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her.
    â€œDo it,” Kat said.
    I closed my eyes and fired two bullets into Raakel’s head. When I looked again, Raakel was slumped over, sliding off the bed and onto the floor in front of me.
    â€œYou tried, Mike,” Kat said, gritting her own teeth against the pain. “We both tried as hard as we could.”
    â€œDid we? Well, it wasn’t good enough.” I felt tears welling up in my throat, hot and painful. “Kat, I don’t know if we’re going to convince any of them.”
    â€œI need you to tie this,” she said again, her voice shaking. I turned and looked at her. She was pale and scared.
    â€œCome on,” she said. “We’re going to have police on us any minute now. We probably woke up everyone in this whole hotel.”
    I put my gun back in my waistband and took the ends of the towel in my hands. “How is it?” I asked, as I tied it into a makeshift bandage.
    â€œIt’s the back of my arm,” she said. “So no arteries or anything like that. But it went down to the bone. I need stitches.”
    I tightened it and then reached down to pick up her fallen gun. She took it with her left hand.
    â€œThere’s a back stairway,” she said.
    â€œOkay.”
    She took a robe from the closet and pulled it on, putting the Beretta into a pocket. As we got outside into the hall, we saw a dozen other guests, most of them in pajamas or bathrobes; they all looked tiredand bewildered, wondering where the noise had come from. Rumors of whatever was going on in the Olympic apartments had to be passing around. Kat and I played it cool, trying to take on the same look that the others had.
    An employee of the hotel made an announcement in German that I didn’t understand, but Kat did.
    â€œLet’s get out of here,” she said.
    â€œThe back?” I asked.
    â€œNo, the lobby.”
    At the front desk Kat asked the clerk a question in German, and he nodded.
    He opened a drawer, neatly organized with all kinds of toiletries: toothbrushes, shower caps, fingernail clippers. He pulled out a little packet and a book of matches and handed them to Kat.
    â€œDanke,” she said.
    â€œBitte.”
    We slipped out the front door and crossed the street to a park. It was still dark out, but the eastern sky was beginning to lighten.
    â€œWhat’s that?” I asked, as she led me to a picnic table.
    â€œA sewing kit,” she said, sitting down and opening the small packet, revealing thread, needles, and a couple of buttons. “You’re going to stitch me up.”

CHAPTER TWO
    We had a first aid kit in the backpack and she opened it and took two painkillers. I opened an alcohol swab and wiped the vicious gouge. The Turkish blade had cut cleanly—a straight cut through the sweatshirt, skin, muscle, down to the bone. I lit a match to sterilize the needle and then tried to follow Kat’s instructions to stitch the wound up cleanly. It took me a few minutes to get the hang of it—I was timid at first, knowing how much pain she had to be in—but I soon figured it out. It was going to be an awful-looking scar, but she said it had to be done.
    While I worked, she got on the walkie-talkie and called to report in.
    She had the earphone in, so I couldn’t follow most of the conversation.
    â€œWe had to kill her,” Kat said. “Yes . . . No, there was no other choice. . . . No. No. At least I don’t think so. . . . Yes. Mike is stitching me up, but I’m not going to be able to use my right hand. It severed the muscle and tendons I think. I need a hospital. . . . We’re in a park across from the hotel. . . . Okay. We’ll see you.”
    There was a long pause, and she looked down at the slash. She was far more comfortable with blood and being stitched up than I was. I didn’t know what kind of pain pills she’d taken, but they must have been strong. She’d been the one to make the first