Jeff Abbott - The Last Minute

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.

For a moment neither of us moved. The blade was broken by the blunt weight of the spike. I held it because I had no other weapon.

And then Lizzie began to scream, incoherent rage, the kind of fury that rises like a storm in the soul. She screamed: ‘Meggie!’ She yanked back the spike by seizing onto the chain, whipping it into a cloud of frenzy.

I dropped the broken knife, grabbed the one still clutched in Beth’s hand. I stood and the weight of Lizzie’s surujin began to spiral around my neck. Instinct to save my throat kicked in and I raised my arm. The weight and the chain caught it, pressing it against my face, the blade now above my head, wedged and useless. Lizzie yanked me toward her, the spike raised. The whirring had cleaned a fair amount of Beth’s brain and blood off of it.

No playpen for me. No keeping me alive now. Now there was just the vast, awful, empty rage in her eyes.

So I flowed with the tug on the chain and I threw myself into her.

We crashed to the floor. She hit me in the head with the spike and the weight at the same time, cymballing my head. I couldn’t shrug free from the chain to release my arm and she whirled me loose and snapped a brutal kick into my face. I fell back and then she looped the chain in a savage noose and began to squeeze, her knees in my back.

Colors swam before my eyes, broke apart, descended into grays. I gritted my teeth. The blade was beyond my reach. I pulled away from her, like a plow horse dragging an impossible weight. Grasping for the knife. She howled and shoved her foot hard against my spine.

Daniel. The thought of him fueled me. My hand closed around the knife.

She leapt over me clawing for it. And this is how a person dies.

The pressure on the chains eased.

We both grabbed for the knife.

I could hardly breathe. When she tried to pull it away, I let her do the work and I just steered it. With a thrust that surprised us both the blade pierced her chest.

She gasped, a very quiet sound for such a loud, bragging fool. I lay beside her. There was not a lot of blood because it had slid into the heart with a pure straightness.

She didn’t die as fast as Beth but then she was gone. I pushed her off me.

Special Projects was basically a rogue group. What happened when you had a rogue inside the rogue? They know about Mila, and they know about my son. I’ll do what they want and they’ll just ask for Mila next. It won’t ever end. Ever.

I staggered to my feet. I pulled the chain free from my throat like a man just spared from the gallows. I got to the window and I spat blood.

Think. I dug in my pocket, I found my cell phone. I just hoped I still had my voice.

Special Projects headquarters, Manhattan

The phone buzzed early, at 11 a.m., and August had changed the ring tone to match an appropriate song: Aretha Franklin’s classic cover of ‘Until You Come Back to Me’.

‘Hello,’ the informant said.

‘Hello,’ August said.

‘So, we’re doing this. An hour early. Forgive the change of plans.’

It didn’t surprise August; the informant was trying to keep him slightly off-kilter. He supposed it gave the informant a sense of control. ‘Yes.’

‘I want you and you alone showing up.’

‘Why?’

‘Those people I pissed off are threatening to kill me and say they can do it as soon as I surrender to you. That they’ve got people inside your team ready to bring my head on a platter.’

‘That is what is known as a scare tactic, my friend.’