“I know you come for a reason, bitch, so don’t play cute,” Slice repeated softly, prodding her cheek even harder with the gun. The answer he was looking for was in the blueprints sitting a foot away in the planter, obscured by dark leaves, but she wasn’t about to give it up so easily. The information was too valuable. She would use it to trade-for Sophie’s life, for her own.

Slice nodded at Bigga, who yanked her up and twisted her arms roughly behind her back. Dragged to her feet so suddenly she saw stars.

“Where’s my friend?” she demanded when her vision cleared.

“You hear that, Big? This bitch think she in charge. She gonna learn her lesson when she dead ’fore the night’s through.” Slice’s tone was casual. Killing was just what he did.

“If you let my friend go, I have some information for you.”

Melanie heard the deadly calm in her own voice. She wasn’t afraid. This felt like a dream. Or a nightmare, really. A nightmare she’d lived through before. The man behind the door, the blast, her father lying in a pool of blood, eyes staring, breathing ragged.

“What information?” Slice asked.

“No. First you show me she’s okay,” Melanie insisted.

“Who you talking about? That Chinese bitch? The architect?”

“Yes.”

“She your friend? Small world, ain’t it? She inside, resting. Come on in, we’ll have a nice talk.” He laughed deep in his throat, like a growl.

Slice went inside, and Bigga shoved her through the door after him. The lights were on, the foyer looking just as it had when she’d been there the night of the murder. It smelled different, though-the burned-flesh odor replaced by a powerful, acrid combination of basement damp, water damage, and the smoky aftermath of the fire. Thick enough to taste, but better than a charred corpse. Slice headed down the hallway toward Jed Benson’s office, and Bigga pushed her from behind, making her follow.

As she walked through the office door, she saw two feet sticking out from behind the blackened remains of Jed Benson’s desk, and she gasped. The feet were clad in Sophie Cho’s favorite black Nikes. Melanie lurched forward, trying to reach her friend, but Bigga grabbed her arm savagely and stopped her.

“Where the fuck you think you going?” Bigga yelled.

“That’s Sophie! What did you do to her?” Melanie exclaimed, craning her neck but unable to see any more of Sophie than her feet.

“She fine. We just give her a little taste of something, keep her quiet on the way here,” Slice replied, a sadistic glint in his tiny eyes.

If Sophie had been unconscious since they brought her here, Melanie realized, they couldn’t have gotten any information from her yet. That was a positive sign. Because the second they had what they wanted, Melanie knew, they would have no reason for keeping Sophie alive. Or Melanie either.

Slice shoved Melanie down into a damaged leather swivel chair. Popped springs from the scorched seat poked into her back and thighs. She wondered if it was the same chair Jed Benson had been tortured and died in. The thought made her angry rather than afraid. Slice leaned close, his sweaty ski mask emitting a sour wool smell.

“Listen up, Melanie,” he said, “we can do this real easy or we can do it the hard way. The easy way, you tell me what I want to know. The hard way, you end up dead like Jed.”

“Dead like Jed,” Bigga said. “My man shootin’ the rhymes.”

“You a pretty girl. Be a shame if you got cut so you wasn’t pretty no more,” Slice said, rubbing his gun along her cheek, pushing back her hair with the barrel. The sexual menace in the gesture enraged and nauseated her. She honed the anger, realizing that it was helping her stay in control.

“If you want to talk to me, Slice, back the fuck off,” she commanded icily, as if she were in her office. She’d talked to scumbag criminals like him a hundred times before. Pretend this is no different, she told herself. She was the boss. She wasn’t surprised when it worked. Confidence was everything in life. Slice laughed and took several steps backward, dropping the gun down to his side.

“The bitch got cojones, I say that much,” he said to Bigga. “And she know our names. No point in being uncomfortable, then. We can go plain-face.”

Slice stripped off his ski mask. Bigga did the same. Melanie was overwhelmed with rage, this time at herself. By using his name, showing him she knew who he was, she’d signed her own death warrant for sure. No way he would ever let her live, now that he knew she could identify him. Her only remaining chance was to drag out giving him the information he wanted as long as possible, and try to figure a way to escape. She had no hope that anybody would come save her. She’d have to rely on her wits.

“What is it exactly that you want to know?” she asked, making an effort to keep her voice steady.

“Don’t play games, bitch. Where the product?” Slice demanded. “We know it’s here. You show us where.”

“We know it’s here, you show us where,” Bigga chanted, laughing. Slice shot him a look, and he fell silent.

So her theory was right. There was an elaborate trap built into the walls of Jed Benson’s town house, concealing a king’s ransom of drugs, revealed in the blueprints she’d left outside. Sophie, Sophie, what did you do? But Sophie, lying on the floor in deep sleep, couldn’t answer her silent question. It had been a classic home invasion from the start. The bad guys were looking for drugs, like they always were. When Jed Benson wouldn’t give up the goods, Slice killed him, as often happened. The same brutal story had played out a thousand times before on the streets of Bushwick. She just hadn’t recognized it in this fancy neighborhood.

Just then the cell phone in her pocket began to howl. Somehow she knew it was Steve; she could feel his worry in each piercing shriek. Slice leaned over and dug his hand into her pocket, his fingers creeping grotesquely against her thigh. He withdrew the phone, turned it off, and threw it to the floor. It skidded to rest against the desk. Melanie looked at it longingly, saying a silent prayer that he would call the police.

“Guess they’ll have to leave you a voice mail,” Slice said, smiling sarcastically. “Now, about the merchandise…”

Drag it out longer. Maybe somebody will come, she told herself. “What merchandise?”

“Don’t be acting like you don’t know. That would upset me. You don’t wanna see some shit I do when I’m upset, you feel me?” he said in a low, intense tone. He had the eyes of some night creature-tiny, gleaming, dead eyes much too small even for his narrow face.

“I’m gonna tell you everything, okay? I don’t want to get hurt. I need to make sure we understand each other, that’s all.”

“What the fuck merchandise you think I’m talking about? Ladies’ underwear?” Slice yelled. Bigga laughed uproariously.

“You’re saying there are drugs hidden here? Why would there be drugs hidden in Jed Benson’s house?”

She didn’t even see it coming, he was that fast. In the blink of an eye, Slice smashed the butt of his gun against the side of her head. Pain exploded in her skull. She shot back in time. “Daddy! No! Noooo!” “Shut the fuck up, bitch!” A blinding blow to her head, then darkness. But a second later, she was back in Jed Benson’s office, conscious, hearing and seeing better than she wanted to. She raised her fingers to the spot the pain radiated from. They came away bloody.

The blow might have thrown somebody else into a panic. But for Melanie it served as a wake-up call. It reminded her. You had to fight back, or the animals would win. They’d won last time. Things had never been the same after the robbery. Her father had never spent another night under their roof. Years of rehab in San Juan, and then he ended up leaving them, marrying his nurse. She’d seen him twice in the last ten years. She wouldn’t let the animals win this time, goddamn it. She found her rage and, at the heart of it, her calm.