A pause.

Now, set the hook.

The agent said, "What's your favorite brand? Miller? Bud?"

"Mexican."

"You got it, Lou. A six-pack of Corona, you let that girl go and we get another hour for the chopper. Everybody's happy."

"I'd rather shoot her."

Potter and LeBow glanced at each other. Budd was suddenly standing close to Potter, his hands in his pocket, fidgeting.

The negotiator ignored the young captain and said to Handy, "Okay, Lou, then shoot her. I'm tired of this bullshit."

From the corner of his eye he saw Budd shift and for a moment Potter tensed, thinking the captain was going to leap forward, grab the phone, and agree to whatever Handy wanted. But he just kept his hands in his back pockets and turned away. Frances gazed at the negotiator in utter shock.

Potter hit buttons on the phone. "Dean, he may shoot the girl. If he does, make sure nobody returns fire."

A hesitation. "Yessir."

Potter was back on the line with Handy. The man hadn't hung up but he wasn't talking either. Shannon's head swiveled back and forth. The black rectangular pistol was still visible.

Potter jumped inches when Handy's staccato laugh shot into the van. "This's sorta like Monopoly, ain't it? Buying and selling and all?"

Potter struggled to remain silent.

Handy growled, "Two six-packs or I do it right now." Shannon 's head bent forward as Handy pressed the gun into it.

"And we get an extra hour for the chopper?" Potter asked. "Makes it about six-fifteen."

"Safety's off," Dean Stillwell sang out.

Potter closed his eyes.

Not a single sound in the van. Complete silence. This is what Melanie lives with day after day after day, Potter thinks.

"Deal, Art," Handy said. "By the way, you are one bad motherfucker."

Click.

Potter slumped into the chair, closed his eyes for a moment. "You get all that, Henry?"

LeBow nodded and typed away. He rose and started to lift Shannon 's marker out of the slaughterhouse schematic.

"Wait," said Potter. LeBow paused. "Let's just wait."

"I'll get that beer," Budd said, exhaling a sigh.

Potter smiled. "Getting a little hot for you, Captain?"

"Yeah. Some."

"You'll get used to it," Potter said, just as Budd said, "I'll get used to it." The captain's voice was far less optimistic than Potter's. The agent and the trooper laughed.

Budd started like a rabbit when Angie squeezed his arm. "I'll come with you to see about that beer, Captain. If that's all right with you."

"Uh, well, sure, I guess," he said uncertainly, and they left the van.

"One more hour," LeBow said, nodding.

Potter swiveled around in his chair, staring out the window at the slaughterhouse. "Henry, write down: 'It's the negotiator's conclusion that the stress and anxiety of the initial phase of the barricade have dissipated and subject Handy is calm and thinking rationally.'

"That makes one of us," said Frances Whiting, whose shaking hands spilled coffee on the floor of the van. Derek Elb, the red-haired trooper, gallantly dropped to hands and knees to clean up the mess.

5:11 P.M.

"What's he doing with Shannon?" Beverly signed, her chest rising and falling as she tried to breathe.

Melanie leaned forward. Shannon's face was emotionless. She was signing and Melanie caught the name Professor X, the founder of the X-Men. Like Emily, the girl was summoning her guardian angels.

Bear and Brutus were talking and she could see their lips. Bear gestured to Shannon and asked Brutus, "Why… giving them away?"

"Because," Brutus answered patiently, "if we don't they'll break in the fucking door and… shoot us dead."

Melanie scooted back, said, "She's just sitting there. She's all right. They're going to let her go."

Everyone's face lit up.

Everyone except Mrs. Harstrawn's.

And Kielle's. Little Kielle, a blond, freckled bobcat. An eight-year-old with twenty-year-old eyes. The girl glanced impatiently at Melanie and turned away, bent down to the wall beside her, working away at something. What was she doing? Trying to tunnel her way out? Well, let her. It'll keep her out of harm's way.

"I think I'm going to be sick," signed one of the twins, Suzie. Anna signed the same but then she usually echoed everything her very slightly older sister said.

Melanie signed to them that they wouldn't be sick. Everything would be fine. She scooted over beside Emily, who was tearfully examining a rip in her dress. "You and I'll go shopping next week," Melanie signed. "Buy you new one."

And that was when De l'Epée whispered in her useless ear. "The gas can," he said, and vanished immediately.

Melanie felt the chill run down her back. The gas can, yes. She turned her head. It sat beside her, red and yellow, a big two-gallon one. She eased toward it, snapped closed the cover and the pressure hole cap. Then looked around the killing room for the other thing she'd need.

There, yes.

Melanie slid around to the front of the room, examined the back of the slaughterhouse. There were two doors – she could just make them out in the dimness. Which one led to the river? she wondered. She happened to glance down at the floor, where she'd written the messages in the dust about the hand-shape game. Squinting, she looked at the floor in front of each door – there was much less dust in front of the left. That's it – the river breeze blows through that one and has swept away the dust. Enough wind for there to be, just possibly, a window or door open far enough for a little girl to scoot through.

Beverly choked and started a crying fit. She lay on her side, struggling for breath. The inhaler hadn't done her much good. Bear frowned and looked at her, called something.

Shit. Melanie signed to Beverly, "It's hard, honey, but please be quiet."

"Scared, scared."

"I know. But it'll be all -"

Oh, my God. Melanie's eyes went wide and her signing hands stopped in midword as she looked across the room.

Kielle was holding the knife in front of her, an old hook-bladed knife. That's what she'd seen underneath a pile of trash; that's what she'd been digging out.

Melanie shuddered. "No!" she signed. "Put it back."

Kielle had murder in her gray eyes. She slipped the weapon into her pocket. "I'm going to kill Mr. Sinister. You can't stop me!" Her hands slashed the air in front of her as if she were already stabbing him.

"No! Can't do it that way!"

"I'm Jubilee! He can't stop me!"

"That's character in comic book," Melanie's staccato hands shot out. "Not real!"

Kielle ignored her. "Jubilation Lee! I'm going to blow him apart with plasmoids! He's going to die. No one can stop me!" She crawled through the door and disappeared through the shower of water tumbling from the ceiling.

The huge main room of the Webber amp; Stoltz slaughterhouse, in the front portion of which were clustered the three convicts, had been a series of holding pens and walkways for the beasts that had died here. The space was now used for storing slaughterhouse equipment – butcher blocks, one- and three-bay decapitation guillotines, gutting machines, grinders, huge rendering vats.

It was into this gruesome warehouse that Kielle disappeared, intending, it seemed, to circle around to the front wall, where the men lounged in front of the TV.

No…

Melanie half-rose, looked at Bear – the only one of the three with a clear view of the killing room – and froze. He wasn't looking their way but he had only to turn his greasy head inches to see them. In a panic she looked over the main room. Caught a glimpse of Kielle's blond hair vanishing behind a column.

Melanie eased closer to the doorway, still crouching. Brutus was at the window, beside Shannon, looking out. Bear started to glance toward the room but turned back to Stoat, who was laughing at something. Bear, stroking the shotgun he held, reared back and laughed, closing his eyes.