I wished I hadn't seen the pictures.

Rushing from the shattered conservatory—Josiah and Hatch had busted in with tools from the Olympic-sized swimming pool—and through the hall to the Blackstone's study, I was physically incapable of missing a series of framed photographs. Twin girls. Seven or eight, maybe nine. That tricky age when kids start shooting up. Barely older than Karen. Heart-twisting portraits of girls in blazers and ponytails before the gates of The Pennington School. On a porch glider. Trick-or-treating. Chasing a soccer ball, concentration gleaming in perfect, blameless eyes.

My strides slowed. The few Mice behind me clambered past, jostling me and upending hallway tables.

Karen had not liked soccer. "The ball's too hard, Mommy!" Maybe if I could have afforded high-end cleats like the Blackstone girls'. Maybe if I gave it another year, hauling her to practice, setting up cones in the backyard.

Would I get the chance?

Now I was bringing up the rear. Glass had gotten stuck in my sandal strap, and I moved in a kind of limping gallop to minimize the rubbing, purse jouncing off my hips. But I kept up. I never lost sight of the others.

They reached the study and began pooling at open French doors. I'd almost caught up when heavy footfalls sounded behind me. Police? Should I split off and try escaping? If all the Mice were about to be captured, wasn't my mission moot? The guys' deal with American Dynamics void?

But it wasn't the police. It was Hatch. Tromping ahead, stashing a buoy knife in his messenger bag.

"No more land line," he said at my puzzled expression.

I joined the rear of the group as Josiah, flashing back a fanatic's grin, dashed through the French doors into the study.

It was several seconds before I could process the full scene, up on tiptoes to see over shoulders and around ears. Somebody gasped. Somebody else muttered, "Pig."

Piece by piece, the decor of the health-care executive's study came into view. Floor-to-ceiling bookcases with sliding mahogany ladders. An antique globe—sepia, calligraphic labels—perched on a claw-foot stand. On the walls, an array of plaques and awards, portraits of Hollywood starlets like Grace Kelly and Jayne Mansfield, and a collection of arcane weapons hanging on pegs: spiky morningstars, glinting daggers, a crossbow with stock carved in the luxurious form of a serpent.

And in the middle, a man in silk pajamas holding a lance. His sleeves' velvet-red fabric billowed about the domed grip.

"It is real, and I do know how to use it," he said. "I have fifty hours of period-correct training under my belt."

Josiah approached without regard for the sharp tip quavering at him. "Ah, the corporate warrior. Pillage the customer, then blow ungodly amounts on Renaissance Fair trinkets and pretend you're Sun Szu." His Albino eyes narrowed. "Weren't you an EE major at Rutgers, Ted?"

Blackstone shuddered at his own name. "Who are you? What're you doing here?"

Josiah approached until mere inches separated his chest from the lance. "Who we are is the Blind Mice. Why we're here?" He smiled with a deviant quality that turned my stomach. "I think you know, Ted. Deep in your bones."

Blackstone tried to scan our ranks while at the same time covering Josiah, stuttering, jerking the lance. I shrank from his gaze.

"How—wh—why are you here?" the executive said. "Blackstone Health isn't on that list. What, the Despicable Dozen?"

The corners of Josiah's lips stretched grotesquely toward his ears. "You're in a special category, Ted. You get special justice."

He punctuated these words with a primal attack, kicking/shoving/screaming in one motion. The lance clattered from Blackstone's hands to the floor, sweeping the antique globe off its stand. As though energized by the disorder, Josiah hopped up onto a massive partner's desk and began hurling documents, staplers, some golden-golf-ball trophy.

"Let's rearrange your corporate bric-a-brac, aye Ted?"

Josiah flung himself upon the man's books, ranting about "banker's biographies" and "soft-science manifestos." He yanked on a mahogany ladder. It wouldn't budge, so Hatch stepped forward to lend some muscle, green tattoos bunching and bulging. Soon section after section of books came spilling down. Other Mice joined in. Someone swung the morningstar at the girlie posters, breaking the glass, tearing the prints. Josiah urinated on a mohair rug that must've cost thousands.

Blackstone retreated behind his desk. "You have no idea the mistake you've just made."

Josiah, zipping up, sauntered to the desk. "How's your rate of return, Ted?"

Blackstone's eyes shot to his computer. "That was you?"

With a grandiose sweep of the arm, Josiah indicated Piper Jackson. The hacker sniffed.

"With your stupendous take-home pay, the funds will replenish in no time. About $3 million per month, correct?"

"The stockholders approve my compensation every other year in a non-binding vote."

"Non-binding," Josiah repeated. "Sorta like if I asked my revolutionary compatriots here, 'Shall I sever Ted Blackstone's left ear and puree it in his stainless steel food processor?,' and even if they voted 22 to zero against, I could ignore them. I could just slice away."

I watched his loose limbs, which seemed to ripple in place as he spoke. Was he capable of such brutality? Surely he was only spooking Blackstone. They'd trash his house, put the fear of God into him. Maybe Josiah would come right up to the edge of terror, yell, "Boo!" and be done.

I reminded myself again that the Blind Mice were progressives. That they had never targeted people before.

"Let's talk this out." Blackstone mastered his voice. "What do you hope to accomplish tonight? What's your goal?"

"Accountability," Josiah said. "You insure your customers' health. Their bodies and brains. When you blow $80,000 taking the corporate jet to a golf tournament in Florida, do you know where the cash comes out of?"

Ted Blackstone produced an indistinct noise from his throat.

"Their cells, Ted. Their organs. Every puss-filled piece of tissue that's denied treatment. That's where it comes out of."

"That's, er—it's rare I take the jet unless a board meetin—"

"137 times last fiscal year," Josiah said. "Which translates to $12 million, which necessitates denying how many rightful claims?"

"We pay out claims. Our controls are best in breed, we—"

"Please, I beg you to spare us your corporate buzzwords." Josiah started around the desk with deliberate fury. "Tell me about your policy on lifetime caps."

Blackstone inched back in his chair. "I—well, we have them, the whole industry does otherwise you're bankrupt."

"And what is it? Your cap?"

"I'd have to look it up. I know it gets adjusted regularly to account for—"

"$1.35 million. Which lasts about fifteen months when you have pancreatic cancer. Runs out right about the time you cross eighty pounds. When your eyes turn yellow from liver failure and your toes're blue from lack of circulation."

The room was silent. Down feathers from a shredded cushion floated past my face. As I listened to Josiah, heard the crack in his voice, I understood at once that he was not speaking in abstracts. He was not debating public policy.

Blackstone didn't grasp this. "Disease is cruel. But so are shareholders."

Josiah closed the space between them in one seething stride, then dove at the man's face. The chair toppled over backwards. They struggled on the mohair carpet, grappling, clawing.

"My mother," Josiah spat. "Doctors wanted to try high-intensity ultrasound, but it was 'experimental.' By the time the mediator decided in Dad's favor, she'd hit the lifetime cap."

Blackstone bled from his nose and a gash in his silver hair. "Tragic—but you can't possibly hold me to account."

"Dad hung himself. Two months later, in shame. For what he didn't do for her."

Josiah and Blackstone had rolled away from each other, panting, punched out. I looked around at the other Mice and saw I wasn't the only one getting this information fresh. Eyes fell. Faces turned black. There had been disparate rumors about Josiah's parents online, that they'd died in a car crash, that Josiah had disavowed them over his materialistic upbringing. Never a whiff of this.

Blackstone pressed his case, doubling-down on his defense. "I'm an executive. Individual outcomes are not my concern."

The word left my lips before I could stop it: "Bastard."

The guy next to me, the one from outside with great hair, began nodding. "Yeah, let's educate him about outcomes!"

The entire group was buzzing now, crowding closer, galled. Josiah seemed to feed off the collective energy. His grin tightened and again stretched to the point of flying off his face. His eyes shone with a ghoulish intensity.

Outside air was pouring in from the hall, frigid at my ankles. Lampshades wobbled. The fringe of a lace doily bubbled off its table. The globe had wobbled to rest against the arced legs of a Queen Anne chair, South Pole facing up.

I glanced outside for Durwood.

Blackstone pushed his silk pajama sleeves up his arms.

"You're just kids, you don't realize what you're doing." He scanned our ranks. "It's not too late—don't follow this weirdo, he's a fraud, he's mixed you up in a bunch of nonsense ..."

As he spluttered out, Josiah found his phone in his cargo shorts. He tapped for thirty seconds, considered his screen with bright glee, then tapped once more.

Our phones all chimed.

I checked Twitter.

'I'm an executive. Individual outcomes are not my concern.' DYING WORDS OF TED BLACKSTONE.

Josiah faced us. Tendons stood out in his neck. He eyed several of us in turn, then walked over to Hatch. Reached into the tattooed giant's messenger bag for the buoy knife.

He walked back to Blackstone. Before the executive could move, he'd sliced the top button of Blackstone's pajamas.

Plink, it landed on the floor.

My legs turned weak. I heard gasps, and even Piper Jackson up front took a sidestep.

Ted Blackstone stood perfectly still. The point of the blade was at his Adam's apple, which shifted and bobbed.

He said nothing. His expression blank. Likely he'd honed this pokerface over the years, in face-offs with investors or hostile regulatory bodies. It fit the CEO psych profile. He must be terrified inside, but outside, a sphinx.

I wished he would crack. Whimper. Beg for mercy, something ... because every second he didn't, Josiah's grin stretched wider.

The wealthy man's fearlessness seemed the ultimate insult. Even now, even at the brink, he was ceding nothing. Giving no respect. He didn't believe that a bunch of inferiors like us presented a threat to his charmed life.

I opened my mouth in warning.

Before any words made it out, Josiah raked the blade horizontally. The collar of Blackstone's pajamas changed from velvet-red to black.

"Oh God, what?!" somebody shouted.

Hatch lunged forward like a bouncer stopping a bar fight, but this one was over. Blackstone's face looked like old dough.

"Dude. You killed him."

Josiah was spinning the knife frenetically in his fist. "The inevitable first."

Hatch gazed between the body—which was gurgling blood onto the mohair rug underneath—and Josiah. "Inevitable?"

"For change." Josiah opened his rawboned shoulders to us. "Nothing changes until the people at the top are compelled to change. Until their equation changes. And it just changed."