‘Shut up,’ the driver said to her. He looked back at me and laughed. ‘Why would you want me to profit more than my boss? It makes no difference as to whether you live or die.’
‘I’ve been screwed over by a boss before,’ I said. ‘Very badly. I don’t much like bosses because I always did the hard, dangerous work and they got all the credit. Mila’s my boss and I’m not about to die for her.’ Then I played the trump. ‘A million. That’s what the bounty is. And I know some people who will pay at least a million, probably double, for Mrs Ming’s son. He stole something from them, they want it back. Your boss will be taking that money to the bank as well.’ Watch me tap dance, I love to improvise.
He said nothing, he just stared.
His cell phone rang again. He opened it and said, in Russian, ‘Yes?’ He listened. ‘Yes, I can stay longer. Of course. Is… is there anything you want me to find out from them?’ Silence. ‘Yes, sir.’ He clicked off.
‘Let me guess. He doesn’t want you talking to us,’ I said. ‘I love being right.’
‘He’s been delayed.’
‘And he doesn’t want you knowing what we know. You might decide that you could profit.’
‘I don’t want this man mad at me,’ he said.
‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘He has all the power. What do you have? He’s going to have three million dollars. A million for Mila, a million for the kid, a million for what the kid stole.’
His mouth worked.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ Leonie said. ‘Shut up.’ She stared at me, the barrel of the driver’s gun still indenting her hair.
‘You and I could cut a deal,’ I said. ‘You let these two go, and you and I collect the bounties. Together.’
He laughed. ‘And I trust you why? ’
‘Because I’ve told you the truth, and you suspect I’m right, and your boss hasn’t told you squat except spit out a bunch of orders and let you take all the risk.’ I put a heaviness on those final words. ‘You’re the errand boy. You’re not a player. I guess you’re not ready.’
‘Shut up,’ Leonie said.
‘You be quiet,’ the driver said. ‘I let them go, they go to the police.’
It’s always delicious when a not-bright person begins studying the angles.
‘No. The people paying the bounties have their kids,’ I said. ‘They’ve got control over them. They will go home and cry for their kids.’
Sometimes the unexpected happens. Sometimes a word is a bomb. Leonie’s eyes went wide with shock, her jaw trembled. She turned her head and the driver’s gun lay square in her forehead. She stared up past the gun at him, coiled. He glanced at her. Then he made his mistake. He looked up at me. ‘How do I know that any of what you said is true?’
Lying is not hard. I don’t know why the psychologists pronounce it as difficult. Lying is the easiest thing in the world. Truths are far more difficult. ‘Call your boss and tell him what I’ve told you,’ I said. ‘Tell him you know where Mila is, right now, and you know she’s worth a million. See how he reacts. See what he tells you to do.’
‘What if I kill the two of them and you and I work out a deal?’ he said. Testing me.
‘Sam, stop it,’ Leonie said, her voice a razor wire.
I shrugged. He smiled.
There are two kinds of killers. Those that don’t kill unless they believe they absolutely must, and those who kill with a greater ease. The driver was the second type. He liked the power. He liked the control. He was a small man on the inside, and killing made him feel big. I had made him feel small, seen the truth of who he was. It’s not complicated. The reaction tells you whether or not you can kill them without hesitation. I believe in do unto others, you know.
‘You throw her away easily,’ he said to me. He looked down at Leonie, as though considering what a waste that would be. She stared right back up into his eyes, the gun pressed now against her forehead, and ten feet away I could feel the fury radiating off her, the fire of inchoate anger and frustration.
‘Same as your boss is doing to you. Throwing you away.’
Later, replaying it in my head, I think that phrase did it. An accidental tripwire inside Leonie’s head. The idea of someone being thrown away. I didn’t know until much later how much of a nerve I struck with her, and at the time I thought she was thinking of Daniel and her daughter. I didn’t intend for her to fight the battle.
I just wanted him consumed with doubt, with greed, and if I got him close to me, to talk, then I could take him. That was when Leonie attacked. She timed it right. She did her best. Now, a person bound to a chair, it’s not really much of an attack – more of a low-aiming shove. She took advantage of the fact that he was standing right next to her and she slammed her weight, chair and all, into him, fueled by an incoherent rage.
Because he was going to interfere, and he would cause her child to die, to be thrown away.
Leonie knocked into the driver like a knee-hugging tackle, her feet kept propelling into him, and he staggered to the side, crashing into Sandra Ming, who obligingly screamed.
I ran forward.
Time didn’t slow. It always slows in the movies but in this dirty, abandoned old house it seemed to speed up, to accelerate beyond my control. The driver’s gun spoke, twice spitting, and I heard a scream, close as my ear as I dived toward them. The driver threw Leonie off him – picked her up, chair and ropes, and threw her at me – he was counting on me being kind and catching her. I didn’t. I ducked and the legs of the chair brushed my back. She slammed into the wall behind me, high up, falling to the gritty wooden floor. But throwing her off him meant he was off-balance, both hands employed in tossing her, and I charged at him. I pile-drove him hard into the wall, jamming forearm against windpipe, looking to crush it. But I hit him a fraction too high and I caught more jawline than throat.
We snapped back into the wall and he hooked a leg behind me. I fell and then I saw the gun, firm in his hand, and his wrist pivoted toward me. I caught the gun’s barrel and pushed it away. He lay atop me, in the stronger position, and I kept the gun at bay with my right hand. My left hand I used to make short, hard chops in every vulnerable spot: throat, solar plexus, testicles. Three fast brutal ones. He hissed out bad breath in sharp pain and I got a better grip and broke his wrist. The crack was loud. I slammed elbow into throat and he coughed and spat blood.
Money versus child. You tell me who fights harder.
Leonie landed on us. Her chair splintering had unbound her from the ropes. She pulled the gun away from him. He tried to lever an elbow back in her face and he missed.
She got the gun. But instead of shooting him she ran, simply trying to get the weapon out of his reach. She fired a round into Mrs Ming’s handcuff, anchored to the top rung of the chair, and pulled the older woman out of the room. Leaving me to fight the driver.
He slammed a roundhouse into my face with his good hand and I fell back against Mrs Ming’s damaged wooden chair. It was ladder-backed, no arms, worn with age. A weapon at hand. I grabbed the chair with one hand and swung its weight into him. Then again. Then again, each time dodging the blows he tried to connect against me. He screamed, in pain and frustration.
I had a good grip now and I swung for all I was worth. One of the legs cracked, separated from its weak nails and I flung it aside. He rolled and I smashed the chair into the floor, missing him, and the seat, torn from the chair, skittered across the floor. I was conscious of blood masking his face and coating my hands. He snarled; he was coming apart, same as the chair. He knew I was going to beat him to death.
He scrambled backward now, fleeing me, retreating back toward a window.
‘Tell me who your boss is and I’ll let you live,’ I said.
He made a noise and then he went backward, through the window, arms up to protect his battered body, flinging himself out onto the grassy hillside. It was only about a five-foot drop but he fell and rolled like he’d plunged from a great height.
The last big fragment of the chair still in my hand was a length of the ladder-back, with bits of wood dangling off it. I stripped them free; now all that was left of the chair in my grip was a two-foot length of tough oak, its top splintered into a sharp spear.
I jumped out the window after him.
He staggered through the trees, survival instinct fueling his run. But I’d broken him – maybe ribs along with the wrist – and his speed wasn’t top. Today had spun out of his control and he was bent by the reversal of fortune.
