Swords of Exodus [Dead Six 02] (27 page)

I shrugged. Probably true, but all things considered, since I had been taken in by the Lorenzos, I had been a relatively good kid.

“I look at some of those men that I send to jail, and sometimes, I see you, and I worry. Some of them have the same kind of attitude you do. They think that what they are is what they are, and that they can’t change. People aren’t set in stone.”

“I’m not going to do anything stupid, Dad. Don’t worry,” I assured him. “You guys have been great to me. I won’t let you down.”

“But I’m not going to be around forever. Just remember, no matter what happens, a man can always repent. They can always change. You know, there’re three kinds of people in the world.” He ticked them off on his fingers. “Good guys, bad guys, and those that don’t care. Now most people, if you ask them, they would say they’re one of the good guys, but really, they don’t care. They’re good as long as it’s convenient. Bad guys, well, I’m afraid you know a lot more about them than any young person should ever have to. But you want to be a good guy. Sometimes, life makes it easy to be a bad guy, or for those that don’t have the stomach for that, then they fall in that great grey middle ground. But to be one of the good guys, that takes work. It takes honor.”

Dad was rambling now. He did that once in awhile. “I’m not going to get in trouble with the law.”

He laughed aloud. “Law? Boy, good has nothing to do with the law. You can be the most evil son of a bitch to ever walk the earth . . .” that surprised me, he rarely, if ever used bad language, “and still obey the law. Heck, you can even write the laws. No, good means you do the right thing. Even when it hurts. Bad men can become good. I’ve seen it happen, and a good man can go bad.”

“Okay,” I humored him. Sometimes he liked to get philosophical. The Lorenzos were very religious, but Dad had never pushed any of his personal beliefs on his children. He just tried to teach them, and let them choose for themselves. He did make us all go to church every Sunday, however. I didn’t really mind, because there were some really good looking girls at church.

There was a crack of a gunshot from over the hillside. Gideon Lorenzo looked at his watch again. It was a very nice watch, inlaid with silver, with an onyx face, and had been given to him as a present from his father when he had graduated from law school. He sighed. “Looks like Bob jumped the gun by four minutes. That’s buck fever right there.”

“The scoundrel,” I said, imitating Dad’s voice perfectly. We both laughed.

He put his arm over my shoulder. “Be good, Hector. That’s all that I ask. . . . We better get going.”

Then the Sun was up.

It was morning.

LORENZO

Crossroads City

March 15th

It was morning.

My head ached. I cracked open my eyes and scanned the room. I was lying on a bed. I’d been dreaming about my foster father, and the last thing I recalled was him looking at his watch. It was the same watch that would cost him his life the year I turned sixteen. Ruthlessly beaten until his internal organs had ruptured by a gang of worthless hoodlums, because they thought his watch could be hocked for drug money. The law hadn’t caught them, but I had. I’d dropped off the world to find them, and kill them, and I’d never looked back.

The sheets were bright white and smelled like fresh soap. Outside the window, a rooster crowed. The room was empty of decoration. There was only a small table by the bed with a pitcher of water and a cup, and two chairs near the closed door. Both chairs were occupied by men armed with P90 submachine guns.

“Hey.” My head was stuffed with a foggy, hung-over feeling. “Bring me that punk-ass bitch, Anders. We’ve got some unfinished business.”

“Good morning, sir,” replied the first guard. They both had that eurotrash look that the Montalban retainers seemed to cultivate. Even with Big Eddie dead, his people still tended to look like something from Sprockets. “Your clothes are under the bed. We took the liberty of washing them. Your presence has been requested at breakfast.”

At least they were polite. “Where’s my coat?”

“The one you stole off the drunk under the arena?” said the second. “It smelled like piss. We burned it. Now hurry up, the boss doesn’t like waiting.”

Breakfast with the head of the Montalban Exchange?
I just hoped that Jill and Reaper had stuck with the plan and bailed when I hadn’t come back to the hotel last night. This very well might be my last meal.

The Montalban Exchange building was large, solidly constructed, and sat on a hill overlooking most of the other faction houses. The architecture was vaguely Chinese, with a red roof with upswept corners. The dining room was on the third floor, with a good view surveying the chaotic town, the mountainside, and the mighty gash in the earth that was Jihan’s mines. The walls were made of polished local wood and the floor was covered in thick rugs. A giant rectangular table filled most of the room, and it appeared to have been carved from a single epic tree. There was no one else there.

The guards gestured for me to take a seat. They then left me alone, sliding the bamboo door closed behind them.

I could hop out the window. It was a good drop to the ground, but with my acrobatic skill, I had no doubt that I could roll with it and still walk away. Then all I had to do was somehow make it out of town and then cross a whole bunch of wilderness with the Montalbans after me. And that was assuming that they didn’t have Jill and Reaper. Anders had clearly known about them. So I sat and waited. Besides, if they wanted me dead, they could easily have done it already.

Drumming my fingers on the table top, I tried to think of what could be going on. Maybe whoever was in charge now was happy that Eddie was gone. Maybe they were going to throw me a big thank-you party. I scanned the room. No balloons. No cake.
Probably not.

The roof of the Glorious Cloud hotel was visible from here. I had let Jill come along against my better judgment. She wasn’t cut out for this kind of mission. I’d given in to her, and now she was in danger because of me. I was such a fool.

“It’s been a long time, Lorenzo.”

The bamboo door had opened so smoothly behind me that I’d not even heard it. The voice was female and hauntingly familiar. The accent was Swiss.

“Seven years,” I said automatically, without turning. “Hello, Katarina.”

“Really, that long?” I could sense her walk up behind me. One of her hands landed softly on my shoulder. Her fingernails were painted blood red, and she dragged one up my neck, caressing the edge of my ear. An electric shiver passed through my bruised face. “It seems like yesterday,” she purred.

“Still working for the Montalbans, I see.”

She kept her fingernails on my neck as she circled my chair. She blocked my view of The Crossroads and stopped directly in front of my knees. Always beautiful, she had aged extremely well. Her lips were full and red, her skin was as smooth as the day I had met her, and her ice blue eyes twinkled with a predatory mischievousness. She was wearing a black silk kimono that was entirely inappropriate for polite company.

“Working for the Montalbans?” She laughed as she lifted one long, perfectly muscled leg, and draped it over my own. Katarina settled down onto my lap, with her fingers intertwined behind my head. I could smell her warmth and her perfume. “Lorenzo, my dear, I
run
the Montalban Exchange now.”

“You’ve moved up in the world,” I replied in the most noncommittal way possible. She always had been the ambitious one. It wouldn’t have been a surprise for her to grab whatever she could after Eddie’s death.

“Indeed,” she answered, breathing on my neck. Some of her soft blond hair hit me in the mouth, and I could see down the top of her kimono. “I’m very glad to see you.”

“Yeah, I got that impression.” This was certainly not going the way that I had expected. My ex-girlfriend was the capo of a group of hired killers that should want me dead, but apparently she was all about kissing and making up. I tried to remain stoic, but it is difficult to keep a poker face in a situation like this. “So, if you’re so glad to see me, why’d you have your thug knock me out?”

“I told him to bring you in. Anders is an efficient employee. Would you rather he have subdued you by force?” She rubbed one hand down my chest. “Mm, you’re still doing all those pushups, I see. Maybe I should’ve told him to be forceful after all. I should have liked to see that fight, I think. Pity.”

“Where’s my crew?”

“They’re fine,” she whispered into my bad ear. I could feel her teeth. “Perfectly safe.”

I’m only a man, and it was hard to hide my reaction, but I knew Katarina, the human razor blade, far too well to fall for this kind of thing. Besides that, if I was anything, I was loyal. “Kat, I’m glad to see you too, and I’m real glad you didn’t have me killed,
but . . .
” I gently grasped her hands in my own, and pushed them away. “Ain’t gonna happen. This trip is all business. Nothing personal.”

She guided my hands to someplace
really
unexpected. “All business is personal,” she said, punctuating it with that sultry laugh of hers.

This was awkward. I don’t usually have mob bosses sit on my lap and try to seduce me, but then again, this was the best looking mob boss I’d ever dealt with. “Kat, get off me.”

“Very well. I just wanted to see if the fire was still there. I never felt more alive than when I was with you.” She leaned in and kissed me, just like the old days, hard enough to almost draw blood. I didn’t respond. She broke away. Disappointed? Who could tell with her. “Too bad . . . ” Her warm thigh dragged across me as she stood. Katarina stepped back, adjusted her kimono, put her hands on her perfect hips, and smiled. “Besides, our breakfast guests are here. Please, have a seat.”

I glanced back at the door. The guards and Anders were flanking the
guests.
Looking past an obviously nervous Reaper, there was Jill. And the look on her face was a mixture of disgust, anger, betrayal, and shock.

We had just moved to a whole different stage of awkward.

I thought back to Malaysia, and the aftermath of the Independence Day Massacre seven years ago.

“Sorry, Kat, it’s over.”

“Are you talking about our employer . . . or are you talking about us too?” she suddenly looked sad, but I knew that was an act. A year ago I would have believed she was capable of sadness but now I doubted it. Any human emotions Katarina had, had long since been expunged.

“Both.”

“I thought you loved me . . .” she said, voice cracking, and this time, I almost could believe her. Almost . . . I turned my back on her and walked away.

I had loved her once, to say otherwise would be a lie, but she was broken inside. There was something wrong with Katarina, deep down, just plain abhorrent. She never talked about her past, and all I really knew about her was what she had chosen to reveal to me, and that wasn’t much, and over the last few months I’d decided that she had fabricated most of that too. Not that I was somebody who could say much about that.

“Wait!” Her voice was plaintive. I paused, just for a moment, weak. “You can’t leave me, Lorenzo. Not like this.”

It had been great at first. For the first time in my life I had found someone who was just as conniving and malicious as I was. Ambitious, smart, and for a man like me, who lived his life on the ragged edge of law and probability, she had actually been fun. But that had changed over time.

It was like she was several different people, wrapped into one beautiful, fragile shell. The one that I fell for was a relatively decent human being who had endured a difficult life, a scared girl with a good heart. The next minute she could turn into a cold-blooded murderer, all calculation and ruthlessness, her body a weapon in more ways than one, and when she was off her meds, she turned into a screaming psychopath, flying off in a rage at the slightest provocation. She popped pills like crazy. Not so many at first, but the more jobs we pulled for Big Eddie, the more she had taken. Which Kat you ended up with depended greatly on which personality was running the show that day.

Working for Big Eddie was bad for her. I could see it. No sane person could exist in his world for long without being corrupted, and Kat was now his favorite intermediary. I was never allowed to meet the man. I had tried to get her to leave, but she had refused. Her future was with the Montalbans. That ambition that I had been so infatuated with had required her to turn totally into the cold Kat, with occasional outbursts from the crazy Kat. I was certain that the good Kat was still in there somewhere, but that side of her was weak, so she had locked it away in her cage made of drugs and hate.

Yes, I had loved her, but not anymore.

“Don’t walk away from me! Lorenzo!” she shrieked. “Damn you! Don’t you leave me! Not like this!” She grabbed onto arm, her nails tearing into my skin. And just like that, she lost it entirely. Kat attacked me, clawing at my eyes, ripping my shirt, her spit hitting me in the face. She was a trained fighter, but when she flew into one of her rages, there was no skill, just savagery. I bore it for a moment, waiting for her to do something stupid like actually start fighting, or to go for a weapon. Finally, I put one hand on her chest and shoved her violently to the ground.

She curled into a ball in the wet Malaysian grass and began to sob. “But . . . But I . . . I need you.”

“Goodbye,” I said simply and turned back to the house. Carl was watching from the front door. He nodded once and left to get Reaper, Train, and the car. We were out of there. Kat could stay and deal with Eddie all she wanted. A small part of me expected a bullet in the spine, but none came. Apparently she had taken at least some of her medications today.

“You’ll pay for this, Lorenzo, I swear to God!” She screamed, cursed, and cried as I walked away. I didn’t look back.

“So, what brings you to my neck of the woods?” Katarina asked innocently.