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“Fuck! My hand!” He waves his hand around, spattering everyone with blood.
“Shut up,” Spiro rushes to close the briefcase and protect the money. “Joe?—”
Joe steps forward and cold-cocks Bruiser. Bruiser collapses to the dirty floor. With a gush of blood, the knife slides out of his hand, clattering to Joe’s feet.
Everyone freezes.
Slowly, Joe reaches down and picks up my knife. He shuffles forward and offers it carefully to me. “I never liked him,” he says about poor Bruiser, who is still groaning on the floor.
I accept my knife back with a nod, and the tension in the room goes down a notch.
Spiro hugs the briefcase. “We’ll talk to him,” he says with a nod at Bruiser. “Explain things.”
“There’s a burner phone underneath the money,” I continue as if we hadn’t been interrupted. “I’ll call you in two days.”
“And if we don’t deliver?” Spiro asks, still wary. I can feel the men’s eyes crawling over me, trying to figure out where I hide my knives. Wondering how many I have secured away and how quickly I could draw and throw them.
I shrug. “You can keep the cash. I’ll find another way. But I plan to stick around this town, and I’m generous to my friends.” I give them a big, friendly smile. For some reason, it doesn’t seem to reassure them at all. “And it might be nice to be my friends. Don’t you agree?”
CHAPTER 12
victor
“He’s a fucking maniac. I vote we take the money and blow.” This is from Kill Zone. He paces back and forth, waving his hands. “Did you see him smile? My cousin told me he smiled like that when he killed the bean counter at the wedding. Just bam. Dead.”
Uzi sits in a corner, cradling his gun like a teddy bear.
Bruiser is nowhere to be seen.
Spiro has the briefcase splayed open on a table, counting stacks. “He could’ve killed Bruiser. And he didn’t.”
“He could’ve killed us all,” mutters Joe from his guard post at the door.
I lean back in my chair, watching the blurry shapes of the men on screen. The lagging feed makes them look like puppets, moving jerkily around the room. The visual is poor, but the audio comes through crisp and clear.
“It’s all here.” Spiro sags into a seat. “Half the advance Stephanos gave him. He wasn’t lying.”
That gives them all pause. Stacks of cash speak louder than words.
I mute the feed and watch them deliberate. They are on the spectrum between fear and awe, with a little curiosity mixed in. A few of them might cut their losses, take their share of the cash, and leave town. But my bet is that a core group will remain. Their leader, Spiro, has an aging mother in the area, which would make him reluctant to move. He can contact Stephanos. And if he carries the briefcase anywhere, I’ll be able to track it.
It’s just one tendril, one silken thread I’ve woven to make my spider’s web. In time, I will have Stephanos trapped where I want him. Not today. But soon.
In the meantime, I have sweeter company to keep.
To my right, a smaller screen shows the small room and king bed where I left Lula. The doctor reported that she remained asleep all this time. Her eyes are still closed, but she’s more restless, her fingers and toes twitching. I rise and leave the computer room and its monitors. I only have a few minutes to get ready.
My beautiful prisoner is about to wake.
Lula
I blink my eyes open, feeling like an elephant is sitting on me. A heavy blanket is on my lower half, and when I shove it off, I’m able to breathe, but my limbs are still heavy with the languor that comes from a long, uninterrupted sleep. I’m in a big, four-poster bed in a plain, dimly lit room. There’s no way to tell what time it is. My prison isn’t the worst hellhole I can imagine, but the lack of clocks or sunlight is driving me mad. In this stifling, windowless space, with no markers of night or day, I’m lost to the world. Adrift in a timeless space with no direction to tell me up from down.
The only constant is my body, my nakedness. And Victor. I hate how my thoughts go to him immediately and constantly. I hate even more how my body revs up at the thought of him.
I could spend a few minutes lying here imagining shooting him properly. His eyebrows are darker than his silver and gold hair, a honey color. A bullet between them would kill him instantly. But then I’d feel the tangle of emotions when I watched the light drain out of his ice-blue eyes.
Suddenly, the bed is too soft and confining for me to stay in a second longer. I stretch and metal clinks. My right wrist is handcuffed to the headboard, but other than that, I’m free.
