‘We’re taking the responsibility off you, man,’ Lizzie said. ‘And then what?’
‘Then we talk.’
‘No. Then I go get my son if Jack Ming’s dead.’
‘No, that’s not going to happen, I’m sorry,’ Lizzie said. I wasn’t sure what she enjoyed more, the stab or the twist.
Beth said, ‘I would like to know where we can find your friend Mila.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
‘I think you’re lying,’ Lizzie said. ‘This – whatever you’re doing, on the side – it ends now.’
‘On the side?’
‘Working for someone other than Special Projects,’ Lizzie said. ‘We’re on the same side, babe.’ She made the last word sound like a plop of poison. ‘You just have to stand aside and let us clean up this mess.’
Oh. These two were going to kill Jack Ming, all right, but they were going to kill August, too, and whoever came with him, and they were going to kill me after I’d told them where Mila was.
Someone inside Special Projects was protecting Novem Soles and knew about the bounty on Mila, and had decided to kill the proverbial two birds with one stone. And that someone did not care one whit whether I lived or my child lived. August knew. Who else?
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You kill Jack Ming, then I get my kid back and walk away.’
‘You walk away if you give us Mila,’ Lizzie said.
I didn’t nod for twenty seconds, and let the agony play out on my face. Then I nodded, once.
‘Where is she?’ Beth asked.
‘She’s coming here. In an hour. To help me dispose of Jack Ming’s body. She got a confirmation he was going to be here. A phone call to a friend.’
‘She’s hunting Ming?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why isn’t she here with you now?’
‘Because killing him is my job. Not hers.’
The surujin, wound in an increasing arc while I talked, lashed out at me.
It caught me in the side of the throat as I tried to dodge and felt like a baseball bat had swung into my flesh. I staggered back, choking.
‘He’s lying,’ Lizzie said. ‘I know a liar and he’s lying. He’s not giving Mila to us.’
She flicked it again at me and this time I whipped out my hand and caught the weight. It hurt – like a hammer pounding into my palm – but I yanked on the chain and Lizzie flew toward me.
I slammed a fist into her face but she kept her grip on the chain. So I threw her into Beth, who was holding fire to keep from shooting her partner.
The two women hit the floor. Where was my gun? Beth had kicked it somewhere. I didn’t see it.
First things first. Don’t get shot. Lizzie clambered to her feet. I whirled and powered a kick into her chest, knocking her back into Beth. The gun fired into the hardwoods; shards and splinters kicked up by Lizzie’s foot and she screamed. I couldn’t tell if it was rage or pain.
Right now the biggest threat was the gun. Lizzie threw three brutal sharp jabs, muay thai -style, connecting with my jaw, my nose, my mouth, and then kicked me in the chest. Strong as hell. I staggered back and she whipped the weighted end of the surujin downward, anchoring my hands, binding my wrists together. But now she didn’t try to drag me back; I was caught, she had the other end of the chain. The spike gleamed in her hand.
She rushed me, stabbing at my shoulder, just as Beth charged at me, gun in hand, doing what I would do to subdue a prisoner with useless hands: put the gun to my head, order me to stand down. So, no. I dodged two stabs of Lizzie’s, and since I was bound to her, she was bound to me. Beth lunged at me and I drove an elbow into her nose. It broke and she staggered back, for just a moment.
That was my advantage: they wanted me uninjured enough to talk, to give them Mila. I wanted them out of the way between me and my son and that could mean hurt or dead. It made no difference to me, at that moment in time.
I seized, with my bound hands, Lizzie’s arm with the spike, levered it up. I had to get free of her; Beth ignored the blood streaming from her nose, raising for her shot. There was a connection between them – they were partners, not just two people assigned to kill Jack Ming together. She would not risk a shot to Lizzie’s head. I hoped.
I swung Lizzie hard, and her arms plowed right into Beth’s head. Beth went down, and I yanked again, pulling Lizzie along with me. We trampled over Beth, then I yanked her back again, stumbling and stepping hard on Beth a second time. My foot hit the gun and I kicked, scuttling it into the mass of Russell Ming’s junk.
‘Goddamn it!’ Lizzie screamed. Easily frustrated, not calm.
I got my hand on the dangling weight since Lizzie still had her death grip on the spike. She jabbed the spike straight at the center of my chest, hitting my tie. It hit the metal of my knife, instead of soft flesh.
I clubbed the weight into the side of her head. She fell, hard.
I pulled free from the surujin, kicked back from her, just in time for Beth to nearly open my throat.
She had my blade, the one Lizzie had handed her from my ankle. I ducked as she slashed at me; she was only missing by a centimeter.
I threw myself back in a herky-jerky dance as she advanced, chasing me. The blade scored along the front of my jacket, slicing the lapel. She overextended on her thrust and I caught her and threw her to the side. I groped at my tie for my blade.
My tie was gone. She’d sliced the whole thing off, severing the silk, leaving a faint score on the shirt. Where the hell was it?
Beth stumbled, back on her feet, her hand bleeding from where the blade had turned on her. Lizzie, untangling her deadly Japanese not-really-a-toy. My severed tie lay on the floor between them.
I ran, grabbed the cloth, felt the reassuring weight of the knife under the silk. I skidded under the row of tables bordering the boxes where Russell Ming stored his junk. I worked the knife free from the silk, closed fingers around the handle.
The top of the table exploded into splinters, punctured by the weight of the surujin.
My shield – the table I was under – flew up, the two of them throwing it off me.
Which meant they each had one hand otherwise occupied.
I slashed with the knife, at knee-level. I caught Lizzie but not Beth. Lizzie howled but hammered the weight into the small of my back. Pain exploded along my spine. My knife clanged against Beth’s, slash, parry, slash. She cut at my suit sleeve. I sliced across her knuckles.
I backed away. She stayed level, knife out. She knew what she was doing. Next to her, Lizzie raised and started whirling the surujin. Then I saw the weight in her hand.
She whirled the end with the spike.
Lizzie exploded it toward me and it missed me by inches, drilling into one of the crates. She yanked at it with a gasp but it caught in the hole she’d pierced in the wood. Beth crouched before me, defending her partner. All that mattered was that for one moment the field was equal.
‘It doesn’t have to end this way, bitch,’ Beth told me. ‘We are going to win. We are going to wear you down.’ The fact that she was even negotiating was telling me I’d fought harder, hurt them more than they figured I would.
‘You’re between me and my kid. So you either walk away and don’t look back or you’re dead,’ I said.
‘When I get you in the playpen… ’ Lizzie hollered. ‘You will not ever make another threat to us again.’
‘We could see. Trade the notebook for my son.’ I yelled.
For the barest moment Beth paused. ‘What notebook?’
‘The one Jack Ming filled with dirty secrets.’ Our knives clanged as she pressed the attack. Behind her Lizzie yanked the spike free from the crate. She started whirling the damned surujin again, running toward us.
‘We’re sort of kind of on the same side,’ Beth said.
‘Who’s your boss,’ I answered.
Lizzie whipped the spike toward me, arcing hard. I parried it with the blade and it slammed, sideways, back into Beth’s head. Her temple, the soft part. The impact was squelchy and thudding and Beth fell, timbering, boneless, her head a sudden brutal mess on the side.
