Then she found the gun strapped to his ankle. “Jesus,” she said. She took it as well.

Then they were both shouting at him, asking for the combination. He tried to say something, but the words would not come. He continued to be aware of what was happening around him, even if he couldn’t talk or move.

He thought he felt some tingling in his fingers, like maybe his feeling was coming back. Maybe whatever was in that dart wasn’t all that powerful.

He’s really out of it, the woman said.

Look for a key, said the driver.

I told you, I’ve been through his pockets. There’s no goddamn handcuff key, said the woman.

What about the combination? Maybe he wrote it down somewhere, put it in his wallet or something, said the driver.

The woman: What, you think he’s a moron? He’s going to write down the combination and keep it on him?

So cut the chain, the driver said. We take the case, we figure out how to open it later.

It looks way stronger than I thought, the woman said. It’ll take me an hour to cut through.

The driver: You can’t get the cuff over his hand?

The woman: How many times do I have to tell you? I’m gonna have to cut it off.

I thought you said it would take forever to cut the cuff, the driver said.

The woman: I’m not talking about the cuff.

Oscar Fine tried to will some feeling back into his arms. He had a pretty good idea now what they were going to do.

He was a bit surprised when he realized it was the woman who was going to do it.

He tried to form the word “Wait.” If they could hold off long enough for the tranquilizer to wear off, if only slightly. Not to the point where he’d be any threat to them, but enough that he could articulate the words, the numbers they needed to open the briefcase.

Then maybe they’d decide against the amputation.

“Wu,” he said.

“What?” said the woman.

“Dwer,” he said.

She shook her head and looked down at him. A change seemed to come across her face, like a mask. He would never forget that face, not if he lived through this.

“Sorry,” she said.

And then she began to cut.

The injury was so horrendous, so traumatic, that while it might normally have caused Oscar Fine to pass out, it also had the effect of rousing him from the effects of the mild tranquilizer.

Once the woman and the driver had bolted with the case, he managed to summon enough strength to slip off his necktie and, with his remaining hand, wrap it a couple of inches above the ragged stump. A memory flashed through his brain, something he’d seen on one of the morning news shows, about that kid who’d gone exploring in a canyon, got trapped when a rock fell on his hand. How he went days without being found, and eventually had to cut the hand off with his penknife.

I can be that kid, Oscar Fine thought. Shit, half the work’s been done for me. The woman had done the hard part. All he had to do was stanch the blood flow.

With what little reserves of will he had left, he started twisting the ends of the tie, tightening it on his wrist, attempting to stop the rate at which his blood was flowing out of him.

It wasn’t enough. The blood was still coming.

He was going to die.

If he’d still had his phone, he’d have called for help. But the woman had taken it. He didn’t have the strength to open the door, get to his feet, try to flag someone down.

This was it.

“Would you step out of the car, please?”

Huh?

Banging on the window. “Hello? Police! You can’t park your limo here. Would you step out of the car, please? I’m not going to ask again.”

He wasn’t able to offer the cops much help.

Didn’t see them, he said.

Never mentioned the briefcase.

Said he had no idea why they cut off his hand.

His guess? Mistaken identity. No one would have any reason to do such a thing to me, he said. They must have thought I was someone else.

The cops didn’t buy it for a second.

And Oscar Fine knew it. So fuck ‘em.

The hell of it was, someone hit the other courier, the one with the real diamonds. And that courier didn’t fuck things up. He shot the guy, and before he died, learned he’d been tipped by someone from inside.

The hit on Oscar Fine, it appeared, came out of left field.

His employers said not to worry, we’ll look after you.

They covered his medical expenses, even when he said no. Why should they be on the hook for this, he said, when he was the one who screwed up? But they insisted. His recovery took several months. Even though the paramedics had found the hand right there on the car floor, the doctors had been unsuccessful in reattaching it.

Sure, Oscar Fine felt pain. But mostly, he felt shame.

He’d fucked up a job. He’d been outwitted. He’d allowed others to cover his health costs.

I can still do this, he said. I’m not asking to get out. They said don’t worry about it. When we need you for something, we’ll be in touch, pay the going rate.

He knew they’d never call. You couldn’t trust a guy who couldn’t hang on to all his body parts.

So he said, the next five jobs are free. Just tell me what you need. And his employers thought, what the hell, let’s see if the guy can get back on the horse.

And he did.

In many ways, even minus a hand, he was better at this than he’d ever been before. Less cocky, more cautious.

Less forgiving. Not that he’d ever been a softy. But sometimes, he used to actually listen when someone pleaded for his life. Not that it was going to change anything, but Oscar Fine thought maybe it made them feel better. Gave them, if only for a few seconds, a glimmer of hope.

Now he just did the job.

And there was never a moment, not in the last six years, when he wasn’t looking for her. Watching faces, scanning crowds, searching the Net. He only had one real lead. A name: Constance Tattinger. He’d gotten it from that crazy bitch Alanna, the one who’d gone snooping in his gym bag when he’d left her in the car for only a few minutes. She was the only one he could think of-other than those who employed him-who had any inkling of what he did.

He needed to know who she might have talked to. And before she died, Alanna came up with that one name.

The only Constance Tattinger he was able to find any record of was born in Rochester, but her parents moved when she was a little girl after some incident in which a playmate got run over by a car backing out of a driveway. From there they moved to Tennessee, then Oregon, then Texas. The girl had left home when she was sixteen or seventeen, and her parents, speaking to Oscar Fine in the kitchen of their El Paso home, had told him that they’d never heard from her again.

He was pretty sure they were telling him the truth, considering the mother and father were bound to kitchen chairs at the time, and Oscar Fine was holding a knife to the woman’s neck. It was too bad they didn’t have any useful information for him.

He slit both their throats.

Oscar Fine figured she’d been going by other names since his encounter with her. That made it difficult, but he’d never given up. He was pretty sure she and her accomplice had never tried to unload the fake diamonds. Oscar Fine and the rest of the organization he worked for had put the word out to everyone they knew to be on the lookout for them. That many diamonds-real or not-had a way of attracting attention.

And years had gone by without anyone trying to turn them into cash.

Maybe they knew they were fake, Oscar Fine thought. But even if they figured that out, he guessed they’d still try to unload them to someone who didn’t know any better.

Something must have gone wrong. A change in plan. He could imagine any number of scenarios. But he never gave up hope that-someday-they’d try.