“Stay where you are, Allie! Don’t come any closer. Please, Allie, do as I say.” The girl stopped. “I did a bad thing once, Allie. You have to understand. I did it for us, for you, Elden and me. Remember when I took that job a few winters back? When I went up north for a couple of days? I-I did the bad thing then. I pretended to be someone I wasn’t and I almost got some people killed. That’s how I got the money for the winter. Don’t hate me, Allie. I love you, honey. Please just get back inside.”

“No!” she protested. “I can see the knife. They’re going to hurt you.”

“If you don’t, they’ll kill us both!” Wyatt shouted harshly, too harshly. He did not want to do it, but he had to make her understand.

Allie was crying now. She stood in the alley, in the shaft of lamplight, shaking.

“Go inside honey,” Wyatt told her, gathering himself and trying to calm his voice. “It will be alright. Don’t cry. Elden will watch over you. Let him know what happened. It will be alright.”

She continued to sob.

“Please honey, you have to go inside now,” Wyatt pleaded. “It’s all you can do. It’s what I need you to do. Please.”

“I-love-you, Da-ddy!”

“I know honey. I know. I love you too, and I’m so sorry.”

Allie slowly stepped back into the doorway, the sliver of light diminishing until the door snapped shut, leaving the alley once more in darkness. Only the faint blue light from the cloud-shrouded moon filtered into the narrow corridor where the three men stood.

“How old is she?” the voice behind him asked.

“Leave her out of this. Just make it quick-can you give me that much?” Wyatt braced himself for what was to come. Seeing the child broke him. He shook violently, his gloved hands in fists, his chest so tight it was difficult to swallow and hard to breathe. He felt the metal edge against his throat and waited for it to move, waited for it to drag.

“Did you know it was a trap when you came to hire us?” The man with three swords asked.