Adrenaline (38 page)

But I wasn’t retreating. They were only looking for me between the pallets. If I wasn’t where they expected, I could gain a momentary advantage.

I did a standing jump and yank onto the fifteen-foot-high pallets and ran along the edge. I saw movement to my right, another guy rounding a corner where I’d been crouching twenty seconds before, and I fired. Missed him. He fired at the same time I did and I felt the bullet tear up through my jacket and score along the flesh of my back. Then heat hit my shoulder, a sting that rose into agony.

Below my feet, bottles broke, the pallet coming apart at the top. The stack gave way. Beer flooded my shoes. I knew if I tumbled into the mess I’d be cut by the jagged glass and an easy mark.

I jumped to the roof of a forklift, looking down to see a surprised face hiding behind its bulk. I fired wildly and the surprised guy went down, bullets punching into his shoulders. I jumped to the next pallet, hit the wood and didn’t look back. The pain in my shoulder seared. A warm throb of blood coursed down my back. I was hurt.

I couldn’t be hurt. I couldn’t. I jumped off the stack and landed on concrete.

And one of the two had doubled back on his run. I landed three feet in front of him.

He raised an assault rifle but he didn’t fire. “Drop your weapons!” he screamed.

I dropped both the Glocks.

“On the floor!”

I went to my knees. My hand twisted behind me for the
wakizashi
.

“Hands where I can see them!”

My hand closed on the
wakizashi
’s handle. I turned the sword and it sliced through the thin leather belt I wore. Thank you, Piet, for being bored, for sharpening the sword while we waited in the rain outside the sweatshop for the Lings’ truck. If I’d pulled it free he would have seen it, but I made my right hand dangle. “I’m shot in the arm,” I said. “I can’t lift it.”

He took a single step toward me. “Who are you? Police?”

“Yeah, because the police come in one guy at a time,” I said. “Don’t be an idiot. I’m not police.”

I heard the crunch of glass behind me. My feet were in shadow; the only light coming from the vat room. Whoever was behind me would see the
wakizashi
any second.

“Who are you?” the first man yelled again.

Two more steps from behind me. The guy coming up behind me would see the blade. In three. Two. One…

I fell backward into the scattering of glass and rolled, my jacket protecting me from the floor full of sharp edges. The
wakizashi
swung through flesh down to bone on the leg of the guy behind me. He screamed, and the guy with the rifle froze in surprise. I yanked the sword free from its mooring of flesh and swung the
wakizashi
back, twisting to put the edge forward, and slashed through the thigh of the man before me. He bellowed and staggered back, bullets spraying into the floor as he fell. Seriously, are any of us prepared to be slashed with a sword? No. For
an instant, the pain must have been so hot and fresh in the man’s mind that he forgot to shoot me.

That’s the key. You must ignore the pain.

I could hear someone else approaching. God, how many were there? I kicked both the men unconscious. I yanked the flash charge from my jacket, activated it, and tucked it under one man’s arm.

I hurried on the other side of the pallet, moving as quietly as I could, ignoring the pain.

C’mon
, I thought. I heard footsteps. One set, closing fast, spraying a panicky round of fire down the passageway formed by the pallets. Bottles shattered and beer gushed.

I heard someone kneel on the glass-covered floor, murmur a name, and then the light and sound burst like a little bright warhead. A howl. I hurried around the corner, saw a man—but only one—writhing in the glass, blinded and deafened by the flash bomb. I picked up a beer bottle and smashed it on the back of his head and he went groggy. A second kick to the face left him cold; my shoulders hurt too much to try and punch.

A dozen. I’d taken out a dozen. I was barely on my feet. Still one. Still one more. Edward. I checked my Glocks. Empty. One of the men had a gun with a full clip and I took it.

I crept out of the space between the pallets. The glass from the beer bottles was like a signal; every movement producing an audible crunch under my feet, a terrible telegraphing of my position. I moved as carefully as I could. My ears rang from the concussive blast and I was bleeding freely. Everything hurt.

Lucy. The Bundle. Yasmin, the girl I’d been sent to
save, the key to the man who had stolen my family and my life. Focus. Don’t give up now.

I heard nothing except the distant sobbing of the young woman.

She was valuable to Edward. Maybe the orders were to guard her at all costs.

Then I heard her voice rise into a scream. I could hear the echo coming from a hallway to the right.

Maybe Edward had gone after her, decided to make his stand close to his prize.

I
TORE DOWN A SMALL HALLWAY
, gun extended, ready to shoot any shadow.

Yasmin’s screaming stopped. I skidded into an old circular chamber, lined with stone. It smelled of wood and spilled beer and a more recent tang of gunfire. The darkness was gray and blue, and a sputtering light flickered at one side of the chamber. Three side doors, the farthest one half open. I heard a hushed voice inside, murmuring. I strained to hear the words.

Don’t be afraid. Just do as I say and all will be well
. A man’s voice, a low growl, full of impatience and hate.

My father has sent someone else
… Yasmin’s voice, wavering.
Please
.

I inched closer to the door.

Be quiet
. And it was Edward’s voice, the voice on the tape, the voice of the man who had stolen my wife.
He’ll come here soon enough
.

Damn straight. Anger and hate roared up into my head and I kicked in the door. In the guttering light behind me I saw them, him crouching over Yasmin, her mouth twisted in fear. She sat on a bed and Edward had positioned himself between me and her. The scar—like a
little question mark—gleamed by his eye. He held a gun in his hands.

He started to raise it.

I needed him alive. “Drop the weapon!” I fired and the bullet went just wide of his head. He dropped the gun. I didn’t see fear in his eyes. I saw a raw calculation.

“Kick it over here!”

He obeyed. He was a big guy, broad-shouldered, muscled, bigger looking than in the videos.

I stepped on his gun. “On the floor, now. Hands on your head.”

Yasmin was crying. Edward obeyed, scowling.

“Yasmin, it’s okay. Your father sent me. I’m getting you out of here. Come here.”

She slowly inched away from Edward. He seemed to shackle her with his stare, directed fully at her, not at me.

“I know you,” Edward said, as she slowly made her way toward me.

“I know you, too.”

“London.” His voice was a snake moving across stone. He had a soft British accent. The bastard smiled. “You ran very fast. It was almost funny to watch. You made me think of a spider with its web burning. No place to go.”

“My wife. Where is she?” Yasmin was halfway between us, wiping tears from her eyes.

“That’s my sole value to you, yes? Information?”

“Where is my wife?”

He laughed. “Worth something to you, I see, knowing her final resting place. Are you afraid of knowing how she suffered?”

My skin prickled cold. No. “You tell me and you get to live.”

“Even if I’ve killed Lucy? I still get to live?” Edward laughed again. I didn’t like the laughter. A man only laughs when he holds the upper hand.

“Do you mean the American woman?” Yasmin stopped two feet short of me, her hands clutching her elbows, shivering. In real life her voice was a bit higher than on the tape. “The American woman with the baby? Lucy, yes?”

My gaze jerked to her. “Where is she?” I hollered.

“I don’t know where she is now…” She seemed to fight for control of her voice. “I don’t know…”

Edward said, “You want to know where your wife is? You let me and Yasmin leave. It’s the best deal you’re going to get today, Sam.”

I heard a footstep behind me, in the doorway. I’d missed one.

I turned and fired.

And the voltage hit me like a steam train slamming into my bones. I fought to keep the grip on my gun but the shocks, coursing along bones and tendons and spine like lightning, made it drop from my grasp. I fell to my knees. I stared at the black leather boots in front of me.

I looked up.

Lucy. Holding a Taser. Every sound was a blasting roar in my brain. Every sight a nightmare. I tried to slap the Taser needles from my body but then I saw, as if in slow motion, her thumb work and the shattering surge hit me again.

Her boot came back, rocketed toward my head.

Darkness.

P
IET TANAKA OPENED HIS EYES
and blinked away blood. He took a hard, shuddering breath. The hiss of air over ruined teeth hurt so sharply he jerked up. A weight lay atop him. He shoved the form away. A man. One of Edward’s thugs, shot, unconscious.

Piet pulled himself up from the concrete. He could hear the shattering sounds of gunshots inside the brewery.

It was time to leave. The job had gone very wrong. He didn’t care who was winning on the inside: that fool who’d tricked him so badly or Edward’s people.

He saw the van’s keys, stuck in the driver’s-side door. He lurched into the van, started the engine, and accelerated into the night. When he realized his sword was gone, he felt a feverish rage take hold of his heart.
Sam, you rotten bastard
.

Two kilometers down the road he had an idea. He needed a safety net. Sam worked for someone. Fine. Sam’s bosses would want information. They could hide him. It was time to defect.

It had been a bar in Brussels where the manager got Sam his gear; well, Sam had used another bar manager in Amsterdam to establish his bona fides. De Rode Prins.
The bars must be connected, and there he could look for Sam’s bosses to make a deal. He blinked through the pain—his tongue kept probing where his front teeth once were and his gums gave off a hard throb—and he headed for the Prinsengracht. The bar would be closed. But he could break in, find out who Peter Samson worked for.

P
AIN—FROM MY HEAD
to my shoulder to my back—forced open my eyes. I slowly sat up. Everything hurt. Dried blood on my head, my cheek, drool stuck to my lips. I was in a small stone room. No bed; file cabinets. My shirt and jacket were hiked up.

Then I saw Lucy, sitting across the room from me.

I blinked at her.