"Then we start at Winchester."
"It's forty minutes. More, this time of night."
"Then stop talking and go pull the car up."
We went down in the mirrored lift, the three of us, and none of us spoke. I watched the floors count down. Niko stood with the Glock tucked away under his suit and his face gone smooth and far off, and Gregori stared at the doors with his jaw set like a man driving to his own disciplinary hearing. And I was in the middle of them in borrowed clothes, no weapon, nine fingers, going out into a city the size of a country to look for a man who hadn't sent me a word.
The dread had stopped climbing. That was the strange part. Somewhere between the bedroom and the lift it had gone quiet and cold and settled, the way it used to settle in the warehouse before a long night, when there was nothing left to be frightened of because the thing was already happening and all you could do was meet it.
I'd told Aleksi I'd be his trophy wife, and I’d meant it. I’d be damned if I let that surly bastard die before he found the stones to put a proper ring on me, finger or no.
Something was whirring atthe most annoying frequency.
I winced and inhaled. Wherever I was, it reeked of motor oil, concrete, and blood. Pain lanced sharply through the left side of my skull, then faded to a constant dull throb. When I tipped my head to one side, a second, sharper throb started in my ear that said, "Hey, you were shot. Quit moving, asshole."
I listened to the voice.
There was a particular, unfamiliar strain in my shoulder joints that told me my hands were tied behind my back. Plastic zip ties. Creative. They were around my wrists and ankles. The left shoulder had its own complaint — the round that spun me on the road had punched clean through the meat of it, and arms wrenched back behind a chair was the worst way you could hold a man who'd been shot there. Nobody had bothered to check it, and nobody was going to. At least they'd left my suit on. That meant I was in for a beating instead of one of the Italians' more creative torture sessions. I was almost disappointed. Whoeverhad done my wrists had cinched the tie over my shirt cuff. Sloppy. Pavel would have known better, but Pavel was dead. There was a bolt head on the chair frame behind my hands, and I set the plastic against it and went to work, slow, letting the generator cover the sound. Every pass dragged the bad shoulder. I worked through it; I'd worked through worse.
I finally opened my eyes and squinted as I took in my surroundings. A garage, or close to it. A single bare bulb hung from a chain in the ceiling, and in front of us was a big, rolling corrugated metal door, the kind you'd run a car through. No windows.
Someone groaned low and pained to my right. I turned my head.
EJ. That's right. The kid had decided to do the brave thing and lie to Kastelani, hoping it'd keep him alive. Brave, yes. But stupid. He'd only prolonged the inevitable. Once K found out he didn't know shit about the diamonds, he was still a dead man.
And he'd dragged me into the dirt with him.
Not that I'd had far to fall. K had me the second the trees opened up. But the kid had been on the gate. I'd looked at his dumb, starry face in the car and decided, against every instinct I had, that this one wasn't going in the ground tonight.
Then he'd opened his mouth on the side of the road and put himself in the ground, anyway.
I clenched my jaw to see if it still worked. It did, more or less. The motion pulled at the crust on my neck, and a fresh trickle of sweat ran warm down under my collar. Somewhere behind the bulb, water dripped. The generator droned on. No voices yet. That was the part I didn't like. K wasn't a man who left prisoners alone in a room unless he was hoping the isolation and silence would do half his work for him.
I'd done the same thing to better men than EJ. I knew the play. Knowing it didn't help.
"Hey, kid. Wake up."
The kid's head came up. He sucked in a sharp breath before jerking his arms so hard that the chair almost tipped. They'd put him in a folding chair, the kind you stack in a church basement. Amateurs.
I snorted. "First time?"
He stopped fighting and looked over at me, eyes widening. "Mr. Laskin! You're alive!"
"Unfortunately," I grumbled.
He blinked. "What?"
"Alive means torture, kid. Bet you're wishing you'd kept your fucking mouth shut the first time, huh?"
EJ ran his tongue over his split lip. "I don't regret anything."
"You will."
"No." He puffed out his chest like a damn fool. "Whatever happens, I can take it."
Fucking kids and their fucking bravado. They all thought they were fucking heroes. The minute K's men started prying off fingernails and slicing off eyelids, they were pissing themselves and crying for their mommies.
"Listen to me," I said. "When K comes through that door, you tell him the diamonds are in a lockbox at Buckeye National, you hear me? You tell him that you're the only one who knows the combination. You cry, you piss yourself, and you tell him exactly that."