Edge

right of her and the two armed captors on the left.
    Pogue pointed to the two with the weapons and drew his finger over his throat, then to himself.
    He was, after all, a professional killer and I was, in effect, the opposite. I prepared to shoot into the shoulder of the man on the right and Henry Loving.
    I aimed. Pogue held up three fingers of his left hand and began counting down.
    I trained my sights on Loving. The image in my mind was Abe Fallow.
    Two . . .
    It was then that Amanda gave a gasp and jerked back. “Oh, shit.” She screamed, “No!” She was staring down. The men crouched and separated and we momentarily lost our targets. One stepped back, just out of view.
    Pogue and I froze.
    The girl said, “A rat. There’s a rat under the chair! Get it away!”
    “A—”
    The captor nearest her muttered, “Fuck, scaredthe shit out of me.” He stood and stepped forward, close to Amanda, looking under the chair.
    Pogue and I started to aim once more.
    Which was when the girl’s bound hands lifted the bear purse to her mouth. She unzipped it with her teeth and managed to pull out a small black canister. She aimed awkwardly but fired a stream of orange pepper spray directly into the startled face of her captor. From two feet away it shot straight into his eyes. He screamed and dropped his gun, which Amanda dove for. The man beside him swung his gun toward her.
    Loving shouted, “No!”
    Pogue and I simultaneously shot the man who was about to fire at Amanda.
    Henry Loving knew instantly what had happened and, as we turned our guns toward him and the others, he swept his arm into the lamps, which shattered on the floor, plunging the room into darkness. The only illumination now was the ruddy glow from the three exit signs.
    Pogue and I stared down into the murky scene, where I had a vague image of Amanda scrabbling away from the men into the obstacle course of the room.
    Then, beneath me, I heard the whispers of the three remaining captors as they planned their strategy.

Chapter 63
    NOW IT DIDN’T matter if there was a mole in Freddy’s office or not, since Loving knew about our presence. So I hit SEND , transmitting the text I’d prepared earlier. It gave Freddy a brief explanation and an urgent request for backup. I told him too that the primary was en route, so to set up roadblocks around the facility.
    Amanda’s heroics had guaranteed that we now needed all the help we could get.
    Eyes growing accustomed to the darkness, we made our way down the stairway to the floor of the control room. I saw a dim form but whether it was a shadow or a silhouette, I didn’t know. I aimed but was well aware it might be Amanda and waited for a clear image.
    I never got one. He, or she, disappeared.
    I heard hard breathing and faint groans from the man Amanda had sprayed. “Fuck, that hurts. . . . Okay, okay. I can see. I’ve got my weapon. Who the fuck’s here?”
    From somewhere, not that far away, Loving hissed for their silence.
    Where was Amanda?
    A moment later I heard more whispering.
    Loving was playing a Bayesian game now, one modeled on imperfect information. He wouldn’t know whom he was up against. How many we were, who we were, what our agenda was. But he’d be making instantaneous adjustments in assessing the probability of what his enemy would do.
    He’d think there might be just one adversary here—he wouldn’t have heard the second shot, from Pogue’s silenced weapon. He knew that the attacker had eliminated the guard out front. He knew that the opponent was willing to fire without surrender demands. Another bit of information was that to distract them we’d flung glass into the corner of the control room, meaning this was a very limited operation, with no SWAT backup. Had the Bureau’s hostage rescue team been on hand, this place would have been lit up like Times Square.
    Loving would be thinking he and his men outnumbered the opponents and that they still had some time. Enough to find the girl and escape.
    A piercing scream filled the black space. Amanda. She was near me. I could hear the sounds of a struggle. Then a loud clank and a man shouted in pain, “Need some help. She got me with that fucking spray shit. I’m in the northwest corner—”
    “Quiet,” Loving shouted, as Pogue and I separated instinctively and moved fast in that direction. I fired covering shots high.
    The shadowy figure by the door lifted his gun and fired a round in my general direction. Pogue