"This bag's getting heavy," Clark called out.

Dempster walked over to the front desk and tried to look into the room but couldn't see anything. No bell sounded so he didn't hear the slide of the door, but he heard the two footsteps and then the sudden stop. He snapped his attention to the sound and saw the kid staring at him. He lifted his gun and told the kid not to move. The kid's arms jittered and his knees knocked. Then, as the light from the elevator began to narrow, to Dempster's surprise, the kid seized his opportunity and jumped in just as the door closed.

"Shit."

"What was that?" Jimmy asked.

"It was the kid."

"Shit. He get away?"

"What do you think? Sounds like we've got a haul. Let's get the hell out of here."

"Yeah," Jimmy said. Then to Marie, "Don't go anywhere." He moved to the back room. "All right, guys, it's time. Let's go."

"What's going on?"

"The kid. He saw us and got away."

"Just now?"

"Yeah."

"We still got about five minutes then."

"Don't be stupid," Dempster called over the desk. "Let's goa"now."

Evan's voice told him, "You go if you want. We'll catch up."

"Goddammit, we're not meeting somewhere for lunch. This isa"" From above a hard blow struck him in the back and sent him to the floor. Dempster spun around and instinctively fired once.

Harold fell backwards against the stairway, a tiny stream of blood running from his mouth.

She hadn't seen it but she'd heard it, and now all Marie could do was scream. Jimmy raced to the desk and looked over it at the dead man on the stairs.

"Holy shit."

"What's going on?" Clark shouted.

"Security guard's dead," Jimmy told him, his voice filling with panic.

Marie began screaming louder.

"Shut that bitch up," Evan yelled.

Jimmy went to her and tried to calm her down.

Dempster stared at Harold, no longer moving but his eyes staring back at him. The one person he would have to kill, and it would be the one guard that was never armed.

"I didn't think anyone was going to be killed." It was Gardner's voice, and it was hysterical. "No one was supposed to die!"

"Shut up," Evan told him.

Clark was now standing in the doorway, still looking into the room, a heavy-looking laundry bag in his hands. "Let's go!" he shouted at Evan.

"Get away from there, Doug," Evan's voice warned.

"No one was supposed to die!"

A moment later there were gunshots. Two of them. Clark turned away in disgust.

"What happened?" Dempster demanded.

Jimmy took the bag from Clark, who was now crying. He pulled himself together as best he could, then said, "He shot him. He triggered the silent alarm under the monitors, so he shot him."

"Jesus Christ."

"The cops have already been called," Jimmy said. "Why did it matter? Let's just get the hell out of here." He placed the bag on the desk.

Dempster took it.

"I need a cigarette," Clark said.

Marie's screams reduced to loud sobs.

Jimmy crouched down and whispered something to her. Possibly words of encouragement, possibly something else.

Clark remained in the doorway, his back against the jamb, staring out at the lobby, trying not to look into the room but not leaving either. He looked sick. His face was pale.

"All right, let's get out of here," Dempster said.

Jimmy helped Marie to her feet and out from behind the desk. Clark slumped out of the doorway. When he was halfway across the desk, the two security guards screamed.

Everyone froze. A second later there was a loud brekebrekebreke sound and Clark instinctively raced back to the door. Now one guard was screaming and one was not. The brekebreke sounded again, and Dempster watched Clark yell something that couldn't be heard over it as he lifted his gun and aimed it into the room. The sound didn't stop. Instead it accepted the sound of one pistol shot from Clark and punched holes in the wall and around the doorjamb; then Clark was standing in an epileptic fit that evolved into a spastic dance. Finally, he went down, the whole front of his body red and ruined.

"Holy mother-fuck!" Jimmy shouted.

Marie began screaming again.

At the same time, through the tiny windows in the front doors, Dempster caught sight of red and blue flashing lights. He stepped past Harold's body and up the stairs.

"I'm sorry, Marie. I didn't think it would come to this."

"It doesn't have to."

"I'm sorry. I don't have any choice now."

"Yes you do, you have a choice."

"No I don't."

As more and more lights flashed and men started up the front steps, Jimmy wrapped his arm around Marie's throat and held his gun to her. As he dragged her quickly through the lobby towards the darkened area of the lounge, he saw Evan run across the lobby, machine gun in one hand, pistol in the other, and disappear into the darkness of the Old House restaurant. It looked as though Evan hadn't seen them. If he had, they probably would have been gunned down.

Now the cops were inside. And they could see him. And they had their guns drawn.

"Let her go!" they were shouting. "Release your hostage and put down your weapon!"

Jimmy kept going, dragging her by the throat. He could hear her tiny gasps for breath, almost as though they were directly in his ear. She struggled and he told her to keep calm, took a quick check to see where he was, and saw that he had almost entered the lounge.

They'll be coming from behind me too, he thought. Any moment they're gonna be coming up the concourse.

He backed into something. It was something solid but not a wall. He moved to his right and got behind it as the entire world spun around him and his gun hand shook so much that he could hardly hold it. Through the glass case with the giant pot he watched the police advance. He crouched lower behind the tiled stone stand, bringing Marie down with him, and fired once into the lobby. Watching the police drop down and scatter was surreal. He fired again then looked back into the lounge and saw, through shadows, the fancy upscale dining area, the Eldorado Court. If he could cut through there he could get to the kitchen. There had to be an exit out that way.

"This will all be over soon, Marie," he told her. "Just work with me a few minutes longer. We're gonna cut across into the kitchen. There's an exit there, I know there is. I'll let you go as soon as we're outside, all right? Then this will all be over for you, and you can go back to Boston and see your boy and watch him grow up and become a famous writer."

But Marie didn't say anything. Marie wasn't moving. Her body was dead weight under his arm. He let go of her as the realization of what he'd just done sank in. She looked at him with dead eyes for a moment. Then her body dropped out from behind the display stand.

Someone said, "Aw, shit."

Someone else said, "All right. He's killed his hostage."

Jimmy, bordering on hysterical, shaking so much he couldn't handle it, crouched down and fired again.

This time they fired back. He heard the sound of bullets punching the stone wall in front of him. He screamed when the glass case above him shattered and rained down. Shards went into the back of his uniform. Then he heard them coming up the concourse and saw their shadows entering the lounge.

They saw him. Their guns were on him. They were telling him to drop his weapon and lay down.

He looked at the splayed dead body of Marie. You're a murderer, he said to himself. You killed an innocent woman. You killed an innocent woman and there's nothing left for you, ever again. The cops closed in on him.

Jimmy put the barrel of his gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger.

After Evan sprayed bullets into Clark and raced out across the lobby and into the Old House restauranta"catching the flashing lights from the corner of his eye as he dida"he realized his folly, and quickly made his way out of the restaurant and down the hall. He made a left, and saw the other security office with a television on and no one about, and to the right a fluorescent-lit hallway.

They had to have seen him. Someone was going to be coming up behind him any second. He went right, down the hall. It made a sharp curve, and when he came out he found himself in the parking garage. The sound of a generator and the emerging sound of sirens roared about him (the first squad cars hadn't used their sirens, probably as an element of surprise). Several feet to the right was a workstation, with eight dozen keys hanging on eight dozen hooks. Each key had a tag with a number on it that corresponded with the parking space in which the car was parked. He unhooked three keys and hustled deeper into the garage, trying to find one of the corresponding numbers.

Then came the screech of tires. The brightness of headlights and the kaleidoscopic brilliance of red and blue, twirling about with carnival grace. He ran deeper into the garage. He heard car doors opening and closing. Then people were shouting at him as he found a short stairway that led up to a door.

Which was locked. He spun on the police and fired the Micro Uzi, shooting up the hood and windshield of the front squad car, then quickly spun back and shot up the lock on the door. As he pulled the door open the police pulled their triggers. Evan felt the hot burning pain as a bullet struck his left shoulder. He slammed the door behind hima"which now wouldn't latcha"and ran through the dark room, trying to ignore the pain in his shoulder while at the same time numbness consumed his arm.

Scrambling through the darkness, he sought an exit, found one, and entered an ugly cement hallway lined with doors. The feeling in his arm disappeared all together, and the Arcus 94 dropped from his hand and clattered to the floor with a crackling echo. He tried the first door: storage. He tried the next door: locked. The third door opened to a stairway as unattractive as the hallway. Making his way up the first level he heard voices below, out in the hall. He ascended the next level and opened the door to an elegant hallway with loud zigzagged carpet and potted cacti and ugly watercolor paintings and rows and rows of doors with numbers and peepholes on them. He stopped long enough to regard his shoulder, and saw that it was bloody. He crouched down, removed the cartridge from the Micro Uzi and replaced it with another. From there he made his way down the hall, thinking, collecting himself.

He needed to find Dempster. He needed to get the bag and Dempster was the one who had it.

At the foyer one of the elevators opened. Without seeing who it was he fired into it, heard somebody scream, saw a body fall out, and ran. A stern voice at his back demanded that he stop. He kept running, aimed the Micro Uzi behind him under his limp arm and when he pulled the trigger the gun rattled out of his hand and the surprise caused him to trip over his own feet. He landed hard but didn't waste a second. By the time the cop came out of cover the machine gun was back in his hand. He fired, hit right on target, and as the man went down the door from which he'd entered opened up.

No one was coming out of their rooms, not that he expected them to. Getting to his feet there was a gunshot. It punched into his left thigh and he dropped again, though the pain was almost non-existent. He fired down the hall and watched the little fuckers race for cover, back into the stairway. Using the nearest door handle, he got to his feet, putting his weight on his right leg. He limped back a step and shot out the lock. Someone inside the room screamed. He grabbed the handle, but the door wouldn't open. Down the hall it began to fill with pigs. He cranked the handle again and put his weight against the door and pushed as hard as he could.

The door popped open. To a chain. He glanced through the four-inch gap into the room and saw a couple huddled on the bed. Then he heard a series of gunshots and saw his blood spatter onto the door and wall.

The woman screamed again.

When Dempster got to the top of the stairs he crossed the computer area, went straight to the gray metal door, punched 3114 into the little keypad, heard something within the door disengage, then cranked the handle and stepped inside.

It was dark. Several different humming sounds resonated around him. He was in a hallway, or more accurately, he was in a small maze, with metal pipes and large machines making up the intricate, winding passages. With a click the door closed behind him. The room was warm and mildly humid, and in the faint light everything looked like dry mechanical swampland. He walked down the short hall, past gauges and regulators and nozzles and valves, past the maintenance office, and came to a windowed door on his left. Through the window was a small lounge, not elegant like the hotela"more the sort of lounge one would find in a factory, with plastic chairs and a cafeteria table and a small kitchenette. Bars of streetlight cut in through the window blinds.

He opened the door, which thankfully wasn't locked, and with the barrel of his .45 pushed down the blinds and looked to the street. He saw the police lights bouncing off the buildings and the tail end of a squad car far to the right. At least so far, this side of the hotel was unwatched. Good. He crossed over to the next door, eased it open and found a small office, empty at this hour. There were two doors in here, one to the left and one straight ahead. The one to the left had a narrow vertical window that looked out into what appeared to be the guest part of the hotel. He went for the door straight ahead of him. It opened to a stairway with a second door, presumably the one for guests.

As he climbed the first flight he heard a series of voices on the other side of the door. He quickly raced up the next flight, aware of how heavy the bag was becoming, and when he didn't hear anything on the other side, decided he had to chance it.

Below he heard gunshots.

The hallway he entered was quiet. He took a moment to visualize where he was. Once fairly certain he understood, he continued, past guestrooms, past a small humming concession area, and he wondered what the hell had gotten into Evan.

He put his gun away and switched the bag to his right hand.

I should've known that fucker would go psycho.

He walked casually.

Fuck-ups. All of them were fuck-ups.

He thought about Harold. He saw Harold standing in the lounge telling him what time it was and then Harold was dead on the stairs and blood dripped from his mouth and his dead eyes were looking at him. He wondered if Marie had been telling the truth when she initially said there were others up in the computer room.

Several people were standing around in the foyer. They looked at him. They saw that he was a janitor.

"Hey, buddy, what's going on?" a middle-aged man with a southern accent asked.

His wife nudged him and said softly, "Honey, he doesn't know anything, he's just a janitor."

Dempster moved on. If the cameras weren't back on yet they would be any second. He turned the next corner. Underneath came a chaotic spree of gunfire. It was loud enough to be frightening if you didn't already know it was probably going to happen.

Behind him, back in the foyer, a woman with a panicky voice said, "I think we should go back to our room."

Then all of a sudden he stopped. The kid was running towards him, looking behind himself, unaware of what he was headed for. He turned back just in time to keep from colliding with the very thing he was trying to keep away from.

Dempster grabbed him by the tie. The kid's eyes widened to coasters, his jaw dropped, and before he knew what was going on he was on his back, unconscious. Dempster, with effort, dragged the kid through the hall, made the last left and entered a set of double doors as he heard the bell of the elevator down the hall.

Inside the doors the service elevator, for employees only, stood at his right. To his left were two laundry carts, one filled halfway with dirty sheets, the other one empty.

He put the kid into the empty cart, then stripped out of his janitor's uniform, under which he had on his dark blue blazer and pants and a white shirt open at the collar. He buttoned the collar and from his jacket pocket withdrew a blue and gold striped tie. He removed his glasses and baseball cap, took off the mustache, bundled them with the uniform and stuffed everything into the bottom of the half-filled laundry cart. When he emerged from the room the only thing causing him to stand out was the bag.

People were coming out of their rooms now. A door opened beside him and a young couple stepped out wearing pajamas. They pulled the door closed behind them, which didn't shut all the way. Without noticing, they walked down the hall to see what was going on. Dempster pushed the door open and stepped inside.