“Shada,” Chuck repeated, “what’s it gonna be?”
Chapter Sixty-six
Vince was alone in the hotel room. His ribs ached. The side of his face felt swollen. The Dark certainly knew how to deliver a punch. But Vince was proud of himself.
If the Dark knew Jack Swyteck was in London, he hadn’t heard it from Vince.
Vince had spent his time alone counting steps, trying to diagram the floor plan in his head. More precisely, he was counting the sound of the Dark’s footsteps each time he crossed the room. Eight steps, twelve o’clock, from the door to the chair Vince was tied to. Six steps, one o’clock, from Vince to a table or a counter where the Dark had popped open a beer or a soda after beating the daylights out of him.
Three steps, nine o’clock, from Vince to the chair on which the Dark had tossed the Brainport after Vince had told him to stick it up his ass.
You weren’t the only one injured in that explosion.
Those words kept swirling around in his head, and he wondered what the Dark had meant by that. Vince’s memory of the explosion in the Mays garage was fuzzy-pushing through the door, the gunshot, the deafening percussion, the flash of light… and then nothing until he awoke in the hospital. Rescuers were already in the driveway and acted fast enough to save his life, but not his sight. Firefighters arrived too late to keep the house from burning to the ground. He was lucky to be alive, was the way he tried to look at it-which meant that the Dark, too, was lucky.
You weren’t the only one…
Vince could only speculate, and his thoughts ran the gamut on the possible injury to the Dark. Third-degree burns to his skin? Ringing in his ears? Vince wanted the satisfaction of knowing that the Dark had gotten the worst of it, that the man who had murdered McKenna had paid a price. Short of death, what could be worse than blindness? Millions of things, Vince told himself.
But at that moment, he couldn’t think of one.
The door opened, and Vince heard someone enter. It closed quickly, and the chain lock rattled. Then Vince heard footsteps… one, two, three… and the sound of a heavy sack or backpack dropping onto the luggage rack. A zipper opening-too long for a backpack, maybe a suitcase. Finally, there was the unmistakable sound of a magazine loading into a firearm. The Dark had been out gathering supplies.
“Amazing how much crap you can accumulate in self-storage,” the Dark said smugly.
It was a safe bet that there was more than one handgun in that suitcase. It had sounded like an arsenal, the thud with which it had landed on the luggage rack.
“I have to use the bathroom,” said Vince.
“Go in your pants.”
“You won’t like the smell in the room.”
The argument was a convincing one, even if Vince didn’t really have to go.
“Fine,” said the Dark, starting toward him.
Vince was immediately counting footsteps again. One, two, three…
The Dark put a gun to Vince’s head before untying him. “Don’t try anything stupid.”
Six steps, at eleven o’clock, from Vince to the suitcase filled with weapons.
“No problem,” said Vince, the floor plan etched in his brain. “Nothing stupid.”
Andie was still in the main lobby and waiting for an elevator, surrounded by polished granite, glass, and chrome. Her cell chimed. The number was familiar, but it was a dummy-merely a trigger for her to call in to her supervisory agent. Less than five minutes had passed since her last conversation with Harley. The quick callback was cause for concern.
She glanced across the lobby, and on the other side of the plate-glass window the snow was falling even harder. She would never have called her contact from the Black Ice offices on the twelfth floor, but the building lobby was essentially public space. She dialed, gave her contact name, and listened.
“Bad news from Scotland Yard,” said Harley. “They lost track of Hassan.”
“We’ve been tailing him for two months, and they lost him in two days?”
“He attended a prayer session at the East End Mosque. They watched him go in, but they didn’t see him come out.”
“How can that be?”
“In the Yard’s defense, twenty thousand people come and go from that mosque every week. They lost him for about eight hours.”
“So they’ve reconnected?”
“Only because he’s in the Royal London Hospital. Someone found him unconscious in a public park or athletic field in the East End and called for an ambulance. Paramedics picked him up and brought him to emergency.”
“How did he get hurt?”
“Hassan isn’t talking. I don’t know if he’s in a coma, but he still has not regained consciousness. The only report I have is that he took a bad blow to the head.”
“Any idea who did it?”
“No confirmation yet. But it’s possible that an order issued out of Black Ice.”
She knew what he was saying: Hassan had gotten too close to the truth about his nephew’s detention, and one of Littleton’s special-ops guys was on the job. But that didn’t mean the FBI’s read of the situation was correct. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“I just want you to be aware and know that I have a team on alert if you need to be extricated.”
“Is Jack in any danger?”
Harley paused, as if reluctant to say what he had to say. “Andie, I understand your concern about the way your assignment intersects with Jack. I told you I would be on your side when the time comes to make an issue out of it. Now is not the time.”
“I’m not saying I’m going to make an issue out of it.”
“You can’t call him. Not at this juncture.”
A janitor rolled a trash can past her. She waited for him to pass, which gave her a moment to think about her response. But she still didn’t know what to tell her supervisor.
“Andie, you can’t jump in and out of role as you please. I promised you that this operation was on the verge of wrapping up, and you agreed to come back and finish what you’d started-no more leaves of absence. That’s the assignment, and that means you can’t call Jack.”
She considered it further.
“Andie, did you hear what I said?”
“Yes, I heard you,” she said, acknowledging only that.
Jack and Shada rode down the elevator in silence. Step one was to get their hands on the cash, and Jack had to defer to Chuck on that part of the plan. For the next couple of hours, at least, Jack had no choice but to follow Chuck’s instructions.
The elevator doors opened to an empty lobby. A black taxi was waiting in the motor court on the other side of the revolving door. Before heading out, Jack took the opportunity to pull Shada aside and make one last plea.
“You don’t have to do this,” he told her.
“We can’t call the police. You and Chuck are in agreement on that. I’m the one Habib wants.”
“The delivery is always negotiable, especially when all we’re talking about is the person who makes the drop. Chuck can manufacture an excuse for you.”
“Then who is going to do it?”
Jack paused, not quite believing what he was about to say. “I will.”
“You? Why should you do it?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
“Because you don’t owe Vince anything.”
