Blindside(49)

I felt like I was doomed. Henry wouldn’t have called in these two if he was going to let me walk away. These were the kind of men who killed you, then stuffed you in the trunk of a car. The irony of it was, now that I knew Natalie was safe, I would gladly walk away. That is, if I was given a choice.

The guy with the teardrop tattoo and the sleek thug were still on either side of me. I couldn’t just break and run. They’d have no qualms about shooting me in the back.

Still, no one had searched me. That was going to be a hell of a surprise. I calculated the advantages of pulling the pistol now or waiting. The longer I waited, the better chance someone had of discovering the gun. It also gave them the opportunity to bind my hands and keep me from moving.

But if I waited, I could surprise whoever drove me in the car. It would probably be just the three of us. I liked those odds if I had the element of surprise.

I still had hope. That was the key to a happy life. Hope. Just like I hoped to see my children grow up. I still had hope that Brian would get out of prison. I hoped to marry Mary Catherine soon, and I hoped these assholes would be careless enough not to search me.

I looked up at Henry. “You don’t have the guts to do your own dirty work?”

“I see you still haven’t given up. Good for you. I don’t know what kind of trap you’re trying to walk me into, but I already told you I’m too smart for that. No matter what you think you’ve worked out. I’m a step ahead of you.”

I could tell by the way he’d delivered the little speech that he believed it. Absolutely and completely. In his eyes, he was equivalent to Einstein. And that would be his weakness. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but eventually someone with that high of an opinion of himself always got knocked down.

The main problem, at least in my mind, was that if he was knocked down in the future it wasn’t going to help me now.

The two men I’d seen in New York—Christoph and Ollie—stepped closer to me. They spoke English with an accent different from anyone else’s in the room. It sounded German or Dutch. It wasn’t anything I could use at the moment.

I said to the slovenly man in the AC/DC shirt, the one who looked like an Ollie, “I was in the coffeehouse in New York when you and your buddy opened fire.”

He chuckled. “Wild show, eh? Good thing those don’t happen every day, no?”

“I imagine in your line of work they happen more often than most people think.”

It was his buddy, the tall guy—probably Christoph—who answered. “We’re professionals. It depends on the circumstances and what our assignment is. If we don’t want a public shoot-out, we don’t have one. You were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. If it wasn’t for Alice and Janos, there wouldn’t have been any problems at all.”

“Are those the other killers you gunned down?”

The neat, well-groomed Christoph smiled. “We’re used for contracts on professionals.”

The heavy, sloppy Ollie added, “And on cops.” He had a breezy, endearing smile. It’d be hard not to like him in other circumstances.

Christoph said, “Aren’t Americans used to public shootings?”

“Not by slipshod amateurs like you. It must’ve been embarrassing knowing you had to use that kind of firepower on two unsuspecting people. Now you had to get extra help just to deal with me. Don’t you have any standards?”

I could tell I was getting to the neat killer. He had an image he was trying to maintain. Just like Henry. The fat one, Ollie, couldn’t have cared less. He said something in Dutch and his buddy didn’t say another word.

From the catwalk, Henry called out, “Enough. You can chat with him on the way. Just get him out of my sight. We have work to do. We need to go to the new office.” He clapped his hands to get everyone moving quickly.

It was more information but nothing that could help me right now. I felt a little desperation creep into my mind. I might have to do something drastic soon.

Then the door behind me burst open, and I turned quickly. The door hung at an odd angle, swaying on broken hinges, as someone began to enter the room. I saw the gun first.

It was the FBI’s finest: Bill Fiore.





CHAPTER 71


ALL EYES WERE on the FBI agent. Fiore looked focused as he stepped all the way into the room. He took a position near a concrete support column close to the door. He showed good tactical sense.

Everyone stood perfectly still. Including me. They just stared at the portly FBI agent with his Glock 9mm held out in front of him. Just as I was thinking, Don’t say something like “Freeze” or “You’re all under arrest,” Fiore opened his mouth.

He said, “Nobody move.”

Great. That should scare them into submission. I stepped backward until I was close to him. The heavy support column was a few steps to our left. I checked it out because something told me we might need it.

Then the handsome Christoph, the one who’d started shooting in New York, pulled a pistol from behind his back. At almost the same time the “janitor,” Gunnar, did the same thing.

Out of instinct, I yelled, “Gun.” It was the universal signal among police that there was real danger in real time.

Fiore fired three times quickly before we both jumped to our left, behind the column. Before I did, I saw Gunnar go down. His pistol clattered on the hard, tiled floor. Blood quickly leaked into the grout and spread all around him. There was nothing neat or clean about a bullet wound.