Then Niko stepped out from behind the bonnet like he was crossing a ballroom.
I'll say this for the man, and I'll say it till I die: I have never seen anyone make killing look so much like something you'd pay to watch. He didn't rush. He didn't flinch when a round wentpast close enough to part his hair. He raised the Glock and fired down range twice, and forty yards off, a man folded over a fuel drum and stopped being a problem.
"Two down," Niko said to nobody, pleased. Then he shouted. “Aleksi, you son of a bitch! You still alive in there?”
“No thanks to you!” Aleksi shouted back. “EJ is in here with me! K is—” And then he went quiet.
The quiet after was worse than the record player had been.
The windsock ticked on its pole, a fuel drum hissed where a round had opened it. My heart pounded in my ears.
"Aleksi!" I was up on my knees before Niko could put me back down. "Aleksi, ye great bastard, answer me!"
Nothing.
And then the side door opened, and my heart jumped into my throat when I saw Aleksi. He was bloody, beaten, and bruised, but alive. My beautiful, stupid, stubborn Russian was alive. His hands were still tied behind his back.
And then I saw the gun pressed to his head and the monster walking behind him holding it.
Everything stopped.
Niko had the Glock up and steady on the two of them, and I watched him not take the shot. K had Aleksi a half-step in front of him, tucked in close, the gun hard against the soft place behind his ear where the blood had already dried black. Niko was the best I'd ever seen, but there was no clean shot, and K knew it. That was the whole fucking point.
"Guns down," K said. "All of them. Or I paint the field with Volkov's right hand, and we are all very sad about it."
"Don't you fucking dare," Aleksi said to me, only to me, his eyes finding mine across the gravel. "Fin. Whatever he says. Don't—"
K cracked the gun against his temple, and he stopped.
I stood, fists clenched. The cold had me all the way now. It was a gift, that cold. It had gotten me through the van and the warehouse and Pavel, and it would get me through this, because somewhere under it a small, clear voice had already decided how this was going to end.
He wanted me afraid. He wanted us all scrambling and shouting and putting our guns in the dirt.
So I gave him a smile instead, the mean wee one, and started walking.
"Aye, all right, big man," I said. "Let's you and me have a wee chat."
"Stay where you are," K said.
I didn't. I kept coming slowly, hands open and empty at my sides so he could see the nine fingers and think me harmless. Behind me Niko swore low in French and didn't follow, because Niko understood what I was doing even if he hated it. K's eyes came off the dark and settled on me.Eyes on the prize, mate.
"Ye remember me fine," I said. "Dinnae insult the both of us pretending ye don't. Ye sent a man to steal me back out of Aleksi's flat. Ye stood over me in that shop with yer wee gold ring and told me I was what ye'd lost, like I was a watch ye'd left in a cab." I took another step. He let me have it. "Ye paid for me twice. The Italians the first time, off Victoria Street, with my da bleeding on the cutting floor and my granddad's tools under yer arm. Pavel the second. And both times the same man took me off ye."
I tipped my head toward Aleksi. Toward the gun at his skull.
"That one. The one ye're so pleased to have on a leash now. He walked into yer shop and put three of yer men on the floor and carried me out the front door past ye, and ye let him, because somewhere in that cold wee heart ye already knew. Ye were never going to keep me." I stopped when I was close enough to see the sweat at his hairline. "Ye're no a monster, K. I built yeinto one for six months. Took ye to bits now and there's nothing in ye. Yer just a man. And if there’s one thing I know about men, it’s how easy they die."
K's jaw clenched. "I should’ve killed you like I did the women.”
"No," I said. “Ye shoulda killed me first. Didn’t yer mum ever teach ye? Never leave a vengeful Scotsman alive. It’s bad fer yer health.”
Behind him, the hangar door opened silently, and a small, pale figure crept out.
I’d kept K’s eyes on me the whole way in, and the kid took it for the signal it was. EJ drove his shoulder into the back of K’s knees, all his weight low where his ruined hands didn’t have to do the work. K buckled, and the gun came off Aleksi’s skull as he went down.
Aleksi wrenched his wrists apart. The tie gave like he'd been at it for an hour, and the next thing I knew, he was on top of K and they were wrestling for the gun. A round went off into nothing. Aleksi drew back a fist and punched K once, twice…
The gun came loose in the scrum. I crossed the last of the ground between us, jammed my heel down on K’s wrist, and tore the pistol out of his hand. Nine fingers. Turns out ye only need the one on the trigger.