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“You never asked about my nickname,” he said.

The conversation was moving too fast for me. “I assumed it was some kind of card-playing thing.”

He shook his head while I watched him in the mirror. Then he started unzipping his pants. He was too far away to touch me, or for me to fight back. All I could do was wait for him to come to me.

He slipped inside his open fly and lifted himself out in a smooth practiced movement. He was huge, impressive even limp and soft. If I hadn’t seen Bernardo earlier, I’d have been more impressed. Of course, you could never be a hundred percent sure how big a man got when he was erect. Some barely changed size. Some grew a lot. Maybe he’d been very impressive. Then I realized he had a tattoo on it.

I had to turn and look, rather than trust to the mirror. “Am I supposed to run screaming or ask to touch it?” I wasn’t even scared. It was too bizarre.

“Which do you want to do?”

I admit I was having a hard time looking at his face and not his penis because it was growing, and I could see the tattoo more clearly. “Can’t rape the willing, hey?”

He smiled, as if this approach had worked before with women. It was certainly something a girl didn’t get offered everyday. “I won’t tell, if you don’t.”

“Is that the two of hearts on your . . . penis?”

His smile widened.

“Didn’t that hurt?”

“Not as much as it’s going to,” Deuce said. He moved slowly towards me, so I could get a good look. He had a flair for theatrics, did Deuce. I didn’t want him using his flair or anything else on me. I turned and stumbled on purpose. He caught me, as he’d caught me all the other times. I put the pen against his chest, just under the sternum, angled upward. I was a vampire hunter. If there was one thing I knew how to do, it was to find the heart with the first blow.

I pressed the button the second I touched him. There was no upward movement, no feel of shoving the blade, because the blade did its own work.

His eyes went wide, mouth opened, but no sound came out. I twisted the blade left, then right, making sure he’d never draw breath to warn the man in the other room.

Deuce started to slide down the cabinets. I caught him and lowered him gently to the floor, glad he was one of the smaller men. I’d have had trouble wrestling Mickey’s body around. The water was still running in the shower. Blade probably wouldn’t have heard the sound of the body hitting the ground over the shower, but better safe than sorry.

Deuce lay there on the floor, the blade sticking out of his chest, his pants still unzipped, his namesake naked to the world. He looked very sad lying there dead. If I had time before I left, I’d zip him up, but first Blade. I got the gun off Deuce’s shoulder and put the sling around my shoulder. I checked to make sure I knew where the safety was, and that it was off. The switch on the side had three settings, not just two like the Uzi. I put the setting on high. Logic said it would make the most bullets come out in the shortest space of time. I got Duece’s extra clip for the sub gun. A clip only holds twenty rounds. Normally, that sounded like a lot, but not tonight. There wasn’t enough ammo in the world to make me feel safe tonight. I put the extra clips for both sub guns and the hand guns in the purse and crossed the purse straps across my chest.

Deuce’s backup was a .9 mm Glock. Personally, I find Glocks awkward to shoot, though I know people that swear by them, once the learning curve was over at the firing range. But I was happy to see this one.

The guns were great, but they would make a lot of noise. If I shot Blade, it would bring the rest of the bad guys down on me, and worse yet, they might kill Edward before coming after me. They had three hostages. They only needed one.

I needed something quiet. Trouble was I didn’t think I could take Blade with a blade. Hand to hand, forget it. That left me with the contents of the purse.

I pulled the blade out of Deuce’s chest. Blood welled up darker than most, like heart blood is