Wild Justice (38 page)

“Do you think he’s such a good idea?” I said, jerking my chin at Henry.

Koss lifted his eyebrows. I paused, waiting for some sign from Jack that this was not an avenue I should pursue. But he stayed motionless behind me.

“You said earlier that sleeping with my partner isn’t a good idea,” I continued. “But it does have its advantages. We’ll fight for each other. Without that, well, it’s every man for himself eventually. Now, in the military, you’re taught to protect the guy beside you, to trust the guy leading you. Henry isn’t in the military anymore. Those rules don’t apply. He’s on the other side of the law, where no one gives a shit about loyalty.” I looked at Koss. “As you yourself just said about Duncan, it’s a rare trait. And yet, apparently, you trust Henry.”

“He’s like a feral dog. Intensely loyal, as long as I keep feeding him. And I feed you very well, don’t I, Henry?”

The man’s eyes narrowed.

“It’s true,” Koss said, conversationally, as if he had no idea how much he was insulting his partner. Or he just didn’t give a damn. “As you guessed, I joined Contrapasso for the same reason I made my living fighting for justice for women. It’s not just a smoke screen but an unbelievably rich source of information and opportunity. Henry’s more like you. He has ethics, damn it. And morals. Unfortunately, those ethics and morals don’t play nicely with his compulsions and obsessions, do they, Henry?”

A faint tightening of Henry’s lips. Still, he said nothing. Koss had something on him—a lot of things, I presume, making this partnership more like a hostage situation.

“So you feed those compulsions and obsessions,” I said. “Poor Henry here goes to Contrapasso for redemption, and you drag him deeper into the pit with you.”

Henry finally spoke. “I don’t see how this is any—”

“Oh, relax,” Koss said. “We’re all just getting to know each other better. We can’t expect Nadia and her friend to listen to our proposal if they don’t know us.”

“Proposal?” Jack said.

“The man speaks, his tongue loosened by the potential for profit. That’s the trick with your kind, isn’t it? Anything for money.”

I glanced back as Jack shrugged. “Willing to listen.”

A smug smile. “Of course you are. But it seems your girlfriend has some compunctions about Henry here. She doesn’t quite trust him.”

“Do
you
?” I asked. “I thought you’d have learned a lesson from Drew Aldrich. That particular partnership was more trouble than it was worth, wasn’t it? An albatross around your neck, having Aldrich out there, knowing your secrets. I bet it feels good to have finally gotten rid of him.”

Henry shifted. He was thinking of Aldrich. Thinking of Koss’s obvious contempt for him.

Koss turned and shot Henry. Right through the heart. And I sat there, gaping like an idiot.

Before Henry even hit the floor, Jack lunged and yanked the gun from my holster. Koss spun and there was a brief flash of surprise on his face as he realized he’d left his flank open. Surely the very shock of his action should have stunned us into immobility. And it did—for me, at least.

Jack shot Koss in the right shoulder. The blow sent him spinning, gun flying from his hand. I dove for that gun and grabbed it before it hit the floor, then twisted and managed to land on my ass, gun pointed at Koss, before he recovered from his stumble. It was a sweet move, and Jack nodded his approval, which was nice, though I would have preferred to have been the one who’d actually had the presence of mind to shoot Koss. Moves, I’ve got. Nerves of steel? Aluminum more like.

Once Jack trained his gun on Koss, I disarmed Henry. He was still alive. Dying, though, lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, mouth working. I watched him in his final moments, and all I thought was,
What has he done? What crimes has he committed?
That shouldn’t matter. A man was dying. If I could comfort him, even briefly, I should. But I couldn’t.

So I took his gun and patted him down, and I found Jack’s weapons, and took them, too.

“Four guns and a knife,” I said, holding them up. “We have an arsenal.”

“Got another gun under my pant leg.”

I grinned. “Of course you do.” I looked at Koss. “You
winged
him? Seriously?”

As I joked, Koss’s scowl grew. Clearly he did not appreciate the casual response to the situation. Too bad.

“He winged me because he won’t kill me,” Koss said, struggling to find his smirk. “He knows you want me alive, and he wouldn’t do anything that might cut him off. That’s how you emasculate a hitman, Nadia. You fuck him and then—”

“He likes to talk,” I said to Jack.

“Noticed.”

“So I’m guessing there’s a real reason why you kept him alive. Something to do with why you let yourself be captured?”

“Let himself?” Koss snorted. “You’re as moonstruck as he is. He screwed up and got caught; he just managed to reverse the situation. A half-assed reversal because he needs to keep me alive so you—”

“Are we keeping him alive for someone else?” I said. “Because if not, I’d like him to stop talking now.”

“So would I,” said a voice from the doorway. “Unfortunately, we need him alive.”

I turned and got my umpteenth shock of the night when I saw who was standing there. Quinn.

Quinn walked in, followed by two men I didn’t recognize. Both were armed, but they trained their guns on Henry and Koss. One lifted a radio.

“Bryant is still alive,” the man said, meaning Henry, presumably. “Get Hayes up here and we might be able to keep him that way.”

“Are you sure you want to?” I asked.

The man looked up at me and for a second I thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he dipped his chin and said, “I’m afraid we do. At least long enough to find out what he knows. And what he’s done.”

I nodded back and turned to Quinn and Jack. “Contrapasso?”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Cut a deal.”

“They get to question Koss,” Quinn said. He moved closer to me, lowering his voice so Koss wouldn’t hear. “They want to know what he’s done, so they can investigate any other partners. And so they can give the families closure if possible. We’ll interrogate him together. Then they’ll hand him back to you.” He looked me in the eye. “Is that okay?”

“That’s fine,” I said.

He nodded, pulling away, any softness in his face vanishing as he straightened. A woman arrived then, with a medical kit, and hurried over to Henry. I looked at Koss, standing there, his shoulder bleeding, his gaze fixed on the wall. Figuring out how to spin this. How to use that keen brain to get himself out of this mess.

The Contrapasso team hadn’t asked us to put away our weapons, but theirs were holstered, so Jack and I did the same.

“So how do we do this?” I said. “The interrogation?”

“We’ll take Sebastian,” one of the men said. “His injuries aren’t life threatening. We’ll patch him up at our destination.”

“We aren’t doing it here? The building is empty.”

“It won’t be in a few hours. This could take a while.”

The other man took Koss by the arm. “You have a car, don’t you?”

I nodded.

“Meet us around front. We’re in a dark van. You can follow us.”

“Actually, I’d rather go with you.”

“I’ll take the car,” Jack said.

A look passed between the two men.

“Sure,” the first one said. “Bring her down right after us. We’ll do this in stages.”

I thought he was talking to his partner. Then I noticed two other men right outside the door. They came in as the first two led Koss out.

I stepped toward the door. “I’m not letting him out of my—”

The men blocked the exit. I wheeled just in time to see Jack going for his gun. Quinn went for his, too, spinning on Jack. It should have been an easy victory for Jack. He had the jump on Quinn. He was a faster draw than anyone I knew. But he fumbled, just for a brief second, as Quinn pulled his gun and I pulled mine and—

And then Quinn’s gun was pointed at Jack’s head.

“Hands up,” Quinn said. “Dee? Gun on the table.”

When I didn’t move, Quinn’s finger twitched. “You really think I won’t do it?”

I put my gun down.

“You set us up,” Jack said.

Quinn gave a short laugh. “And you’re shocked? Really?”

Jack lifted his gaze to Quinn’s. “Thought you cared about her. No matter what happened. That doesn’t change. Not that fast.”

“That depends on whether there’s anything to change,” Quinn said. “Your mistake was thinking I gave a shit in the first place. I just thought she was a really good lay.”

Jack dove at Quinn. There was, once again, that split second of “what the hell?” confusion. Jumping a guy holding a gun on you? An amateur move.

Jack and Quinn were up to something. It seemed we were still in the middle of a grand performance. And I had yet to be given my script. Luckily, I’ve taken a few classes in improv.

The two Contrapasso guards gaped at each other, as if to say “What are we supposed to do about this?”

I helped them answer the question by pulling my gun on the unarmed woman tending to Henry. She stared at the gun, then up at me, eyes wide.

The moment I distracted the guards, Jack and Quinn each tackled one.

There was a scuffle. My part was easy—the medic just sat there, terrified. Only when the guys had their targets pinned did I lower my gun.

“Is he dead?” I said, nodding at Henry.

She stared at me. Maybe it was my conversational tone. Maybe it was the fact that I was using that tone while my partners grappled with the two guards.

I repeated the question. She finally nodded. Henry was dead. I don’t know what else they expected, sending someone with a medical kit to tend to a guy shot through the heart. I suppose they felt they had to make the effort.

Across the room, the two guards were now trussed with zip ties. Jack and Quinn were patting them down for weapons. Neither had been shot or even badly injured. Quinn tossed me a zip tie for the medic. I asked her to turn around and put her hands behind her back. She did without argument. I put them on.

“You’re okay,” I said. “They’re okay. But this would have gone a whole lot easier if your team hadn’t double-crossed us. Remember that. We acted in good faith.”

She nodded mutely.

I rose. “And talk to them about getting you a gun. Just because you’re the medic doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know how to defend yourself.”

A snorted laugh behind me. I turned to see Quinn shaking his head.

“What?” I said.

He started to reply, but Jack cut him off with an impatient “let’s move” wave. We took off.

Jack led us along the empty hallway toward the stairwell. Quinn whispered to me as we went, telling me that the Contrapasso team consisted of five people. We’d left three in the model suite. Two had taken Koss, which meant we wouldn’t encounter any guards lingering in the hall.

“So is anyone going to tell me what’s going on?” I whispered.

“They took Koss,” Jack said. “We’re getting him back.”

I glowered at him.

Quinn laughed softly, then said, “It’s a long story. The short version is that Evelyn called me, and I got myself in on the Contrapasso operation. Jack made us coming in.”

“Which you knew he would.”

Jack waved for silence as he checked the stairwell. He held up a hand for us to stay there as he went in. Quinn held the door cracked open, making sure Jack didn’t get jumped, and it was such an automatic response that I felt a pang of . . . regret, I guess, that it couldn’t always be like this. Throw them into a situation together and they watched each other’s back, anticipated each other’s moves.

Jack waved us into the stairwell. We stayed silent there, the empty space too prone to echoes, but once we were on the first floor, I resumed talking as if we hadn’t been interrupted.

“You knew the Contrapasso folks didn’t intend to let us interrogate Koss,” I said.

Quinn looked uncomfortable, and I knew that whatever Contrapasso had done here, he wasn’t ready to frame them as the bad guys. “They couldn’t. You and Jack, you’re clearly doing the right thing, but . . .”

“We’re still hitmen. We can’t be trusted.”

“But they
would
have interrogated him,” Quinn said. “And he’d have disappeared afterward. This wasn’t about cutting one of their own loose. When they got here and realized Henry Bryant was in on it, too? I thought Diaz—the guy who took Koss away—was going to be sick. He worked with Bryant for years.”

“We done?” Jack said as he stopped us at the front door.

“Yes,” I said. “The situation has been explained.”

At least as well as it could be explained right now.

Jack checked outside as I held the door. I peered out. The street was empty.

“They’re long gone,” I whispered as Jack motioned us out. “How are we going to find them?”

Quinn lifted a portable device. “We can track Koss with this. I volunteered to man it. We just need to hurry before Contrapasso find out I went rogue and they shut down access.”

“They track their agents?” I said. “How the hell do they do that?”

The same look of discomfort passed over Quinn’s face, obviously reluctant to give away their secrets.

I held up my hand and said, “It doesn’t matter. So where is he?”

“Not far,” Quinn said as Jack waved us toward our car. “It took them a while to get him in the vehicle. We should be able to catch up.”

Jack looked over his shoulder at us.

“Or we will,” I said. “If we shut up and move faster. Right?”