens!"

I wasn't sure he heard me. The woman fought him furiously, and he had trouble keeping his grip on her. But Gage caught my eyes and nodded.

His wrist-lock supplied just enough pain to make the kid cooperative.

Good enough. I shut the door and headed for the lobby as fast as I could go without running.

Master Soon had left the hall earlier for some reason.

The lobby was practically empty. A few guests lined the reg-ist-rfltion counter, oresumablv checking out. Near the doors, a small group of karate-ka watched the parking lot, waiting for someone.

In the middle of the open floor, Anson Sternway stood with Alex Lacone and Deborah Messenger, his back to me. La-cone's fixed grin, and her artificial animation, made me think that she was explaining the finer points of commercial coverage. As far as I could tell, neither of the men noticed me. But she managed to fling me a bright smile without interrupting herself.

I ignored it. My pulse had kicked into overdrive the instant I saw that Bernie wasn't in the lobby.

Then where ?

If he'd chased the drop out into the parking lot, I could stop worrying. He couldn't have run down a four-year-old, never mind a determined man less than half his age.

Had he already caught his target, taken him to the Security offices?

He'd be safe enough there. He'd have backup.

Back into the service corridors? I'd never find him without Max's help. And if his monitors showed any trouble, Max would've called for help by now.

If I were a smart drop, and I wanted to ditch Bernie without an audience of security cameras, hotel staff, and passersby In panic I ran for the nearest men's room. Fumbling instinctively at the .45 I didn't have, I smacked open the door and charged inside.

White tile echoed the clash as the door hit the wall and bounced shut behind me. Stressed metal clanged like the clash of ruin, so loud that I thought the mirrors would shatter. The space was big for a men's room, and as generic as the rest of the hotel six urinals, eight toilet stalls with open privacy doors, at least ten sinks below the mirrors, enough paper towels to mop up Armageddon. The Luxury wanted its guests and visitors to relieve themselves conveniently, if not comfortably.

The room was empty. Except for the echoes. And my thudding heart.

And the legs sticking out under one privacy door.

Thin legs, all bone too thin for the heavy shoes propped against the tile.

Almost gently, I swung the door all the way open.

He lay sprawled in the stall like he'd been overcome by loneliness, his head on the floor near the commode, one arm draped awkwardly over the toilet paper holder. Dumbly I knelt at his side. I didn't need the lost glaze of his eyes, the pallor of his skin, the trickle of blood drooling past his lips, or the stillness of his abandoned chest to tell me that he was dead.

But there was so little blood. It had all drained out of him long ago.

Or he'd lost it to the labor of a vexed and failing heart. I wasn't sure how he'd died until I lifted his head and saw the narrow diagonal welt, as bright as a shriek, driven furiously and impossibly deep into his Adam's apple.

He'd been killed. By a blow that crushed his larynx.

Oh, Bernie.

He hadn't even had time to reach for his walkie-talkie. It was still clipped to his belt.

One part of me knelt stunned beside him, nearly unable to breathe, entirely unable to think. He'd been chasing a drop, for God's sake, a mere thief a man with no reason to worry even if he'd been caught red-handed, what with lawyers and bail and good time, and courts overcrowded with far more frightening crimes. No ordinary thug with even a hint of experience, never mind common sense, would commit murder over a bag full of petty theft.

But this one had.

There was nothing ordinary about him. He was a butcher.

While I knelt, however, another part of me the part that knew its job, and understood how to be angry had already moved on.

The beige paint on the metal sides of the stall got me started. It showed scratches No, they were more than scratches, they were like welts themselves, slashes cut so deep that silver shone through them.

And thin, no more than an inch at the widest. One was as long as my forearm, the rest shorter.

Another marked the inside of the privacy door. And when I finally climbed to my feet, I found another outside, on the support between stalls. Something had taken a chip out of the rim of the sink opposite the stall.

I'd seen marks like that before.

Ten.

I took a few seconds to make sure. Then I reached for the phone. My fingers felt numb, and my hands shook. I was stunned and livid at the same time. If the number I needed hadn't been programmed for me, I might not have been able to dial it.

When Max answered, the shocked part of me stared dumbly at my image in the mirrors a rumpled suit on a too-big frame, topped by a face like a ghoul's. The other part told him where I was. Then it said, "Bernie's been killed."

Max gasped like an asthma attack.

"Shit. Oh, God. Shit."

The part of me that knew its job didn't care.

"Get the cops," I snapped at him.

"Then I want one guard, I don't care who. I need him right away. Don't let anyone else in here." Vicious with memory, I added, "And keep an eye on those fucking chops."

I had no authority to give him orders. But he knew I was right. Still gasping, he muttered, "Shit. I'm on it." Then the line clicked dead.

Echoes seemed to hang in the air the clash of the men's room door, the screech of welts gouged across metal, the fatal rasp of Bernie's crushed throat. I couldn't clear them out of my head. The numb part of me wanted to kneel at Bernie's side again, stay there until help arrived. But I didn't.

Instead I moved woodenly to the men's room door to keep guests and spectators out.