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“No.”

“Please.”

“Shut up.”

“He will shoot you.”

“So let him.” He did not turn his head. “You’re not dying, Maksim. Not while I’m here. You hear me? I’m not losing you.”

Roake’s finger tightened.

I moved.

I do not remember deciding to. My body decided, and my body is faster than I am. I surged up and forward, and I caught Lex around the waist and swung him aside, and the gun went off.

The sound in that steel room was tremendous.

Something struck me in the shoulder. A blow like a hammer, a burst of cold, and then the fire began. It went into me and through me, into bone and blood, and I felt my legs go from under me. I fell to one knee. I felt Lex’s arms catch me. I heard him scream my name.

“ No —”

“Stay down,” said Roake. There were tears on his face. I saw them. “I am sorry. God forgive me. I am sorry. But it must be done.”

He raised the gun again.

And the door at the far end of the warehouse blew open with a crash like a thunderclap.

A figure shot through it, a running, shouting, terrifying figure in a Kings hoodie, waving a hockey stick over his head like a claymore.

“GET AWAY FROM MY BEST FRIEND!” bellowed Jason Reyes.

He swung.

The stick took Roake across the wrist with a crack that echoed off the racks. The gun flew out of his hand. It skidded across the concrete, spinning, and came to rest at Sabine’s feet, and she picked it up with two fingers and examined it as though it were a dead mouse.

Roake stared at his broken wrist. Then he looked at Jason.

“Who,” he said, faintly, “are you?”

“I’m his defenseman, “ said Jason, panting. He had blood on his lip and a wild grin, and his hair stood up in all directions. He had not stopped shaking. “Lex texted me from the Pit two hours ago. Can’t sleep. Going to hit someone. Don’t tell. I’ve been driving around for an hour with a stick in the back seat. I didn’t know what else to do. “

Lex made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.

“Jason,” he said. “You idiot.”

“I know.”

“You’re the best idiot in the world.”

“I know. “

Behind him, in the distance, came the thin rising wail of sirens.

I sat on the cold floor with my back against a steel rack and my head in Lex’s lap, and watched the world go to pieces.

The police came in through three doors at once. Men in navy jackets with flashlights and drawn weapons, shouting, sweeping. They found four unconscious men in gray, one with a knife in his shoulder, one with a crushed knee, one with a ruined jaw. They found a woman in a vintage coat sitting on an upturned crate, with a curl of smoke rising from the silver revolver in her lap. They found a hockey player with a stick and a hoodie, and a second hockey player with a bruised face and bound wrists.

They found me.