“Yeah.”
I watched her for a bit, looking for some kind of uncertainty, even a hair of it, to creep into those placid eyes. But it never happened.
“Are you ready—I mean, really ready—to give up all you’re giving up here?”
“What am I giving up?” she asked. “You mean, like, Harvard and all that?”
“For starters.”
She widened her eyes at me. “I’ve got five ironclad identities. One of them, by the way, is already enrolled in Harvard next year. And one is enrolled in Brown. I haven’t decided which one I want yet. A real degree from either of those schools, or any school for that matter, is no better than a fake one. And in some cases, it’s worse because it’s less malleable. There’s an eighth continent now, Patrick. It’s accessed by a keyboard. You can paint the sky, rewrite the rules of travel, do whatever you want. No boundaries and no border wars because very few people even know how to find this continent. I do. Some other people I’ve met do. The rest of you remain here.” She leaned forward. “So, yes, playing by your rules, I’m Amanda McCready, an about-to-turn-seventeen high school dropout. According to my rules, though, Amanda McCready is just one card in a thick deck. Look at it like—”
She pushed back her chair, her eyes on the window that faced the street. She grabbed the bag at her feet and tossed it onto the table. I followed her gaze and saw a car out front, one that hadn’t been there a minute before.
“Who is it?”
She didn’t answer. She dumped her leather bag on the dining-room table and pulled out of the pile two sets of the weirdest-looking handcuffs I’d ever seen. There was no chain between the cuffs. The base of each cuff met the base of the other. They were encased in hard black plastic. One cuff was standard size. On the other end, it was tiny. Small enough to cuff a bird maybe.
Or a baby.
“What the fuck are those?” I crossed the dining room and threw the lock on the front door.
“Don’t curse in front of the baby.”
The top of someone’s head passed beneath the dining-room window.
“Fine. What the heck are those?”
“High-security rigid handcuffs.” Amanda struggled into her Björn. “They use them to transport terrorists on planes. I had these modified. They kick ass, right?”
“They’re cool,” I said. “How many doors into the house?”
“Three if you count the cellar.” She unstrapped Claire from the car seat. The baby groaned and then huffed out several unhappy grunts. Amanda fit her legs into the holes of the Björn, slipped one flap over her shoulder, and buckled it as someone kicked in the back door.
Amanda snapped one cuff over her own left wrist, one over her right.
I pulled my .45, pointed it at the dining-room portico.
Amanda snapped one of the smaller cuffs over Claire’s left wrist.
A window broke in the living room, followed a second or two later by the sounds of someone climbing through it. I kept my eye on the portico, but now I knew they could flank me.
“A little help?” Amanda said.
I came over to her and she held her right arm up so that the smaller cuff hovered beside Claire’s left wrist.
“You bring game, sister.” I snapped the cuff closed over Claire’s wrist.
“In for a penny, in for a pound.”
Kenny came through the portico at the end of the room with a shotgun leveled at us.
I pointed my .45 at his head, but it was a hollow gesture; if he pulled that trigger from this distance, he’d kill all three of us.
I heard the racking of another shotgun, to my left. I glanced over. Tadeo stood where the living room met the dining room at the base of the staircase.
“You just ejected a shell trying to make a cool sound,” I told him.
He turned a bit red. “Still got one to put in your chest.”
“Dang,” I said, “that gun’s almost as big as you.”
“Big enough to cut you in half, homes.”
“But the recoil will blow your ass into the front yard.”
Kenny said, “Put your gun down, Patrick.”
I kept my gun where it was. “You Mexican, Tadeo?”
He nestled the shotgun stock into his shoulder. “You damn right I am.”
“I never had a Mexican standoff with an actual Mexican. There’s something cool about that, don’t you think?”
“Sounds racist to me, homes.”
“What’s racist about it? You’re Mexican, this is a Mexican standoff. It’d be like going Dutch with someone from Amsterdam. Now if, because I’m Irish, you accused me of having a small dick and being a drunk, that’s racist, but describing a standoff as a Mexican standoff as opposed to a plain old, you know, standoff, that seems a pretty victimless racial modification to me.”
“You’re stalling,” Kenny said.
“I’m giving everyone time to calm down.”
Helene came through the portico behind Kenny. She saw the three guns and took a big swallow, but kept coming into the dining room.
“Honey,” she said in a syrupy voice, “we just want the baby.”
“Don’t call me honey,” Amanda said.
“What should I call you?”
“Estranged.”
Kenny said to Helene, “Just get the baby.”
“Okay.”
Amanda raised her wrists so Kenny and Helene saw the cuffs. “Claire and me? We’re a package.”
Kenny’s face grew long and defeated. “Where are the keys?”
“Behind you in the handcuff-key jar.” Amanda rolled her eyes. “Really, Ken?”
“I can kill you,” Kenny said, “and just cut those cuffs off with a hacksaw.”
“If it was 1968 and this was Cool Hand Luke, maybe,” Amanda said. “You see any length of chain on these? You see anything you could cut?”
“Hey!” Helene yelled as if she were the voice of reason. “No one’s killing anyone.”
“Gosh, Moms,” Amanda said, “what exactly do you think Kirill Borzakov is going to do to me?”
“He won’t kill you,” Helene said, patting the air for effect. “He promised.”
“Oh, well, then,” I said to Amanda, “you’re fine.”
“Right?”
“Patrick,” Kenny said.
“Yeah?”
“You can’t win this. I mean, you’ve got to know that.”