“Not necessarily.” She rubs her buzz cut. “I, um, inherited the business from him.”

“Oh,” says Zach, parsing that. “Oh! So, is Phalanger your mom’s last name, or–”

“It’s not anybody’s name, Zach.”

“I knew that,” he says.

“The guys at the agency, they may… object to me taking over. I could use a lieutenant. Somebody tough. Somebody like the man who killed Hidebound.”

A pause; the plane’s engines are singing.

“I just did the website,” says Zach.

“Not anymore,” she says, and kisses his unscarred cheek.

She holds it now in the pocket of her cardigan, running one thumb over the edge as a counselor talks to her about shock and the aftermath of trauma. Mirna nods.

And then somehow her substitute teacher is Sara.

“All of you have great potential,” she says, meeting Mirna’s eyes. “I’ll be watching to see you fulfill it.”

In a fugue and handcuffs, he nods in response to dour questions in Hungarian. He spends sixteen hours in a cell, touching the bandages lightly. He thinks about Sara.

On the plane, the Vulpine Phalanger sits down next to him.

“Oh,” he says.

“Hey,” she says. He’s never seen her in civilian clothes; she seems younger. “I know a little about scars. Want me to take a look?”

He shrugs.

She peels back the gauze, and she is kind. She purses her lips.

“Those,” she says, “are going to look badass.”

Unsilenced gunshots have done what their screaming couldn’t, and summoned the cavalry. The doctors and techs and security guy look scared, but they’re working fast. It’s okay, Zach wants to tell them. The bad man’s gone.

Sarah’s trying to control the situation even as they haul her off to surgery; that’s what Sarah does. The little girl is crying. They’ve injected his face and it’s all rubbery, but as they wheel him out Zach touches her shoulder.

“Zach,” he mumbles.

“Mirna,” she manages.

Fade to white.

Hidebound grinds Zach’s face into shattered fruit bowl on the floor. It’s glass. Zach’s screaming too, until Hidebound finally pulls him upright with the silencer to his cheek.

“Vode, molim,” mumbles Zach through bloody lips.

“What?” says Hidebound.

The little girl sweeps aside the curtain, snarling Croatian curses, and pulls Zach’s stolen gun from between her pillows.