Jeff Abbott - The Last Minute

‘Gun on the ground, please,’ Beth ordered.

I obeyed. Dropped it to the hardwood floor, kicked it over to her. I kept my hands slightly raised, in front of me, where she could see them.

‘Hands on head. Lizzie, search him.’

She did with gusto, fingers dancing over me, exploring more than she should have, while Beth kept the gun leveled at my head. She probed my arms, my groin, my backside. She ran her hands along my ribs and my legs. Lizzie found the thin blade at my ankle. She ran her fingernails along the skin of my leg. She was so busy toying with me that her search was incomplete. She’d not thought to pat down my tie.

‘Boys and their toys,’ Lizzie said. She flicked the knife at my face. I didn’t flinch; she stopped a good inch away from my cheek.

It seemed to displease her I hadn’t given the reaction she wanted. ‘I can make you flinch,’ she said. ‘I will.’

‘Lizzie, step back,’ Beth said. Lizzie obeyed.

‘The preference is not to shoot you,’ Lizzie said. ‘It makes a mess.’ She stepped back, tucked my knife in her belt. She picked up the surujin and began its slow swing again. There is a whole subclass of punk-ass killers who have seen a Hong Kong or Tokyo gangster movie and decided to flash up their act a bit. One supposes they think it makes them look more dangerous. Most of them are older than me and honestly should know better. I’d dealt with one back in Amsterdam with a Japanese sword fetish and now he was dead.

Lizzie just kept smiling at me. Like she wanted to encourage me to ask her on a date.

‘Are you kidding me?’ I said again. ‘Put that down.’

She didn’t. She laughed. The little weight kept spinning, slicing the air; it sounded like a knife. ‘See, with this, I don’t kill you, I knock you around a bit, bad bruises, yes, cuts, yes, but those can heal without too much care. I can play with you a lot more. A gunshot takes forever to heal, trust me, it’s so annoying. And smelly.’

The other one – Beth – looked embarrassed, for just the barest moment. ‘Where is Jack Ming?’

‘I don’t know. I thought he might be here.’ Truth. ‘That’s why I was eager to look in that locked room.’

‘And why you tried to shield me in case he was there with a gun. Oh, how sweet,’ Beth said.

‘I won’t shield you again.’

Lizzie started swinging the surujin, harder, higher; it made a steel halo around her head.

‘Why are you looking for him?’ Beth said.

Well, I wasn’t expecting that question. But I like the cards on the table in moments like this. ‘Why are you?’

Lizzie threw the surujin. The weight slammed into my shoulder with the force of a savage punch. With a flick of the chain she’d drawn it back to her, whirling the weight in front of her. She actually knew how to use the thing. Where do you go to surujin school?

‘She can break your nose, shatter your teeth, shred your ears with it,’ Beth said. ‘I really suggest you tell us what we want to know.’

‘Talk, talk,’ Lizzie hissed.

‘Because the people who have my child want him dead.’

‘That’s very moving.’ Lizzie walked to one side of me, the weight orbiting her head. The sound it made was an awful whirring hiss. She was at both her weakest and her strongest when she threw it, if I could keep it from coming back to her. The spike was to stab someone tangled or stunned by the weight and the chain. It was like a Swiss Army knife of weapons.

‘And these people, they just want Jack dead?’ Beth asked.

‘Yes. Kill him and I get my kid back.’

‘That is so sweet,’ Lizzie said. ‘You’ll be the bestest daddy ever.’

Beth said, ‘Jack Ming is going to die. You can see it happen, if you like. But we do the job. Not you.’

Something inside me broke. They had a gun on me, fair enough, and the one playing at samurai was crazy as hell. But this was over.

‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t trust you to do what needs doing.’

‘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.