“Not good enough.”
“I thought you wanted to end this. I thought Spilatro already knew how this was going to play out. One way or another, I’m going to confront him, either pretending I have you to trade, or physically having you to trade. Like I said, I have nothing but time.
“So we have three choices here. One, we can go back to the thirst scenario and see how you’re doing tomorrow. Two, you can give me the number and hope for the best. And three, I can shoot you and figure out another way to contact Spilatro, maybe a way he hasn’t figured yet.”
“That’s what I’m telling you… he’s figured all three plays! He knows what you’re going to do. There’s no free will here. Not with him!”
I pick up the water bottle, untwist the lid, and then take another swallow, so now the bottle is only half-full. “All right then,” I say, setting the bottle back on the chair. “See you tomorrow.”
I only take two steps before he says, “Wait.”
Thirty seconds later, he gives me the number to reach Spilatro. I take off the lid to the water bottle and hold it to his lips. He gulps it down in three swallows. While the bottle is to his lips, I put my Glock to the side of his head and fire once.
I suppose there was a fourth play, the one where he tells me what I want to know, and I shoot him anyway.
She’s in the bathroom, throwing up. I give her a lot of credit. She put up a brave face for a long time, but the reality of what I do for a living, what I’ve always done, caught up to her in this empty warehouse on the west side of downtown Detroit. I’m not going to try to talk to her through the closed bathroom door, though I have a lot to say. I do know the sooner we get out of here, the better I’ll feel. While she jerked her head at the concussive sound of the pop, her face bloodless as she saw Deckman’s head explode, and then turned on her heels to hightail it to the bathroom, I picked up the body and dragged it behind a rusted and forgotten drill press. Deckman kept his frame fit, so it wasn’t too difficult to move him. I saw the bathroom door slam shut out of the corner of my eye as I finished disposing of the body.
I hear the water running in the sink. It hasn’t stopped running. I imagine she’s checking herself in the mirror, searching for a visible change in her face. After a moment, the door opens and she emerges, ashen.
“I’m sorry for this,” she says, chewing on a breath mint. “I.. ”
“It had to be done, Risina.”
“I know. It’s just…”
“We couldn’t try to transport him. The longer you keep a prisoner around, the more chances he has to disrupt your assignment. And this is an assignment, Risina. I’ve been ducking that mentally for a while, but make no mistake about it, it’s an assignment. The name at the top of the page is Spilatro. After we deal with him, we figure the rest of it out.”
“I understand. I need to get some air, if you don’t mind, before I vomit again.”
I can’t tell if she’s agreeing with me because she processes what I’m saying or if she’s trying to block it from her mind.
We find the side door and the crisp air envelops us, sweeping away the smell of dust and death in the warehouse. I parked our sedan around the side of the place so it wouldn’t be visible from the street.
Before she can open the passenger door, I move over to hold her and she submits, burying her face in my chest.
“I was done, Risina. You know that. And then they came to us. They took Archie and penned a note with my name on it and forced me to answer it. These aren’t innocent men.”
“I know,” she says, her face hidden. Her eyes weren’t red when she emerged from the bathroom and she’s not crying now.
“You going to be okay?”
“Yes.”
She reaches up and kisses me on the cheek, but it’s perfunctory, devoid of feeling. “We should leave, yes?”
“Yes.”
She slides into the passenger seat, and I get behind the wheel, crank the engine. In two minutes, we roll away from the broken chain link gate. Another ten and we’re on the highway heading east. Another twenty and Risina’s asleep, the last forty-eight hours sapping her energy like physical blows.
I don’t know if her attitude toward me will change now that she’s stepped behind the curtain and seen me unmasked. I told her once I was a bad man, but up until this morning, they were only words.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The blossoms have fallen off the cherry trees as we return to Washington. Discarded cotton candy mounds mark every few feet as sidewalk sweepers push the petals into piles. Trees we were admiring just a week ago now look bald and empty. It happens that quickly.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
We’ve set up camp in a budget hotel on the outskirts of McLean, Virginia, near the location of the CIA headquarters. I’m looking to disrupt Spilatro’s operating method any way I can. I’ve already put a bullet in the head of his oldest friend, now I’m going to approach him in his own back yard, see if I can shake the leaves from his trees.
“Tell me that you were going to shoot him after he gave you the number.”
“I knew it had to be done from the moment we kidnapped him in the hotel. You can’t keep a wild dog chained to you for too long if you don’t want to be bit. I didn’t know how you’d react and honestly, didn’t want to have an argument about it. I wanted you to be a part of it, but I didn’t want you to give anything away if you knew. If he saw it in your eyes, I might not have gotten the information from him. It was a delicate tightrope-”
“You didn’t trust me.”
“No, that’s not it. Trust has nothing to do with it. It’s only a matter of the unknown, and as a contract killer, you have to keep the unknown at bay every chance you get. That’s the job. I didn’t know how you’d react, and I knew what needed to happen. Once I killed him, it wouldn’t matter how you reacted.”
“Well, you should have told me anyway. You should have dealt with my reaction up front instead of catching me by surprise.”
“I’m not going to apologize for this, Risina. I had to play the cards dealt to me.”
She folds her arms across her chest and glares at me, grimacing.
“I’m in this all the way with you,” she starts. “You need to be in all the way with me.”
“I am.”
“No. You’re lying to yourself about that. I’ve known it since Smoke died in Chicago and you saw you couldn’t protect him. He died in the worst way possible, right in front of us. And since that moment-”
“Risina…”
“Let me finish. Since that moment, you’ve known it could happen to me too. So you won’t let yourself be in all the way with me. You’ve been questioning bringing me with you from the beginning.”
I’m practiced at keeping my face blank, but it’s as open as a book right now, and she reads it, reads that she’s right.
Her voice catches, but she plows forward, her Italian accent thickening with every word. “So listen to me and listen carefully. I’m not going away. I’m not leaving you. And you may not be able to protect me. I might get hurt or worse, but as you say, those are the cards we’ve been dealt. If the plan is to kill someone to get us to the point we need, then tell me. If the plan is to use me as bait the way you did in Rome with Svoboda, then tell me. Jesus Christ, just tell me. Quit trying to do everything alone. We’re partners. We’re a tandem, as you call it. Just tell me.”
“Okay.”
She starts to protest, so sure I am going to argue the point. “Okay?”
