Morris County, New Jersey
I saw the rental Prius, nosed into a grove of trees. I turned in and climbed a wall and headed down a long, paved road. A sign read PRIVATE DRIVE. NO TRESPASSING. Ahead was a long, curving driveway and a house that looked like it might once have been a grand home or summer retreat from the start of the twentieth century. She’d tried to sneak in, but I was expected. Zero point in anything except walking straight into the house.
My phone rang again. ‘Come to the front door. Nothing funny or the redhead dies and you get to watch.’ Short and sweet.
I made my way to the front door, across a grand porch. I opened the door and stepped into a large foyer.
‘Here,’ a voice called.
I headed back from the front of the house and went to my left and entered what might once have been a library or study. The limo driver must have been a Boy Scout. He was extremely well prepared. He aimed a gun at me, and held another pressed against Leonie’s temple. He had a Taser tucked into the side of his pants. Leonie’s face was bruised along the jawline.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘You heal fast, bumper boy.’
‘Vitamins and milk.’
‘But those are not brain food,’ he said. He tapped Leonie’s head with the gun for emphasis. ‘I’m thinking you know the drill.’
‘I’m not armed,’ I said.
‘Liar. If I check you and you have a gun, I’m going to shoot off this bitch’s thumbs.’
I produced the security guard’s gun from the back of my pants and dropped it on the floor.
‘Kick it over,’ he said.
I did as he said.
‘Who are you with?’ he asked me.
‘Me, myself and I,’ I said.
He switched the gun over to Mrs Ming’s head and she began to wail. ‘I don’t believe you. I’m not sure who you’re more interested in – your partner here or your target.’
‘I don’t want anyone hurt.’
‘Then who are you with?’
‘I’m with nobody,’ I said. ‘We’re looking for Mrs Ming’s son.’
‘And you thought I was bringing her to him?’
‘I did. Not now.’
He gave a twisted little laugh. Now that I was unarmed he put a gun up against each of their heads. Toying with me.
‘I’m not sure which one you want alive the most,’ he said.
‘Both of them.’ Ten feet separated us, plenty of time for him to shoot me if I made a move.
I knew at least that with Mrs Ming he was bluffing. He’d brought her here to hold her or to question her, on someone’s orders.
‘Are you with Novem Soles? Because we’re on the same side, then, and this is a misunderstanding.’ The thought that Anna could have opened up a bounty on Jack Ming occurred to me. They just wanted him dead; they wouldn’t care if it was by my hand.
‘Novem what?’
‘Nine Suns.’
‘Sounds like a slant restaurant.’ He seemed to be taking my measure with his gaze. Mrs Ming stared at him with hate in her eyes. ‘You’re the one answering questions, not me, who’s your friend?’
‘Her name is Leonie.’
‘And where would I find Mila? I gave your friend a roughing up and she didn’t know.’
Not a question I was expecting at all. What the hell just happened? ‘I have no idea.’
He eased the gun over toward Leonie’s eye. ‘I want you to tell me how to find Mila.’
‘Mila contacts me when it suits her,’ I said.
‘You’re going to tell me how I can find Mila, or I’m going to kill one of them.’ He shoved the guns hard against their skulls; Mrs Ming let out a twisted moan; Leonie bit her lip and her gaze locked with mine. ‘Not sure which. Guess we’ll know when I pull the trigger. On five. One. Two. Three.’
‘She sometimes meets me at a bar,’ I said in a rush. ‘She calls, she picks the bar.’
‘And define sometimes.’
‘Once a week, when I’m in New York,’ I lied. ‘But it’s on her schedule, not mine.’
He studied my face. ‘Sit down on the floor. Keep your hands behind your back.’
I obeyed. He took the gun off Sandra Ming and holstered it, and then he produced a cell phone from his pocket. He tapped buttons. And in Russian he said: ‘Yes, sir. I have him now. He says the woman will meet him at a bar every week, but she calls him.’ He listened for thirty seconds. ‘Yes. All right.’ He closed the phone.
It’s hard to keep three prisoners when one is unsecured. Right now he wanted me talking. But he hadn’t secured me; he’d used the women as hostages, but he was keeping his distance from me. The women were my bonds.
But his bonds were that he wasn’t master of his own fate. He had to call someone. Someone he called sir. He had to take orders from someone, and, speaking Russian into the phone, he hadn’t wanted me to know that. He hadn’t wanted me to know he was, well, not the top of the totem pole.
But he didn’t draw the second gun again. He felt very much in control. I watched him. He watched me. A minute ticked by. Then another. He didn’t shoot any of us or ask any questions or say what was going to happen next.
‘I find silences awkward,’ I said.
He clearly didn’t.
‘Let me guess. Your boss said not to ask us any questions.’
He looked at me.
‘I’m sure he doesn’t want you to know what the information we have is worth. You might cut a slice for yourself.’
‘Shut up,’ he said. ‘You bore me. You didn’t even try to fight. Coward.’
‘Did he tell you how much the bounty on Mila is?’
‘Shut up,’ he said again, but after a pause.
‘I presume once he gets here, all you do is dig the graves,’ I said. ‘I bet he doesn’t even give you one per cent of the cut on Mila. What are you, paid by the hour? I’m sure that was why you came to the land of opportunity, to dust grave dirt off your hands while your boss collects an insane amount of money he wouldn’t get without your help.’
He stared at me. His mouth opened and I could see a little strand of spit bridge his lips.
‘He told you to sit on us, he’d be out here soon. Or she.’ I was quiet for a minute. ‘He didn’t tell you how much Mrs Ming’s son is worth, either?’
He stared at me, but he swallowed at the same time.
I had a noose around his neck now, so to speak, so I gave it a hard tug. ‘Mila presently has the highest price on her head in the world, for someone who isn’t a head of state or terrorist. And I know how to get her, and you’re just going to hand over that information to your bosses and let them score the profit. But that’s okay, I guess you get to wash the limo at the end of the day.’
‘I would like to know who the hell Mila is,’ Leonie said.
‘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. He dodged me through the shade of the oaks and as we ran downhill he stumbled over a white outcrop of rock and he took a cruel fall.
I landed on top of him, knees digging in, the sharp wood raised above my head. ‘Talk,’ I said.
He spat at me.
‘Who do you work for?’
‘You are so fucked. You don’t even know who you’ve pissed off.’
‘Tell me.’
He smiled through a bloody gash across his mouth. ‘No.’
I showed him the makeshift spear and said, ‘I will run this between your ribs and then stir.’
‘I was told to come get the Ming woman and her son if he was here. Bring them here. See what evidence the Ming kid has.’
‘And to hold us.’
‘Yes. For questioning.’
‘But you know about Mila.’
‘My boss does. He knew you were connected to her. I never heard of her until tonight.’
‘Who do you work for?’
‘I can’t tell you because I don’t know.’
‘You’re lying. He has to have a name.’
‘Do you think he’s ever told me his real name?’
‘How does he give you work?’
‘I get a phone call. I do what he asks, and a lot of money appears for me in a Caymans account.’
‘You’re ex-what?’
‘I used to be Latvian intelligence,’ he said.
Very small spy agency. ‘Didn’t it pay well?’
‘No. Money is better doing freelance work. I drive limo here, I do what my boss asks me. He knew my background before he ever called me. Please.’ He could see that if I hammered the spear into him it would slide deep into his windpipe. ‘Let me go,’ the driver said. ‘Please.’
I knew he would not have shown any mercy to me or Leonie.
‘Get up,’ I said. ‘Give me your wallet, your car keys.’
He obeyed. He wheezed; I’d broken ribs with the chair. His face was a bloodied wreck and his shirt and pants were torn. He wouldn’t look at my eyes. ‘You can’t leave me behind here, he’ll kill me. I know he’ll kill me.’
The wooden, pseudo-spear felt heavy in my hand. But I couldn’t kill him in cold blood. ‘Start walking. You can stop when you cross into Pennsylvania. If I see you again I’ll kill you without hesitation.’
He nodded. He stumbled, fell to the ground.
‘Get up,’ I said.
He nodded again, agreeing with me that getting up was a capital idea, and I leaned down to yank him to his feet.
The rock crashed into the side of my head and I went down to my knees, eyes thrumming with pain. He scrabbled across me, trying to seize the improvised spear and shoving my arm into the mud. Then he raised the rock again, slammed it into my face. I twisted my head so he missed my nose but hit my shuttered right eye. It hurt like hell.
I felt the butt of the spear grind into the mud and so I pushed him up. His feet scrabbled in the muck, obliging me, and then I drove the spear into him. It hurt him, he howled, but it didn’t pierce his side. He writhed away and then I was on top of him and I drove it, point down, hard into his belly.
I walked back up to the house, bleary with pain and my mouth tasting of puke. My eye was swollen nearly shut. It hurt but it wasn’t anything more than a black eye, I thought, not a broken socket. I stumbled and kept my feet moving.
Leonie stood in the door, shivering. With my good eye I could see her clutching at her elbows.
‘Mrs Ming… ’ she said. ‘Hurry, in here. Where’s the driver?’
‘Dead.’ I didn’t add it hadn’t been a good death to see.
‘You killed him?’
‘That’s usually what dead means. Thanks for the help. Thanks for shooting him once you got the gun and everything. Really appreciate it.’
‘I had to try and help Mrs Ming… ’ she moaned, and then I ran into the house.
*
The driver’s stray bullet had punctured her chest. Her skin was pale and gray as a clouded sky, blood easing from her mouth, her nose. Leonie had tried to staunch the bleeding. I knelt by her.
‘Mrs Ming.’
Her eyes fluttered open.
‘Mrs Ming. Where has Jack gone?’
Her bloodied lip thinned. ‘Won’t tell you… You people want to kill him.’
‘Is he going to go to his father’s building in Brooklyn? He took the keys from your house, I think.’
‘Tell you nothing… You want to hurt my son.’
‘I can help protect your son,’ I said.
‘Liar.’
Oh, God, please, I thought, please help her talk to me. ‘Mrs Ming. I worked for the CIA. I don’t want to hurt your son. Look at me.’ Her face focused on my bruises. ‘I just killed the man who kidnapped you. I’m trying to help you. I lied to that man. So I’m Jack’s only hope. The CIA is looking for him.’
‘The CIA called me… ’ she said. ‘Liars. All liars.’ Her eyelids fluttered.
Her words hit me hard as a punch. ‘Who in the CIA called you? Who?’
Her lips moved, and her breath gave what sounded like a final hush. ‘They wanted a deal… protect Jack, protect me… if you came I was to keep you at the house until they got there… ’
‘Who in the CIA did you talk to, Mrs Ming?’
But she didn’t want to talk about that, not with fewer breaths than fingers left. Mrs Ming said, ‘My son… help my son, please.’
What was I supposed to promise her? I was supposed to kill her son to save mine. I took her hand. ‘Jack will be all right,’ I said. ‘I promise you. I promise you.’
‘I loved him,’ she said. ‘Forgave him… ’ And the words, the breath, faltered and with a bubble of blood at her lips she was gone.
‘Oh, my God,’ Leonie said.
‘Are you all right?’
She nodded. She stared at the dead woman. She pressed fingers against her throat, so as to be sure there was nothing to be done. ‘What do we do? His boss is coming… ’
‘I know. These are our choices. I know where Jack Ming is hiding. He might be there if we go there now. Or we can wait and see if the driver’s boss shows up, learn who we’re up against. We can’t do both.’
‘Jack Ming,’ she said. ‘No question.’