And then Luc realized with a shock that he indeed had been shoved—by the odd-looking stranger who leaped into the conference room with a drawn pistol.
"Everybody hold still!" he shouted.
He was addressing all of them, but he kept his pistol—Luc noticed with alarm that it was fitted with a silencer—trained on Dragovic. Something familiar about him… the warm-up, the hat, the sunglasses. And then Luc recognized him: this man had shared the elevator with Dragovic and him a short while ago.
"Thank God!" Brad cried. "I don't know who you are, but you arrived just in time!" He pointed to Dragovic. "This man—"
"Shut up!" the stranger yelled, pushing Brad toward the end of the table. "Over there with your buddies." Then he turned to Dragovic. "You carrying?"
Dragovic stared at him. "Do you know who I am?"
"Yeah, now answer the question: what are you carrying?"
Dragovic sneered. "I have no need to carry."
"So you say. Take off your jacket and prove it."
"Go to hell!"
Without warning, the stranger's pistol coughed once and Dragovic fell back into a chair, his breath hissing between his teeth as he clutched his thigh. Luc saw that a splintered hole had appeared in the mahogany door of the cabinet behind him.
"Take off your jacket," the stranger said, "or the next one will go for the bone instead of creasing you."
Leveling a murderous glare at the stranger, Dragovic removed his suit coat, balled it in his bloody hands, and hurled it across the room at him.
"You are a dead man."
"You already tried that once today," the stranger said, catching the coat with his free hand. "Now it's my turn."
Luc watched Dragovic's expression change from anger, to bafflement, then to… was that fear? Luc turned his attention to the stranger who was emptying the jacket pockets. He wished he could see the eyes behind those dark glasses. He seemed to be brimming with rage, more than Dragovic, if that were possible. What was it between these two? Luc glanced at Brad and Kent who looked as baffled and frightened as he.
A cold band tightened around his chest. Have we traded one madman for another—this one armed?
19
Jack had loved shooting Dragovic—took just about all he had to keep from pulling the trigger again—but relished the mix of terror and bafflement scooting across his face right now almost as much.
"You?" Dragovic said; then his eyes narrowed. "Yes, it is you! That mustache is fake. I have seen you!"
Jack found only a cell phone in Dragovic's suit coat. He dropped the phone on the table and tossed the coat back.
"No, you haven't."
"Yes. You were at my front gate!"
Damn security cameras, Jack thought.
"I knew it!" Dragovic shouted, purpling with rage as he pointed to Monnet. "You work for him, don't you! He hired you to humiliate me!"
Where'd he get that idea? Jack wondered, but decided not to straighten him out. This might work right into his plans.
"Just sit there and be quiet while I talk to these bozos," he said, dismissing Dragovic—which had to hurt him worse than another bullet. He turned to Monnet. "Where's Nadia Radzminsky?"
Monnet seemed jolted by the question. But maybe frightened too. Hiding something? Jack couldn't tell for sure.
"Nadia?" Monnet gave this nifty little Gallic shrug. "Why… home, I suppose."
"She's not. She's missing." He turned to the other two. "How about you guys? Any idea where I can find Nadia Radzminsky?"
"How should we know?" said the heavier, sweaty one.
"Radzminsky?" said the nervous ferret type. His eyes darted Monnet's way. "Luc, isn't that the new researcher we hired?"
"How do you know Nadia?" Monnet said.
Jack ignored him, concentrating on the other two. "How about Gleason—Douglas Gleason? He's another of your people who's MIA. Know anything about him?"
Bull's-eye, Jack thought when he saw the ferret's shocked expression. Here was a guy he'd like to play poker with.
Keeping a peripheral watch on Dragovic, Jack pointed his pistol at the ferret's head.
"Nice haircut, but I think the part would look better on the other side, don't you?"
The ferret clapped his hands against his scalp and ducked, crying, "Tell him, Luc! Tell him about Prather!"
Monnet closed his eyes and Jack stared at him, stunned. The only sound in the room was ripping cloth. Jack glanced at Dragovic and saw him tearing the silk lining from his suit coat and tying it around his wounded thigh.
'Tell him!" the ferret screamed.
"Shut up, Brad!" Monnet said through his teeth.
"Ozymandias Prather?" Jack said, and watched the three partners' faces go slack with shock.
"You know him?" Monnet said.
"I'm asking the questions."
"No-no," Monnet said, an excited look replacing the shock. "This is important! If you know him, then you must have seen the creature he calls the Sharkman."
"Yeah. Saw it a few hours ago." Where was this going?
"Then please tell this man," Monnet said, pointing to Dragovic. "Tell him how the creature looks, how it's at death's door."
"You kidding? It looks great—ready to bust out of its cage."
Monnet looked ill as Dragovic pounded his fists on the table and shouted something about liars and traitors, but Jack wasn't following because a sickening scenario was playing out in his mind.
He stepped closer to Monnet and pointed the pistol at his face.
"You!"
The doctor cringed. "What?"
"What did Oz and his boys do to Gleason?"
"Nothing."
Jack jammed the muzzle of the silencer against Monnet's temple, hard enough to make him wince. "You've got three seconds… two seconds…"
"He made him disappear!"
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I don't know!" Monnet cried. "He just said he'd found an 'absolutely foolproof means of disposal' and we'd never have to worry about him again. That's all I know; I swear!"
You bastard! Jack thought, aching to pull the trigger. You rotten lousy bastard. He'd bet all he owned that Oz's foolproof dispose-all had yellow eyes and a scarred lower lip.
"And Nadia? What about her?"
Monnet closed his eyes.
"Only one second left on your clock," Jack said, then held his breath, pretty damn sure he wasn't going to like this answer.
Monnet nodded. "The same." His voice seemed caught between a whisper and a sob.
"Aw, jeez."
It now seemed a possibility that the suddenly healthy rakosh hadn't lunched on Bondy as Jack had first thought. Oz must have fed it Gleason… and Nadia was probably next on the menu.
He backed away, trying not to give in to the increasingly insistent urge to redecorate the room with this son of a bitch's brains. That was too good for him. Too good for all of them.
"All right," he said. "I want all pockets emptied onto the table. Everyone. Now. Do it!"
The three executives got to it with gusto. Jack could see relief on their faces: Emptying pockets meant robbery. They understood that, and it sure as hell beat getting shot.
Dragovic didn't move. He simply sat there pressing a hand to his thigh and glaring at Monnet. Jack remembered his shouts about liars and traitors a moment ago. Looked like this little business arrangement was falling apart. He let Dragovic be—he already had what he wanted from him.
"Hurry!" Jack shouted, and meant it. Gleason was probably gone, but maybe he still had time to save Nadia. "I want all pockets turned inside out."
He didn't care about the wallets that landed on the table. The cell phones were what he wanted. Three more of them joined Dragovic's.
"You," he said, pointing to Mr. Sweaty. "Rip out every phone in the room and dump them here on the table." As Sweaty hopped to it, Jack pointed the ferret—the one Monnet had called Brad—in the direction of the wet bar at the far end of the room. "You bring me four glasse
s and a pitcher of water."
When all the phones had been collected, including the conference speaker-microphone in the center of the table, Jack wrapped them in someone's suit coat and tossed them out into the hall.
"Now," he said, tugging the Ziploc of Berzerk from his pocket and sliding it across the table to Brad. "Put a handful of that in each of the glasses."
The look on Brad's face left no doubt about his familiarity with the powder.
"W-why?"
"Just do it."
Brad's hand was shaking like a wino with the DTs, but he managed to get the job done.
"Now fill each glass halfway with water and pass them around."
A minute later, each of the four men had a glass of blue-tinged fluid before him.
"Bottoms up, gentlemen," Jack said.
Mr. Sweaty got sweatier. "No," he said shaking his head and staring at the glass like he'd been poured a shot of battery acid. "It'll kill us."
"Yeah, well, you gotta go sometime. Drink up; then I'm gone."
Dragovic snorted derisively, raised his glass as if he were toasting the room, and chugged the Berzerk. Then he hurled the glass across the table at Monnet, missing him by inches.
"I can't!" Brad wailed.
Jack put a bullet into the mahogany tabletop directly in front of Brad. The three executives all but jumped out of their seats; Dragovic was cool, though. Barely blinked. Under different circumstances, Jack could have almost liked him.
"I don't have time for this, so I'll tell you that we can do this two ways: you can swallow it, or I can shoot you in the gut and pour it in."
Mr. Sweaty drank his. He looked sick when he set his empty back on the mahogany. Brad choked halfway through his, and for a second or two Jack was afraid he was going to blow it all over the table, but he kept it down.
Monnet was the last. "Do you have any idea what this will do to us?"
"Firsthand. I got the dose you or Dragovic set up for Nadia."
"I have never heard of this Nadia," Dragovic said. "Who is she? Should I know her?"
"Then it was you," Jack said, staring hard into Monnet's eyes. He wanted so much to hurt this man. Instead he held up his free hand, the leather-clad thumb and index finger a hair apart. "This morning I came this close to hurting two people very dear to me because of you. I think you'd better drink up."
Monnet drank.
"Why?" Monnet asked when he'd drained the glass. "Why are you doing this?"
"Nadia hired me," Jack said, wanting to smash his teeth because Nadia was gone, maybe dead, because of this man.
"To do this!
"No. To keep an eye on you." Jack pointed to Dragovic. "To protect you from him. She thought you were in trouble. She was worried about you. She cared about you."
He watched Monnet crumble. "Oh, my Lord."
He surprised Jack by dropping his face into his hands and sobbing.
Jack reached into a pocket, pulled out the paper-towel-wrapped collection he'd assembled in the cafeteria, and dropped it on the conference table.
"For your amusement. Just remember the Law: not to spill blood. Are we not men?"
He enjoyed their confounded expressions as he backed to the door and pushed it open. He couldn't resist aiming a Parathion shot at Dragovic.
"Got any old tires you care to sell?" he said in the Thurston Howell lockjaw accent he'd used on the phone. "Oily ones, perhaps?"
"You!" Dragovic cried, rising from his seat. "Why would you do that to me!"
"Nothing personal," Jack said. "I was hired to do it."
With that he ducked out and slammed the door closed. Immediately he tipped the filing cabinet, letting it fall against the door, wedging it against the opposite wall. Then he ran for the elevator, praying he could make it to Monroe in time.
20
Luc was vaguely aware of what was going on around him… Kent moving to the door, trying it, unable to open it… he and Brad futilely throwing their weight against it… their panicked cries about being trapped.
Other words had a death grip on his thoughts… She thought you were in trouble. She was worried about you. She cared about you…
Each word, each syllable was a drop of acid eating through Luc's brain.
Poor Nadia. She was looking out for me while I was contracting her death. What have I become? What sort of monster am I? What brought me so low?
He raised his head from his pool of misery and found Dragovic staring at him from the far side of the table.
"So," the Serb said with a lopsided grin. "It is just the four of us again." He rose and moved along the table with a barely perceptible limp. The wound wasn't slowing him down. He pointed to the stranger's package. "Let's see what your man left us."
"He's not our man," Kent said. "We've never seen him before in our lives. At least I haven't."
"Me neither," said Brad.
"He said you hired him."
"Never!" Brad cried. "He said he 'was hired.' But not by us."
All eyes turned to Luc.
"You got rid of the Radzminsky woman without checking with us," Kent said. "Did you hire that man as well?"
Luc said nothing. He no longer cared what they thought.
Dragovic pulled at the paper towels wrapped around the stranger's package. They unrolled in one long strip until four carving knives fell free and clattered onto the table.
"Oh… my… God!" Brad whispered.
Dragovic picked up the longest and ran his finger along the edge. "Sharp," he said, grinning. He shoved the point toward Luc. "Want to feel?"
Luc gripped the front of his shirt and ripped it open, sending a button bouncing across the table. He thrust his exposed chest at Dragovic.
"Do it! Go ahead—do it!"
Luc was not bluffing. He was sick to his soul and could almost welcome ending it all right here.
"Don't dare me. Because I will—and your two partners as well."
"Don't even joke about something like that!" Kent cried.
"Who's joking?"
"Start with me," Luc said. "I don't care anymore."
It was something of a shock to realize that he truly did not care, and that granted him a bounty of wild courage.
Dragovic stared at him, his grin gone. "You will care when this bites into your throat."
"Stop this talk!" Brad said. "You can't get away with harming any of us. We're all trapped here until the cleaning service shows up." He glanced at his watch. "And they should be here within the hour."
"Right," Kent said. "You don't want them to find you here with a dead body and blood on your hands, do you? Even your lawyers won't get you off on that one."
Dragovic considered this, then shrugged. He tossed the knife onto the table. "Some other time, then." He leaned closer to Luc. "When you care. Because I want you to care."
"We've got to stay calm," Brad said. "That man, whoever he was, wants us to kill each other—expects us to kill each other. But we can outsmart him and have the last laugh if we just… stay… calm. We've all got Loki starting to run through our brains right now, enough to make half a dozen people crazy. But we're all intelligent men, right? We're smarter than Loki. We can beat it."
"Right," Kent said. "If we all sit quietly, saying nothing to upset anyone else, we can all survive until the cleaning service comes."
Brad moved to the far corner of the table and patted the chair there. "Milos, you sit here. Kent—"
"No!" Dragovic said, dropping into the chair opposite Luc. "I sit here."
"Very well," Brad said. "I'll sit here. And Kent will sit opposite me. That way we'll all be as far as possible from each other. Now: everyone be quiet and just… stay… calm."
Silence. Luc closed his eyes and listened to the faint hum of the air conditioning. After a few minutes he realized that his mood was lifting. He felt nowhere near as miserable as when the stranger first imprisoned them.
Thoughts of Nadia returned, but he found he could view them from a fresher, more realistic perspe
ctive. Absurd to blame himself for Nadia's demise when clearly it was her own doing. If she'd kept her attention focused on the task she'd been assigned, she'd still be alive and welL But no… she had to go sticking her nose where it didn't belong. If you play, you'd better be ready to pay.
And hadn't she lied to me about her relationship with Gleason? Damn right. Told me they were just friends when all the time they were engaged. Engaged! Serves the bitch right. Can't lie to me and get away with it.
Luc opened his eyes and found Dragovic staring at him.
"What are you looking at?" he said.
Dragovic sneered. "Dead meat."
"Please," Brad said from the far end of the table. "If we don't talk we won't—"
"Shut up!" Luc said. "God, how I'm sick of your whining, wheedling voice!"
"OK," Brad said, his face twitching as he pressed his palms flat on the table. "Fine. Let's leave it at that."
Luc bit back another remark. Brad was right. Tensions could soar under the influence of Loki. A casual remark could spark a war. He and everyone else had to keep quiet.
But damn he felt good! Hard to believe that just moments ago he'd been mired in some morass of guilt over what he'd done to Nadia. The Loki was letting him see the idiocy of expending even a nanosecond of thought, let alone guilt, on a nobody like her.
Loki… he regretted never trying it before. This was wonderful. His senses were turned to a higher pitch—he could feel the air, the individual oxygen molecules, hear the ticking of Dragovic's Rolex or whatever that garish contraption was on his wrist, feel the grain of the mahogany writhing beneath the varnish of the tabletop.
And his mind—so clear. He could see all the errors of his life, especially during the past few weeks, and how things would have been completely different if he'd had a little Loki to clear his vision.
He glanced around the table again.
Brad and Kent… what a pair of losers: the complete wimp and the flabby blowhard. How did I ever let myself become involved with them? And Dragovic—he's not so tough. Bigger and stronger, perhaps, but brawn carries you only so far. Even in a hand-to-hand fight, he'd be no match for my intellect. Why was I ever afraid of him?