she'd made and, coming through the other side, put it behind her. But she had to take the initiative, to formulate a plan of counterattack. That was what Deron meant when he said, This is your mess.
"The thing to do," she said, slowly and carefully, "is to beat LaValle at his own game."
"And how do you propose to do that?" Deron said.
Soraya stared down at the dregs of her scotch. That was just it, she had no idea.
The silence stretched out, growing thicker and more deadly by the second. At last, Kiki uncurled herself, stood up, and said, "I for one have had enough of this gloom and doom. Sitting around feeling angry and frustrated isn't helping Tyrone and it isn't helping us find a solution. I'm going out to have a good time at my friend's club." She looked from Soraya to Deron and back again. "So who's going to join me?"
The high-low wail of the police sirens came to Bourne as he sat beside the museum guard in the bulldozer. Up close, she looked younger than he had imagined. Her blond hair, which had been pulled back in a severe bun, had come loose. It flowed down around her pale face. Her eyes were large and liquid-red around the rims now from crying. There was something about them that made him think she'd been born sad.
"Take off your jacket," he said.
"What?" The guard appeared totally confused.
Without saying anything, Bourne helped her off with her jacket. Pushing up the sleeves of her shirt, he checked the insides of her elbows, but found no Black Legion tattoo. Naked fear had joined the sadness in her eyes.
"What's your name?" he said softly.
"Petra-Alexandra Eichen," she said in a quavery voice. "But everyone calls me Petra." She wiped at her eyes, and gave him a sideways look. "Are you going to kill me now?"
The police sirens were very loud, and Bourne had a desire to get as far away from them as possible.
"Why would I do that?"
"Because I..." Her voice faltered and she choked, it seemed, on her own words, or on an emotion welling up. "I shot your friend."
"Why did you do that?"
"For money," she said. "I need money."
Bourne believed her. She didn't act like a professional; she didn't talk like one, either. "Who paid you?"
Fear distorted her expression, magnified her eyes until they seemed to goggle at him. "I... I can't tell you. He made me promise, he said he'd kill me if I opened my mouth."
Bourne heard raised voices, using the clipped jargon endemic to police the world over. They'd started their dragnet. He retrieved her gun, a Walther P22, the small caliber being the only option for a silent kill in an enclosed space, even with a suppressor.
"Where's the suppressor?"
"I threw it down a storm drain," she said, "as I was instructed to do."
"Continuing to follow orders isn't going to help. The people who hired you are going to kill you anyway," he said as he dragged her down from the bulldozer. "You're in way over your head."
She gave a little moan and tried to break away from him.
He grabbed her. "If you want, I'll let you go straight to the cops. They'll be here any minute."
Her mouth worked, but nothing intelligible came out.
Voices came to him, more distinct now. The police were on the other side of the corrugated wall. He pulled her in the opposite direction. "Do you know another way out of here?"
Petra nodded, pointing. She and Bourne ran diagonally across the yard, dodging heavy equipment as they picked their way through the rubble and around deep holes in the earth. Without turning around, Bourne could tell that the cops had entered the far side of the yard. He pushed Petra's head down as he himself bent over to keep them both from being spotted. Beyond a crane, a crew chief's trailer was set up on concrete blocks. Temporary electric lines were strung into it from just above the tin roof.
Petra threw herself headlong under the trailer, and Bourne followed. The blocks set the trailer just high enough for them to worm their way on their bellies to the far side, where Bourne saw that a gap had been cut in the chain-link fence.
Crawling through the gap, they found themselves in a quiet alley filled with industrial-size garbage bins and a Dumpster filled with broken tiles, jagged blocks of terrazzo, and pieces of twisted metal, no doubt from whatever buildings had once stood in the now