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Page 40.

She quickly trimmed his hair a bit around the ears and neck. "You have a military cut, so there's not much to fix. Wish I could put a long hair wig on you."

"Blond," he quipped.

She held up an end of her hair. "I wish."

"Shame to do this."

"We have to." She offered the scissors. "Want to make yourself useful?"

"I have never cut hair in my life, much less a woman's."

"First time for everything."

She sat in a plain, upright red plastic chair with chrome tubing—a cheap imitation of a 1950s style statement. "Cut, baby, cut."

He tore a sheet from the bed and spread it around her feet as she sat in the chair. "Can't leave any stray hair." He approached her as if she were going to melt. "What do I do?"

"Use your imagination. Just cut it short, like a boy's. Hurry."

So he began clipping. "This is kind of fun. I feel like an artist."

"You don't have any magazines to read."

"Our shop is fresh out," he said, "and the TV is off because we didn't pay the power bill."

"You're doing fine." She eyeballed herself in the mirror.

As he cut her hair, it fell onto the sheet—gorgeous gilded ropes and strands of it.

"You're actually starting to look sort of cute," he said.

"The gamine look," she said, eyeballing herself.

"Ah yes." Rick understood the clever French double-entendre. Gamine was a made-up word suggesting a female who looked like a boy (gamin). "There is definitely something exotic about this. Weirdly sexy. Like I'm giving you a sex change. Like Garden of Eden, the novel by Hemingway."

"Published decades after his suicide," she said. "I know. I've read it. We're not weird, bored, or exotic, mon ami. We are desperate."

"Of course, mademoiselle. You are always right."

"And don't you forget it." She was just about to settle back, when she jumped. "Hey, don't cut my fucking ear off!"

"Sorry, a little slip, mademoiselle," he said in his best fake accent. "As an apology, I will give you zis 'aircut for free."

She pretended to pout. "I should make you pay me for the haircut, you bozo."

"Ah, you will be grateful when this is over."

"You're telling me." She squeezed his upper arm in a soft, nervy spot that made him squirm. "But I'm taking you with me after it's all over."

"I think I would take you up on that offer." He didn't explain how gladly.

Within twenty minutes, they were done. She had colored his hair to look slightly blonder, while her own hair had become a short, ragged punky clip that could best be described as dark oxblood red. She used mascara to darken her golden-brown eyebrow hair. And she applied a brownish lipstick that made her small, full mouth look bigger.

"You look different," he said, standing before her.

"No shit, Sherlock." She started to gather the wet, dripping comb, scissors, empty bottles, and other debris.

Rick scoured the sink to remove as much of the hair coloring evidence as possible. "This is going to be impossible."

"Yes, but it'll take time for forensic analysis if it comes down to it."

He felt a sense of relief. "You're right. It's just a dirty old man at the desk. Screw him."

"Better not."

"No, I'll just leave the money for him. We have plenty to burn."

Rick strewed about sixty Euros across the torn, mangled bed.

"Looks like we had that affair," she said, glancing at the bed.

"I'll bet it was fun. A passionate affair."

She made a little gurgling laugh deep down, without comment, and gave him a familiar little shove. She went into the bathroom and closed the door. "I'll be out in a minute." She went into the facility.

Rick dug the burner phone from his backpack and redialed.

A man answered, babbling some nonsense about being Private Wucknut at the JAG office, blah blah blah.

"Sergeant Buchan. Let me talk to Major Walsh."

Kendra was on the phone in half a yadda. "Richard, where are you?"

"Running."

"You've got to come in."

"I'm scared. Any change?"

"Not yet. I can get the case against you frozen if not thrown out. I'm trying to locate the witness I need to corroborate that you were where you needed to be when your team was killed."

"Good luck."

"Rick—"

He hung up.

Hannah came out of the toilet.

Rick sidled past her. He tossed the phone into the Klo, which was the German word for Kloset (or something) meaning porcelain throne. This time he flushed, and a whole mass of yellowish water like piss vinegar swelled up and burbled before whooshing away into the mystery plumbing of Thionville. The drowned phone almost went along, but stayed stuck, just peeking out from the brown calcified bottom of the saxophone neck. "No wonder this town doesn't draw more tourists," he said. The phone jumped slightly in the water, fizzing and bubbling as its innards committed electronic suicide.

"Hurry, I'm getting really nervous," she said.

"But you just peed."

"You'll make me go again."

"It's all my fault."

Kidding turned into tears. Her cheeks dribbled miserably as she gathered the stuff to be left behind into a trash bag she'd found in a drawer. Rick stuffed his backpack with stuff they were going to keep. Loaded up, they eased carefully into the dingy, carpeted hallway outside.

Not a soul in sight.

They looked at each other, silently, nodding with wide eyes. Pulling the door shut, they hurried down the hall. Rick carried the backpack, and Hannah the trash bag. The weather-door at the end of the hall took them out onto a balcony whose floor had been treated with no-slip, good-grip rubberized paint. Rick dropped the key into the dark arms of a pine tree, where it fell from the second floor down to the first and landed on pine needles under the tree. They walked down a zigzag stairway and emerged on a back street. They followed the sidewalk to the end of the building, where a side street avec driveway led back to the main parking lot.

Walking as fast as they dared, so as not to attract undue attention, they made a wide circle around, avoiding being seen by the dirty little old man in the motel lobby. Minutes later, the garbage bag was in the trunk of the stolen car, the backpack in the back seat, and Rick pulled out into traffic, while Hannah kept watch all around for anything out of the ordinary.

"We are on our way to Thionville," Rick said to the dark, short-haired stranger sitting beside him with the dark eyebrows and punky brown lipstick. She sat with her arms crossed, looking distressed, and stared straight ahead.

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