Don had been half asleep, lying with Charlie's dead weight sprawled over his chest. He snapped awake when Charlie did.

Charlie pushed himself up onto his elbows--jamming one sharply into Don's chest--as he said, "Time?" in a thick, anxious voice.

Don pushed Charlie away a little, working his left arm free and blinking at his watch.

"1:15 pm, on the twenty-fourth," Don said, and Charlie sagged back down over him.

He could still feel Charlie's wakefulness in every muscle, slightly tensed, waiting to move. Charlie pressed his face to Don's throat and said, "I need a shower," in a decisive tone barely audible against Don's skin.

Don frowned a little, running a hand through Charlie's hair. A shower wasn't usually Charlie's first priority, waking up, but on the other hand it was true.

"Okay," Don said, dropping his hand, making it easy for Charlie to get up.

Charlie pushed himself to his knees, but then his hand closed around Don's wrist and he tugged. "And you."

Don smiled. Charlie kept hold of Don's wrist all the way to the bathroom, and only let go to reach into the shower and turn on the tap, twisting it all the way to hot and turning on the shower.

Don caught a glimpse of Charlie's face as he pushed past Don to get to the sink, turning that tap to hot and full blast as well, and he only thought he'd been awake before. Colors went sharp, and there was a bitter taste in the back of his mouth as his heart started to race. Charlie was serious about something, Charlie was finally getting with the program. This was the beginning of something big.

Charlie said quietly, "You may want to sit down."

Don drew his gun and then sat, perching on the toilet, resting his right hand and the Sig on his left knee. Charlie stood facing him, taking a couple of deep breaths as steam began to curl into the air, the running taps warming the room.

"Okay," Charlie said. "The question is: if Williamson walked in here right now, and tried to kill me, would you let him?"

Don stared for a second at Charlie staring intently back at him, as though the answer were actually in doubt, before shaking his head. "You know I wouldn't."

Charlie nodded shallowly. "Okay," he said. "In about three hours, Williamson is going to come in here--or send someone in here--to try to kill me."

Don could not think of a single word to say. He didn't think he could even breathe, or move, every muscle in his body tensed to the point of locking up. Charlie was looking down at him with that faintly concerned expression he'd sometimes worn, back in their other life, when he hoped Don had been able to follow whatever mathematical thing he'd just gone over, but suspected he hadn't. Don groped for words, any words.

"The job?" he said finally, because it had to be something to do with the job.

Charlie looked a little relieved, and nodded. "It wasn't just a job, it was a demo. Williamson wanted me to show what I could do; odds are," and knowing Charlie, he meant that in the technical sense, "this job is meant to seal negotiations. Unless I miss my guess, there will be a buyer in the building when the job goes down."

Don blinked, forcing his numb brain to break down Charlie's words, ransacking them for meaning. "A buyer."

"For me," Charlie said, shrugging a little stiffly. "Williamson's too smart to think he can run me forever. He's made plenty of money with me, but he has to get rid of me, or sooner or later someone will spot a pattern in jobs I've planned and catch us. Catch him. He could just kill me, but why do that when he could get someone to pay to take me off his hands?"

It made a certain horrible kind of sense. Eventually someone other than Don would make the connection; if not the jobs to Charlie, then the jobs to each other, all dangling unsolved, all so perfect. And Williamson was nothing if not practical.

Charlie kept going now that he'd started, his conclusions cascading out like an arcane mathematical proof.

"He wouldn't sell me locally, because leaving me in the vicinity still raises problems for him. I know what he looks like--if I'm arrested I could point to him. So it's got to be international, and in order to have the money to make it worth Williamson's time--we're talking about organized crime, maybe a drug cartel, or--"

Charlie stopped short, and Don met his eyes, feeling sick with realization, wondering how long Charlie had known this, been waiting for it. "Or well-funded terrorists."

Charlie nodded. "I--I don't know where Williamson got me, I don't know what kinds of things I did before, but Don--the stuff I know, about structural engineering, bombs, nuclear material, bioweapons--"

Don winced, and Charlie nodded. That's not why you know, Don wanted to say, but now was not the time. Three hours. One way or another, it would all be over soon. After that, he could tell Charlie, or it wouldn't matter.

"I can't risk," Charlie whispered. "I can't risk that they'll put a gun to your head and I'll kill thousands of people with a mathematically perfect attack. It has to be now."

Don looked up sharply at Charlie, feeling sick all over again. Williamson had left the room with Don's blood on his hand, and--God, he'd been using Don for leverage. And it had worked, as surely as Don would kill anyone who stood between him and Charlie. Still, Don shook his head. "You're not a killer, Charlie."

Charlie made a little laughing sound, desperate and humorless and not actually a laugh at all. "No? Then I will be soon enough. This job, this showpiece--if they stick to the plan I gave them, everyone on the job is going to die."

Charlie looked away, and Don didn't know how many more shocks he could actually register in a row. It took him several seconds to grasp Charlie's words, and everything around him seemed like a dream, bright and insubstantial. The gun under his hand was real; everything else was dissolving in the incongruous warmth of the bathroom, steam flowing like water through the open doorway.

"They'll get in past all the security," Charlie said slowly. "And they'll hit the electronic system once on the outside to get them in, and again once they're in to seal the human security out. They don't realize that they're also going to fuck up fire suppression, but they won't have much time to think about that, because fifty-two seconds after they close themselves in, they're going to set off a blast that's supposed to open up the vault. It won't; it'll kill three of them in the initial explosion, and start a fire that will spread rapidly through that floor of the building, killing the rest of them before they can find a way to get the doors reopened while allowing the rest of the building to be evacuated before it spreads. Randy won't be with the vault team, so it should take him four or five minutes to die."

Charlie glanced down at Don to gauge his reaction, and if he could tell what it was, Don hoped Charlie would say so. Don could make out a savage hope that Charlie was right in every detail, and something like fear, and too many other things to consider naming, all blurred by the distance of shock. Charlie looked away without speaking, so Don finally said, "You tried to send Williamson."

Charlie shook his head. "He'd never have gone. I just made sure he would send Randy. Everyone's scared of him. People do what he says. He'll be the ideal leader to make sure that everyone sticks to the plan exactly. And that's how I'll be sure to kill him and everyone else."

Don shook his head, finally finding something solid to grasp in all of this. "Charlie, that doesn't--you're not killing anyone. They're choosing to get involved in this job, that carries a risk of something happening. You just--"

"I'm just making sure it will," Charlie said, softly but with finality. "And since Williamson is selling not just me but the proposition that I can be controlled, at the moment when he realizes what I've done I become worthless. I'm hoping the buyer will be on site to take immediate possession; that should provoke a fight between Williamson and the buyer, probably with heavily-armed backup on both sides. That should reduce the number of men available to come after us, and give us some warning."

Don lowered his face into his left hand and sat for a while--excruciatingly conscious of every ticking second, but needing every one to try to find some equilibrium. Charlie had done this; kept it from him, kept it from Williamson. Through torture and terror and day after grinding day, Charlie had set this all up and waited for the trap to spring, and now the moment had come. This wasn't the beginning of anything; Don had walked in on the last five minutes--last two hours and forty-five minutes.

Don raised his head and looked up at Charlie, who was watching him with an unreadable expression. His face was flushed from the heat, his hair going wild in the damp, but his eyes were steady and dark. Don could smell him in the warm air. They were separated by bare inches, Don's head at the level of Charlie's waist. Don sat back a little and met Charlie's eyes.

"What would you have done if I said I'd let him kill you?"

Charlie blinked, but didn't look at all surprised by the question.

"I'd have asked you to fuck me," he said, without hesitation, without the least pause to think. He'd already had a plan for that contingency. "Because I want to, before I die, and because you couldn't say no on the grounds of not wanting to hurt me if you were about to let me die, and because you might have gotten sentimental afterward and changed your mind."

Don closed his teeth on his lip, hard, and did not think about that, about Charlie offering himself up for one last--

"You kill me," Don said, low and hoarse. "Charlie, you fucking kill me."

Charlie's eyes widened a little as Don stood, but Don pushed him back to the wall and kissed him. He meant to go slow, he meant to be gentle, but his whole body shook with adrenaline, and he was pinning Charlie to the wall just trying to steady himself. It wasn't until the second time he lifted his head to breathe that he realized he still had his gun in his hand, pressing it against Charlie's shoulder to hold him still. He holstered it and cupped his hands to Charlie's face, kissing him roughly, grinding his hips against Charlie's as Charlie moaned. He could feel Charlie's dick hard against his hip, hot as everything else in the steaming room, and his own hard-on was throbbing in his jeans, but nothing mattered as much as this, his mouth against Charlie's, his breath Charlie's breath, every inch of him pressing every inch of Charlie to the wall.

Charlie kept trying to talk when Don's lips parted from his, "D--" and "Pl--" and "Nn--" but Don couldn't let him finish a syllable, kissing him harder every time. His teeth scraped Charlie's lips, his tongue thrusting deep into Charlie's mouth, until Charlie's head sagged back against the wall and Charlie's mouth was soft and wet and open to him, Charlie's breath rushing against his mouth. Don raised his head and looked down at Charlie, slumped against the wall, sharp eyes gone dazed, lips red and slick, sweat trickling down his temple.

He touched his forehead to Charlie's and closed his eyes, felt the flutter of eyelashes as Charlie closed his. He slid his hand into Charlie's pants, palming Charlie's cock as he whispered, "I'm not going to let you die."

Charlie's head shook a little under his, and Charlie gasped, "I know."

Don ducked his head and kissed Charlie's throat, sucking at his skin almost hard enough to leave a mark, just under his jaw and then again below that, and again below that. He jacked Charlie's cock a little, feeling it jerk in his hand, hot and desperate, and then he was yanking Charlie's shirt up, shoving it off over obediently raised arms. He dropped to his knees and took Charlie's pants down with him.

Don didn't hesitate, didn't tease, just wrapped a hand around Charlie's cock and brought it to his mouth. He sucked at the head until Charlie's hands caught in his hair, and then he braced his hands on Charlie's hips, holding Charlie hard to the wall as he took Charlie's cock into his mouth. He didn't try anything remotely fancy--even by his standards--just swallowed him, sucking hard and fast, bobbing up for breath when he had to. Charlie's hips jerked under his hands, but Don pushed him back fiercely, growling low in his throat as Charlie's body thumped solidly against the wall.

Charlie gasped, his hands tightening painfully in Don's hair, his cock twitching in Don's mouth. Don could feel Charlie's heartbeat, racing as fast as his own, and they were all one thing right now, all together. Don closed his eyes and swallowed around Charlie's cock. Charlie's grip stayed tight but suddenly reversed, trying to push him away, and Don pushed back harder, sucking until Charlie came, spilling into his mouth, the taste shocking and intense and flooding his senses. He swallowed until he choked, turned his head and gasped and then was sucking Charlie again, forcing himself to be gentler as Charlie let out a moan that was half a whimper. He couldn't let go of Charlie's dick, the taste and the feel of Charlie in his mouth, until Charlie's hand slid to his face and pushed him away.

Don fell back all at once, turning his face aside, eyes squeezed shut. Every gasp stung his mouth and throat, and he was shaking. He raised a hand to his face and it came away wet, come or sweat or tears, he didn't even know. Charlie knelt down between Don's splayed thighs, kissing his cheek, the spot beside his eye, and Don let his head fall back, leaning awkwardly against the toilet, as Charlie opened his pants.

He didn't last long--he was surprised he hadn't come in his pants, just from sucking Charlie's cock--but Charlie's hand was like an echo of the same sensation, the same connection. His hips arched up and he was gasping and coughing and coming. Charlie leaned his forehead against Don's temple, and they both stayed there, catching their breath, until Charlie's fingers closed around Don's left wrist, tugging his watch into view. Don tensed a little, though he knew they hadn't really lost much time.

Charlie kissed his mouth lightly and said, "Come on, the water's going to get cold."

Don had washed his hair for him, and insisted on combing it out after he toweled it dry, standing over him and working out every stubborn tangle while time ticked by. It wasn't like there had been anything more important to do, and Don had seemed calm by the time he finished, some of the wildness gone out of his eyes.

Their few preparations hadn't taken long. Don had brought his stash of comic books behind the makeshift barricade--the mattress propped behind the card tables, turned on their sides--and Charlie read while Don sat very still, spare clips and his backup weapon arrayed on the carpet around him.

Charlie peered up from his comic at the second gun from time to time; he'd never even known it was in Don's bag. All that time--but what would he have done with it had he known? Don had been right from the beginning; a gun was no good without a plan. The plan would have been no good without a gun, and someone more skilled than himself wielding it. He had needed Don for this.

Don had his left hand resting on his knee where Charlie could see his watch. Not long now. He squirmed and swallowed, nerves shaking through him before he forced himself to be still. Don turned his head, looking Charlie over, and Charlie squared his shoulders, trying to look ready.

"When I say 'Down,' what do you do?"

"I get down flat," Charlie parroted, gesturing to the corner he was already tucked into. "And I don't move."

"Don't move until I move?" Don asked. "Don't move until it seems quiet?"

"Don't move until you call me by name and tell me to get up," Charlie recited.

Don nodded, seeming satisfied, and got up on his knees, tucking the clips into various pockets. He paused with the second gun in his hand and then looked sideways at Charlie. Charlie held very still.

"You know which end of this to point?" Don asked.

Charlie nodded, reaching out one finger to point to the barrel, and Don smiled.

"Okay," Don said.

He took Charlie's hand and molded it to the grip, and Charlie found it horribly reassuring how strange and heavy the gun felt when he took its weight.

"Safety," Don said, guiding Charlie's thumb to a little lever. "On, off. On. Leave it on until you think you're going to need to fire. Point and shoot."

Charlie nodded slowly, and Don gave him another grim smile. "You probably won't need it, but this way--you can watch my back, right?"

Facedown in the corner. No. He'd only be watching his own back; the only way anyone would get to him was over Don's dead body. Charlie's mouth twitched, and his stomach lurched, but he took the gun from Don, holding it carefully in his lap. Safety on.

There had been sounds of cars arriving an hour ago, but the house had been quiet since. Charlie stared at Don's wrist as the time ticked past. The job should have started at 4:06 on the dot (5:06, but Charlie was nearly positive that the job was in the Eastern time zone and this house in the Central--if he was wrong, they'd get another hour to sit here and wait). Nine minutes to complete the insertion, barely three minutes after that before things began going obviously and lethally wrong.

Everyone would be dead no more than six minutes later. Randy and seven others blown up and burned. He felt vaguely sick when he thought about it too much; not sorry, exactly--he wouldn't undo it--but disgusted and horrified by what he was doing. He couldn't help wondering if--how many times--he'd done this before. Maybe that was why he couldn't remember anything, maybe that was why anything like a memory carried with it that sick, cold, lurch of terror. Maybe everything before was too awful to hold in his head, and after this--

But he'd have to survive the next hour for there to be an after worth worrying about. Charlie gritted his teeth and was reaching for another comic book, left-handed, still holding the gun in his right, when a muffled shout rang out, an unfamiliar angry voice. The shouting intensified, becoming a fury of conflicting voices, and then the pop of a gunshot, and then a whole volley. Charlie's eyes squeezed tight, his whole body pressing back into the wall, his hand clenching tight on the gun.

"Down," Don said, low and calm, and Charlie went flat just as Don shot out the lights.

The light from the bathroom shone on the glass littering the middle of the floor. Don kept his eyes on the reflected glare, reminding himself they'd come in with light behind them. He didn't dare be blinded by it. They'd see the light and gravitate to it; they'd see the red of Charlie's blanket, lying on the bathroom floor as a decoy. They only had to be distracted by it for a second; Don, hunkered down at the opposite end of the room behind his makeshift cover, only needed a second's advantage.

If they were too cautious--if they hesitated at the door to really assess the room--but here they came, running footsteps pounding up the stairs, two sets distinguishable from the continued shouting and gunfire further below. The bar was thrown off, the door yanked open, and two men burst in with their guns out. The first one swung straight toward the bathroom door, and Don took him out with a head shot, blood spraying dark on the wall. Don didn't hesitate before sweeping left, two shots into the second one even as he fired. The gunman collapsed into the closet space, legs kicking for several long seconds before he went still.

Don stayed crouched down, blinking his eyes clear of sweat and dazzling light, waiting. Two men dead, just like that. He heard a few final thumps from below and the whole house was silent. It had lasted a couple of minutes, maybe less.

Don said, "Genius?" as he looked behind him. There was a hole in the chalkboard above his head, a hole blown through the mattress to his right that corresponded to a hole in the wall.

"Okay." Charlie's voice was shaky and muffled. He was still facedown on the floor. Don reached down and touched him, criss-crossing his back and down one folded leg. No blood.

"Okay," Don said.

He kept scanning the room, waiting for something more. He moved sideways in a crouch to the end of their little barricade, easing each step down silently onto the carpet until he was in the open. He could see a slice of the wall past the doorway from this angle, but not enough. He moved out a little further, took a deep breath, and then took two fast heavy steps, crunching across the glass as he said, "Come on, genius," in a slightly louder voice, running to flatten himself against the interior wall, where the angle from the door was the worst. He had his gun up all the way, squeezing the trigger even before he saw movement, and the third man was dead in the doorway.

Don leaned his head against the wall for a second, listening and breathing, but he heard nothing else, and moved slowly down the wall to the doorway. The first through the door, the one who'd been taking aim at Charlie's blanket, had been Skip. Don didn't recognize the other two--the third one's face was a mess of blood, but his clothes looked new except for his shoes, scuffed leather in a vaguely unfamiliar style. Don glanced back in Charlie's direction, closed his eyes and hoped hard, and then pivoted around the doorway with his gun out.

Nothing. No one. Don looked down the stairs, but there was nothing there. He couldn't even hear anything. He darted quickly across to the next doorway--the room where he'd been held while Charlie was tortured--ears open all the time for anyone coming up the stairs. The room still held two folding chairs and sported holes in the far wall, but it was otherwise empty. Opposite that room was another bathroom, empty and dusty, no towels on the racks or curtain on the shower rod. The furthest bedroom down the hall was furnished. There was a bed with a multicolored quilt and four pillows, neatly made, an old desk and mismatched chair, a shabby dresser. The closet stood open, empty, a spare set of closet doors leaning against the wall beside it. Don turned and bolted back down the hall to the room where Charlie waited.

He jumped over the body in the doorway, then glanced toward the corner Charlie was huddled in and stopped. Don grabbed the body by the ankles and dragged it inside, out of the way, leaving a bloody path across the carpet. He caught a whiff of cigarette smoke over the gunpowder and blood stink as he did. It smelled faintly off; it might have been that he was just cranked up to eleven on adrenaline, but it might also have been foreign cigarettes, which would match with the local-but-new clothes and the weird shoes. So this was one of theirs, then. Maybe Williamson had lost that fight Charlie had predicted. Don walked over to the card tables and tipped them down, the mattress falling heavily on top of them. Charlie, in the corner, twitched but still didn't uncurl.

"Charlie," Don said, "come on, get up, let's go."

Charlie sprang up instantly, eyes wide and shiny, cheeks red. Don reached out and grabbed the gun from his hand, checking the safety and tucking it into the back of his own pants.

"Stay behind me," Don said, looking Charlie over.

Charlie looked back at him with a slightly crazed expression, but managed to nod his understanding.

"And watch your step, there's glass."

Charlie followed Don carefully, past glass and blood and three dead bodies. His eyes passed over them quickly, a blur of color, a riot of smell on an unwary breath. Charlie turned his head, breathed through his mouth, and fixed his gaze on Don's back, the second gun now safely tucked into the back of Don's jeans. The straps of the empty holster crossed his back, and he had his gun in hand, muzzle pointed to the ceiling as they stepped out through the door.

Charlie glanced around, briefly curious; he'd never seen anything outside of his room in this HQ. But Don was starting down the stairs, and Charlie stayed one step behind him, pressing his back to the wall. Step, step, step, and neither Don's booted feet nor his own socks made a sound on the carpeted surface. Halfway down the stairs, the other wall ended, leaving them visible to the space beyond. Don eased past that boundary, dropped into a crouch and fired. The gun cracked and Charlie jumped, belatedly looking around for somewhere to get down.

Don looked back and up at him, straightening, and beckoned to Charlie with his hand, moving faster down the last few stairs. Charlie hurried down after him, clutching the railing to keep from falling, and then they were on the linoleum floor. The front door was right there, locked up tight, but Don turned right down a hallway, moving so that Charlie was sandwiched between him and the wall as they both stepped sideways. Charlie glanced past the front door, toward the room that would have had a view of the stairs. He caught another fast glimpse of another body, facedown, dark hair black with blood, and then Don was tugging him along the hallway.

They stopped nearly at the end, and Don leaned to his right, trying to check the room beyond, gun up. Charlie didn't know why, but he looked back, toward the front door. Time seemed to break--everything happening at once, but everything taking forever to happen--as Williamson came around the corner with his gun out.

He wasn't even looking at Charlie; his avid, deadly gaze was all focused on Don, and Charlie stared at his face, fascinated. He'd rarely seen Williamson with his attention focused so absolutely on something other than himself. Even as Williamson came around the corner he was bringing his gun up, taking aim, and Charlie didn't even try to make a sound of warning.

His right hand found the gun at Don's back, heavy and awkward and exactly what was required. Charlie thumbed off the safety as he turned the gun toward Williamson. Trajectories swooped in his mind's eye, but he pulled the trigger without really aiming. The crack was like thunder, and the recoil knocked him back, into the wall and into Don, and a dark wet hole opened in Williamson's belly.

Williamson's eyes went wide, his gaze finally falling on Charlie. He looked surprised, and that was almost a better victory than the blood spreading rapidly from the wound in his stomach. Still, Charlie's numb hand tightened on the gun, and he was raising it again as Don whirled around.

Don's left hand caught Charlie's right, pushing the gun down, even as he swung his own gun around and down. Williamson was still on his feet--his gun still raised--and Don's eyes were probably on that, but Charlie was still focused on Williamson's face. Charlie saw him grin, bloody-mouthed, in the instant before Don's gun fired, knocking Williamson's head back, the side of his face disappearing in a spray of blood. Don's arm jerked and came back into place: another loud shot, and Williamson's throat gaped red as he fell to the floor with a solid, final thump.

Don wrested the gun from Charlie's hand and put it away again, turning to face Charlie as he looked up and down, his gun held with the barrel pointing up between them. Charlie looked at Don's face, not at the wreckage on the floor, or at the spreading pool of blood. Don was looking away, down the hall again in the direction he'd been checking before.

"Don."

Don's head whipped around, his gaze instantly riveted on Charlie.

Charlie flexed his now-empty right hand and whispered, "Why did you--"

Don's eyes flicked toward Williamson and back to Charlie. "You're not a killer."

Charlie shook his head. "You don't know that."

Don's lips quirked up slightly, though his eyes stayed serious and steady. "Trust me."

Charlie nodded a little; he did trust Don. He thought Don was probably wrong--certainly wrong, by some definitions--but Charlie trusted him.

Don looked away again. "Come on," he said, leading Charlie away from Williamson.

Charlie followed him out into the kitchen--a dead man slumped over the table, another on the floor--Charlie trained his eyes on Don's back, and Don led him around the corner and through another doorway. The basement stairs lay before them, and an outside door to one side. Don emptied a little rack on the wall of the keys dangling there, and said, "Here, put these on," kicking at a pair of sneakers, lined up neatly among a row of other shoes. "They should be about your size."

Don tugged him forward, and Charlie obediently jammed his feet into the shoes. It was a weird sensation--constricted but protected--and then Don snorted and bent over, tugging the tongues of the shoes up and rendering them much more comfortable.

"Come on, you can tie 'em in the car."

Don opened the door and Charlie followed him out--out--in a daze. There were two cars there, black and shining, but Don ignored both of them, leading Charlie past them to the far wall, where a row of coats hung beside another door. He shrugged into one and nodded toward another. Charlie put it on quickly, only really noticing the cold as he did so, his fingers clumsy on the buttons. Then Don turned and opened the door, stepping through quickly.

Charlie followed. He hesitated just outside, his hand still on the doorknob, feeling a strange sense of vertigo. This was it. Williamson lay dead in the house behind him and he was outside. The air was full of fog, hanging ghostly above the ground, and the sky was overcast, the light already failing. Charlie smiled at the frozen ground, the skeletal trees barely visible through the mist, and jumped when he heard Don laugh.

Don was standing a little way away, down the driveway. Charlie followed him to find that he was staring at a car parked on the gravel. It was boxy, light blue except where it was beginning to rust, dented here and there. Don was looking at it like it was the most beautiful thing in the world.

"91 Cutlass Ciera," he said incomprehensibly, holding up a key. "Perfect. Come on, buddy, we're getting out of here."

That much Charlie understood. He headed for the passenger door that Don waved him to, trying the handle and finding it unlocked.

"Buckle up," Don said, settling into the driver's seat, and even as Charlie complied Don leaned sideways over his lap, popping open the glove compartment nearly onto Charlie's knees. He rummaged quickly through the contents--a small flashlight, a map of Wisconsin, and an unlabeled white envelope. Don opened it with one thumb; it contained a few official-looking slips of paper and a stack of twenty-dollar bills. Don pulled out the money and dropped it in Charlie's lap as he straightened up.

"Hold onto that," he said, slid the key into the ignition and turned it.

The car roared to life, and Don grinned, shook his head, and muttered something about trains running on time as he laid his arm across the back of Charlie's seat, watching over his shoulder as he backed the car up. He turned forward again a moment later, executing a tight turn, and they were rumbling slowly down the driveway through the fog. Charlie looked back to watch the house disappearing in the gloom. There wasn't a thing to show what had happened in there. For an instant Charlie heard Williamson laughing, saying All you're leaving behind you is a trail of bodies, but Williamson was dead, and the view out the back window was nothing but a blur of gray.

Charlie turned around, settling face-forward in his seat, and looked down at the money in his lap. On some half-conscious impulse, he picked up the top bill and held it up, trying to see it properly in the last of the light: tiny foil strip, yes, watermark, yes, all the lines crisp and clean and distinct.

"Not counterfeit," Charlie said, and then bit his lip, wondering why he should know that. His mind bloomed with suggestions, the way fluid dynamics could track the movements of money, counterfeit or otherwise. When he glanced over most of the triumph had drained from Don's face.

They turned off the gravel driveway onto what he supposed must be a road, though it was at least as bumpy. They crawled along it in the fog as the light continued to fail, and something came over Don's face as he flicked on the headlights, his jaw tightening. Charlie felt suddenly unaccountably scared, and the feeling didn't diminish when Don pulled over the car, well off the side of the road, turning off first the headlights and then the engine. It was nearly dark, and the silence surrounding them was absolute.

"Charlie," Don said quietly, and Charlie instantly replied, "No," randomly, desperately. He didn't want whatever was about to follow that word.

Don's head jerked toward him, Don's eyes intent on him in the twilight, and Don's hand settled firmly on his shoulder and squeezed.

"Charlie," he repeated, "I have to go do something, and you can't come with me."

Charlie's heart went cold, and he shrank under Don's hand, glancing outside at the dark; but Don was taking the keys from the ignition with his other hand, laying them in Charlie's lap.

"You don't have to wait for me," Don said, low and steady, "but if you do, I will come back to you. You can go wherever you want, do whatever you want--go to the cops--"

Charlie shook his head frantically, and Don's mouth went tight.

"Anything," Don said. "But I have to--I have to go." His voice shook a little, and Charlie wondered whether the resolve in Don's voice was for Charlie or himself. Don glanced out through the windshield, over his shoulder toward the road, though Charlie couldn't see it in the fog and dark.

"If anybody comes," Don said, his face turned away but his hand steady on Charlie's shoulder, "you tell them you were hitching a ride, and the guy driving the car pulled over and got out to take a piss in the trees. You don't know anything about him, not even his name."

Charlie frowned, and Don seemed to sense it, looking back at him with a grim, urgent expression. "Charlie, you don't know anything."

Charlie opened his mouth, but Don lunged in and kissed him before he could speak, fast and rough and breathless. Charlie fumbled at his seatbelt trying to get out, get to Don, keep him here. He sucked roughly at Don's tongue in his mouth, one hand clutching the sleeve of Don's coat. But Don pulled away abruptly, saying again in an unsteady voice, "I'll come back," and then he opened the door, letting in a brief burst of cold foggy air as he shook off Charlie's grip, and he was gone.

Don walked quickly through the trees, not quite letting himself run on the uneven, hard-frozen ground, hoping he could navigate back to the house by dead reckoning. It was dark among the trees, if a little less foggy, and it wouldn't be hard to get lost and wind up wandering through some Wisconsin forest for the entire night. They hadn't been moving too fast in the car, but it was hard to gauge the distance in the dark and fog; still, it seemed like he should see some sign by now. He thought about turning back, just going and getting Charlie and getting the hell out of here, but--

The gunshots wouldn't bring cops. If there were any neighbors within range of the sound, they'd be inured to it from Don's days of target practice. And Don hadn't been the only one: he'd heard periodic small-arms fire, muffled and distant, throughout the last week. So there was no urgent time limit here. Nobody was going to catch him and Charlie red-handed.

Give it time, though--a hot summer, bored country kids checking out that creepy house where you used to hear gunshots all the time--they'd find the target range first, or the track through the woods littered with broken bottles and expended rounds. They'd make their way to the house--maybe they'd get all the way inside and smell it, maybe they'd just look through a window and see. But then there would be cops, six months from now. A dozen violently-killed men rotting in this house... It'd be a circus, and they'd pull in the best forensics team they could find to sort out the slaughter, and then--

Fingerprints, just like Williamson had told him, to say nothing of the DNA evidence in the room where he and Charlie had been kept--on that mattress, on the sleeping bags, on Charlie's goddamn blanket. He and Charlie would both be in CODIS now, so no one would even have to notice the similarity of their DNA to realize exactly what had been going on. If Charlie was going to walk away from this--if everything that had been done to him wasn't just going to lurk here, waiting to drag Charlie back--then somebody had to clean house. Don was the only one left to do it--and he would, if he could just fucking find it.

He came up short as the ground loomed suddenly high in front of him. For a second he thought he had to have gone completely wrong somehow, and then he made out the shape of an abandoned spray paint can lying on the ground and realized he'd come up on the backside of the target range's backstop. He turned left and skirted around the clearing until he got down to the end where people had stood to shoot; the ground there was well-trampled, and his footprints wouldn't show up so much. From there he picked up the track back toward the house, following the familiar route across the open yard and up the side of the garage to the door he and Charlie had only just slipped out.

Don took a breath, steeling himself, and then opened the door and stepped inside, sparing a glance at the expensive-looking cars in the garage--armored, he'd bet anything, they had to belong to the buyer--as he hurried to the house door. He meant to go straight downstairs, but a creeping uneasy feeling made him go up to the kitchen instead and look down the hall toward the front door.

Williamson--Williamson's corpse--was still lying there, in a pool of blood that looked black in the near-darkness. Don thought about turning a light on but didn't, walking up the hallway instead. There were two furrows through the paint on the right side, opposite where he and Charlie had stood; he hadn't even heard Williamson fire. Don stopped just at the edge of the blood pool and looked down at what was left of the man.

Most of the blood looked to have come from the gut wound; he hadn't bled for long after Don shot him. Don eyed the placement of Charlie's hit and felt exactly no temptation to take a closer look. As it was, he only suspected that the shot had been well-placed to hit the abdominal aorta. If he was right, Charlie wouldn't have needed a second shot to kill Williamson--he'd only have needed to wait a minute. He had no interest in being sure he was right. Charlie hadn't killed Williamson. Don had.

Fingerprints, Don thought again, and wondered how much Williamson had known. This was the drawback to vigilantism; if you weren't actually Batman, no one explained what they'd been doing when you won. Or maybe that was why Batman didn't kill anyone: morbid curiosity. It didn't matter now. Whatever Williamson had known, this dead body didn't. Don was starting to turn away when a light in the living room switched on, and he fired a round through the far wall before he realized there was no one there.

Don stepped carefully around Williamson, across the foyer and into the living room. Another dead man lay there, face down, heels toward Don. He'd had his back to them as they came down the stairs, but Don hadn't taken the chance. The lamplight reflected off his blood, barely starting to dry where it had pooled on the carpet. Don forced himself to look away from the body, toward the lamp. It took him a few dazed seconds to follow the cord to the wall and find the timer plugged into the socket. He holstered his gun and crouched, looking it over. It looked pretty much like the ones his dad had, to make sure there was always a light on for--

Don gritted his teeth, blinking hard at the timer. It was easy to see how it worked. He glanced at his watch and reset it to turn on again in twenty minutes, then laid the lamp gently on the carpet, making sure the bulb rested against the shade. There was his time limit, then.

Don got up and headed for the stairs, pausing over Williamson for one more look. He holstered his gun and reached for the one at the small of his back, the one Charlie had fired. He wiped it clean with his shirt--not a print left--and then dropped it on top of Williamson's corpse. A little blood, thick and half-congealed, splashed from the impact.

Don stepped over the body and ran up the stairs to the second floor, back into the room where they'd been held.

Charlie's blanket was still lying on the bathroom floor, safely outside the splatter radius of any of the dead bodies. Don balled it up and stuffed it into his duffle bag, which he'd left sitting in the tub. His and Charlie's clean clothes were in there, along with the somewhat depleted first aid kit and his wallet, holding the McDonald driver's license and most of the cash from his payday. Don tucked the wallet into his pocket, zipped the bag and shouldered it. He jumped over the bannister on his way down the stairs this time, avoiding Williamson's body on his way down to the basement.

The basement was divided into two halves. This one held the washer and dryer, furnace, and water heater, along with assorted anonymous supplies. There was a basket of clean clothes, neatly folded, near the door. Don dropped the duffle bag beside it and then forced himself to turn away, opening the door on the other half.

Don had seen pictures like this at Quantico, slides projected on the big screen, instructors talking about how to dissect all the confused evidence of a multiple homicide. The technical term, he thought, was abattoir. There was blood on every wall, a man in a suit slumped backward in a kitchen chair and--he counted up quickly--eight more on the floor. There was an assortment of monitors and laptops on the table the dead man sat beside. One still showed static under a spatter of blood; the others were all blank, sporting bullet holes, victims of the crossfire.

Don stood in the doorway, breathing carefully through his mouth as he reconsidered the necessity of checking the room any more carefully. He shook his head slightly and reached for the light switch, and felt the sting on his leg almost before he heard the shot. It took a long lagging second for him to drop into a crouch, pulling his gun as the next bullet splintered the doorframe at the height of his head. Don fired three shots toward the wavering arm raised out of the mess of bodies, and then the Sig clicked, empty.

Don kept his eyes fixed on that spot as he fumbled a fresh clip out of his pocket and changed it, sparing a glance down at his leg--his right thigh was bleeding, a long strip torn out of his jeans--before he stood and began walking, gun out, picking his way through the bodies to the one who'd shot him.

He kicked the gun from the hand and only then looked up to the face, past the mangled chest, the freshly-spreading pool of blood joining others on the floor around it. The eyes didn't glare, didn't even focus on him, before rolling up and going still.

"Fuck," Don muttered, but he limped around the room, checking each body to be sure they were all dead before he staggered out and shut the door behind him.

His boots tracked blood where he walked, but he had to stop his own bleeding first; everything else would be tidied up soon enough. He glanced at his watch. Twelve minutes to go. Very soon. He pulled a clean shirt from the laundry basket and pressed it hard to his leg. The sting of the wound was backed by a deep, throbbing ache now, and his whole body was getting heavy, trying to argue that getting shot made this the end of the day when it wasn't even close.

It was a shallow cut, at least. He'd lost less than five minutes by the time the bleeding slowed enough for him to fumble the laces of his boots off with shaky hands, dropping his pants and wiping his hands on them before he went into his bag for the first aid kit. He used way too many butterfly bandages, way too much gauze and tape over an uneven glob of antiseptic cream, but his hands were unsteady, and he didn't want to spring a leak at the wrong moment. He grabbed a pair of jeans from the basket, a size or two larger than his own. The hems dragged even once he got his feet back into his boots, but at least they covered the odd bulkiness of his thigh.

Don wiped his hands off again on his ruined jeans, grabbed a sock from the laundry basket and looked around for a flashlight. Williamson's touch showed again; there was one on the shelf in the back of the room, just past the furnace. Don switched it on, moved his duffle bag to the stairs, and shut off all the lights in the basement. When everything was set, he laid himself carefully down on the floor beside the water heater and blew the pilot light out. Then he pulled the Sig out, wrapped the sock around the barrel, and beat the gas valve until it broke open. The smell of it flowed over him at once.

For an instant he was tempted to just stay where he was, lie still and rest and let it take him. Charlie was out, Charlie was safe, the clock was ticking, and soon every shred of evidence would be gone. Don had done what he'd come here to do. The floor was cool and pleasantly horizontal under his cheek, the throb of his leg was distant, and his eyes were so heavy. The gun slipped from his grasp, and the sound of it hitting the concrete floor seemed muffled by more than an awkwardly-wrapped sock.

But as his eyes slid shut he remembered Charlie's frantic grip on his arm, and his own voice saying I'll come back. One last hot wash of adrenaline had him on his feet and running, pain fading to the background as the world went sharp-edged and stark and a countdown blared in his brain. He grabbed his bag as he bolted up the stairs, out the door to the garage, and out the door past that to the cold open air.

Don cut across the backyard, not letting himself break stride until he was into the trees no matter his lungs and legs burned. Even then he slowed only to a fast walk, feeling down his leg--but no, the bandages were holding, his leg was dry. He'd lost the flashlight somewhere, and it was full dark now, utterly black in the trees. If he lost the track--

The explosion was deafening, and Don turned to look back just as the concussion struck, knocking him off his unsteady feet. He landed half on top of the duffle bag and scrambled back up, his path illuminated now by the orange firelight. The neighbors were going to notice that, but by the time they got a fire truck out here, there'd be nothing to do but watch it burn to the ground, not out here off the city water mains. Don reached the target range and cut around it, losing most of the light as he went into the trees, trying to angle back to the road.

He saw lights and pushed himself faster, even as his stomach dropped--they were flashing red, and there couldn't be someone on the scene already, unless a state trooper on patrol had spotted Charlie, and in that case--

But the flash was too slow; Don stumbled out onto the verge of the road twenty yards from the source of the light and finally recognized it. Charlie had turned the hazard flashers on like a beacon; he was standing there beside the car, hugging himself in the blinking light and watching the trees. Don turned toward him, limping on, but Charlie was practically flying across the distance between them, striking Don as hard as the concussion wave. Don threw his arms around Charlie and held on, and Charlie staggered a little but kept them both on their feet.

"Don," he whispered, "Don, Don--"

"It's over," Don said, pressing his cheek hard against Charlie's hair. "We're done. Let's get the fuck out of here."

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