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squeezed the door handle, opened the door, and peered out into the hallway, hearing the muted sounds from the party coming up the staircase and even louder through the closet window behind him.
    He sniffed, smelled meat frying, felt hungry again. But he pushed his appetite aside and strode lightly out into the hallway, hand along the banister, peeking over into the well and seeing no one. He danced down the hall, spotted laundry and trash chutes low on the near wall, and reached the bathroom in three seconds. He shut the door behind him, locked it, turned on the light, and looked in the mirror over the sink.
    Robin looked like the street urchin he’d become in the months since his parents’ murder, face streaked with grime, hair matted to his head, skin scratched and cut, the last purple hues of a black eye he’d gotten trying to outbox Claudio.
    The clothes aside, Robin didn’t fit in at all. He turned on the water, ducked his head under the spray, ran a bar of soap through his hair and all over his face, took off the shirt, and washed under his armpits too. He rinsed as best he could, then found a towel, wetted it, and turned it near black cleaning his torso.
    His dusky skin now had a reddish glow to it and he’d managed to comb his hair into something resembling neat. He smiled, bowed his head as if to a powerful employer, then summoned up his courage once more.
    He shut off the light in the washroom and eased open the door. The hall was empty. So was the stairwell.
    Robin stalked down the stairs, found himself within two doors of the master suite, where Claudio said the woman of the house kept her jewelry. The sounds of the party were louder here, coming up another stairway from below. He could hear the slap of shoes on tile and odd snatches of conversation and the building chords of a piano solo. The aroma of coffee brewing drifted up to him.
    The double doors to the master suite were right there at the head of the lower staircase. The floor seemed deserted at the moment, but he was going to need sheer luck not to be seen by someone on the first floor, which sounded increasingly crowded and raucous.
    Then he heard that man’s deep voice from before, yelling that he wanted everyone out on the terrace to sing to his wife on her birthday. Robin waited, listening until the last footsteps were fading before bolting toward the master suite. He grabbed the door handles. Locked.
    Trying not to panic, the boy fished out the three picks, dropped to his knees, and began to toy with the lock, all the while praying to his mother and father to watch over him, to bless him in his …
    He heard people start singing “Que los cumplas feliz,” but over it came the quick slap of someone running and then a creak directly behind Robin. Someone was coming up the stairs.
    *   *   *
    Monarch thought for a moment that the shrapnel had hit him harder than he thought, that he was wounded and hallucinating in shock. But then the lion lifted its head and looked straight into the flashlight beam, so close Monarch could see the cat’s yellow eyes dilate.
    He had never stopped moving, however, rolling backward, toes to heels, gun aimed at the lion. He could and would kill the animal if it attacked, but he didn’t want to shoot for any number of reasons, not the least of which was noise. Though the lion began to pant, it did not move as he backed up. Indeed, it acted as if mesmerized by the light, expecting something.
    Monarch flicked the beam off the cat and around and saw that he was indeed in a pit with sheer walls and a steel fence above. The top of the wall had to be seven feet, the top of the fence another six.
    He swung the light back at the cat and perhaps twenty feet behind the lion saw a steel door set in the wall under an overhang. Monarch heard the sound of a gate clanging. He flipped off the light, listening to the cat’s breath come in deeper pants that swelled into a low,