It would have been so much simpler to juke the gangers’ hole to the ground. Slab the Morlocks and Jake at once. Easy as shooting crabs off a tree. But your word was your bond on the streets. The only thing a chummer could not buy was his own rep. So Two Bears saved the man who’d gotten his one true love. Melinda. He tried not to wonder if she’d have stayed with him when the change hit him later and he became a dwarf. Did she stay with Jake because she loved him more, or because Adam Two Bears was different now? Two Bears would never know. Sometimes, the truth was better not known. There was great comfort in lies.