Make your best guess. Day of instinct, higher motivations maybe. Osmond was Osmond. Osmond was not Rudd. That later. Now Jill.

“Here,” she said when he approached her.

She led him around the corner, back to where the kitchen lay. As far as Rudd could tell there was only one person there, a young black with two enormous cans cradled in his arm. He was reaching into the freezer, working a way to carry a box of beef without dropping the cans. Just as he managed it he caught sight of Rudd and Jill and immediately fled out the open back door. This prompted Rudd to notice how bare the place looked-though he’d never been here before. Things were missing, knives, pots, food, as well as the staff. Rudd heard a gunshot in the distance beyond the open door.

“Close that,” he said to Jill. “Lock it.”

He walked quickly across the room, throwing open doors, inspecting closets and nooks, small rooms beyond the kitchen where the business of the restaurant was conducted. What he was looking for was, well, the enemy, though this word had not yet presented itself in his mind. He was merely looking, urgently. He knew he had to, that it was the appropriate thing to do. When he was finished and had confirmed the place empty he returned to Jill, now standing where they had entered the room. The back door, he noticed, was not only closed and locked but the three large horizontal bars that made it virtually impenetrable had been dropped into place.

“What’s that for?” Jill asked him, indicating his hand.

He followed her eyes. He was holding his Walther, and when he saw it he remembered drawing it, but when he drew it, during his check of the back, he didn’t realize what he was doing. Again, the right move, but would these people have been armed? Would he have shot somebody, say some dishwasher cowering behind the sink with a chef’s knife? Would anybody who felt the need to hide really be so dangerous, so much of a threat?

“Door was open,” he said simple and plain. “Anybody could have gotten in.” But he was ready for another drink, and given that, he would be ready for anything. He put the gun away. “Up front,” he said.

When they returned to the bar they found the men back on their stools. The bartender, now covered with a tablecloth, lay where he fell with one foot peeking from under the white. Jill peeled away from Rudd, sat at a table, and began folding napkins. This was the situation. Napkins should be folded, Rudd guessed. He thought about helping her as a way to comfort her, but she seemed okay and the men needed him too and he needed a drink. Without thinking too much about it he took the same stool he had been sitting on before, as if the others had been saving it for him. There were bottles on the bar-someone had even thought to put up a fifth of J&B, probably Fenton-but otherwise it felt so natural that Rudd had to glance down at the tablecloth to confirm the nightmare.