Hannibal had a backup plan. It wasn't a good one. It wasn't solid. It consisted mainly of leaving after a set time, and hoping Face would make the preset rendezvous point.
Against Murdock's outrage, he gave the order to leave.
Face had his time. He said forty-five minutes, an hour tops, and he'd be out her door and back with them.
Four hours had passed.
The three men—one brooding and dangerously close to a breakdown brought on by the thought that his best friend was now in shackles—sat in uncomfortable silence in a no-name hotel.
Waiting.
Waiting for what, none of them could really say.
Murdock had given up his arguments and threats that they should go back, they should go and see what happened. He'd looked mutinous. Hannibal wisely sat between the pilot and the door, because sometimes physicality was more effective than reasoning.
B.A. had ignored most of their dispute. He positioned himself by the window to look down over the street entrance.
"Hey, shut up," he ordered, even though Murdock was most decidedly not talking. "Face's comin' back."
Murdock was up and at the window like he'd been spring loaded.
"What's wrong with him?"
B.A. looked down on the man handing money though the open window of a taxi.
"What are you talkin' about, fool? Nothin' wrong with him, besides being three hours late!"
"No . . . there's something wrong . . ."
The brief second of jubilation that shot through Murdock was gone. Something was wrong, something was wrong, something was—
Murdock was right.
Faceman rejoined them in their innocuous, anonymous room. What Murdock could see from four stories up the other two couldn't help but be slapped with now.
The conman looked shattered and smaller. His complexion was blotchy; ashen between the spots where capillaries hadn't broken from obvious sobbing.
At the sight of him, Murdock pulled up short in shock.
"What happened?" he demanded. The pilot checked himself and turned the hug he'd intended into a shoulder grab. "Facey, what the hell?"
Face could barely lift his head. His eyes were bloodshot and his lips cracked. He looked lost and wretched. The horror on Murdock's face slowly seeped into Hannibal and B.A.'s. Face tried several times before he was finally able to force words out of the dry wasteland of his insides.
"Charissa . . . she . . . she told m-me . . ."
The other three waited patiently, with a mounting sense of dread.
Face took a shaky breath. "She told me . . . she had a b-b-baby. M-my baby. Years ago."
He broke into fresh, wracking sobs.
In the stunned silence, Murdock was barely able to bring move his arms to comfort Face with a hug.