The Egyptian (25 page)

He tightened his grip on her hair, then grunted something to one of the other men. A tall man with a purple birthmark splayed across his face handed him a long knife and called him by name. Nomti turned to Veronica and placed the tip of the knife against her cheekbone. He pressed down, breaking her skin. “Scientist,” he said.

“The Hilton,” she said. “I don’t know what room.”

Nomti flicked a hand at the same man, who pulled out a cell phone. Nomti said something in what Veronica thought sounded like Arabic, and the other man paused and held the phone in midair.

A third man, a man with a horribly cleft lip, reached inside his trench coat and pulled out a roll of duct tape. The tape screeched as he unrolled it. He pulled out a knife and cut the tape.

Veronica screamed, and Cleft Lip shoved the tape across her mouth. She fought to breathe through her nose. She screamed and screamed, more out of release than out of any hope the muffled sound would reach anyone.

Nomti nodded at the man with the phone, and he opened the phone and dialed. A moment later he said, “Hilton, Manhattan.”

As they waited Nomti wrapped a rough hand around Veronica’s throat. He squeezed until she began to choke, then released some of the pressure. She whimpered, and he stroked his thumb against the side of her neck. He raised the knife again with his other hand, and placed it on the thin fabric of her blouse, between her breasts. He sliced the blouse, and it fell away.

Tears rolled down Veronica’s face. She begged him to stop, even though the duct tape swallowed her words.

Nomti placed the knife on her left breast and ran the flat of the knife across it. An obscene glow of pleasure lit his eyes, and she felt the hand on her throat harden and constrict.

He moved even closer, straddling her, and shoved his face into hers. She felt the hotness of his breath and the coolness of the knife, and struggled in vain as his hand tightened around her throat.

“Nomti,” Birthmark Man said, and Nomti turned.

Birthmark Man held the phone up and shook his head in disgust.

Veronica trembled.

•  •  •

The taxi dropped Grey and Stefan in front of a ten-story brick building on the Lower East Side, at the address Veronica had given Grey. Grey rushed to the door and then slowed as he stepped inside. He nodded to a concierge and headed for the elevator at the other end of the lobby. Stefan followed.

The concierge called out. “Hey, I need some names. Elevators are locked.”

“Veronica Brown, 1010.”

“I’ll buzz her.”

Grey shifted from foot to foot as he waited.

“She’s not answering.”

Grey approached the desk. “Is she in?”

“Don’t know.”

Grey put his hands on the desk. “She’s a good friend. I appreciate you doing your job, but it’s very important we talk with her.”

“She went up with some guy about an hour ago. Can’t let you up unless she answers, though.”

“Did the guy look Arabic?”

“A white guy. Pretty buff. They looked—hey, I’m just the doorman. If she wants to answer she’ll answer.”

Grey relaxed a bit. “Could you try her again? We just need to talk to her for a minute. It’s very important.”

“Why don’t you call her?”

“She’s not answering.”

“Doesn’t that tell you something?”

“It’s not about that. I’m a private detective. She’s in danger, tonight, and I have to talk with her.”

He tried to buzz her again. Still no response.

“Has anyone been in tonight that looks Arabic?”

“There were these four guys about twenty minutes ago. I guess they could be Arabic, I don’t know. This is New York. They weren’t white.”

Grey’s stomach tightened. “Was one of them short?”

“Yeah, real short. Humongous, though, and with some weird thing on his back.”

Grey gripped the desk, his voice cold. “You listen to me very carefully. Those men are killers. Unlock that elevator, dial 911 and tell the police to come here
right now
, and then lock yourself in a room.”

The receptionist blanched. “But what—”

“Now!”

He pressed a button and reached for his phone at the same time. Grey ran to the elevator and jammed the button. It opened and Stefan crowded in behind him.

When the elevator opened the first thing Grey noticed was the smear of blood on the wall a short ways down the hallway. A few feet past the smear he saw a door with
1010
on the front.

Grey had no time for emotion, but it overwhelmed him anyway. He should have insisted. He shouldn’t have left her alone so soon.

He told Stefan to wait by the elevator and hold it open. Grey put an ear to Veronica’s door and heard muffled sounds, which told him nothing except that someone was in the apartment. He couldn’t wait. If Veronica was still alive, any second could change that fact.

He gently tried the doorknob. Unlocked. This was one of the few times in his life he wished he had a gun. His hands went up and he burst into the room.

The scene in the room hit him like a wrecking ball.

A man on the floor, unconscious. One man leaning against the far wall. Veronica sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, Al-Miri’s bodyguard straddling her, her face bruised and a knife pressed against her naked torso.

And two men a foot from Grey, beside the door.

The man on the far wall yelled Nomti’s name, at the same time Nomti turned, at the same time one of the men beside the door lunged for Grey.

Grey stepped into the man’s lunge, caught him behind the back with one arm, bumped his hips, and threw him into the wall ten feet away. The next man threw a wild swing. Grey stepped inside the roundhouse, and it fell harmlessly on Grey’s raised forearm as Grey struck the solar plexus with his other arm. He followed that blow with a rising elbow, then three quick open-palm strikes to the face, so fast the man had no time to react. Grey finished with a closed hook punch to the button-point on the side of the jaw, and the man was out before his head bounced off the floor.

Nomti was rushing towards him, which surprised Grey. He wasn’t surprised Nomti hadn’t shot him, because using a gun in such a public place was a last resort. But Grey thought Nomti would at least hurry behind Veronica and hold the knife to her throat, which is what most criminals would have done in that situation, and yell at Grey to get on his knees. Instead Nomti had let his knife clang to the floor and come straight at Grey. Grey didn’t know what the hell the guy was doing, nor did he care. The other man was watching, both a gun and a knife in his hand.

Grey met Nomti halfway. He wanted to disable him and get behind him as fast as possible. Use him as a shield, or as leverage, before he got shot or stabbed in the back.

Nomti spread his arms wide. He was leaving Grey the one option Grey didn’t want in this particular fight: frontal engagement. Grey would have to cause maximum damage very quickly.

Grey shot his hand at Nomti’s throat. Nomti didn’t have much space between his head and his shoulders to begin with, and he was already holding his chin down as a good fighter does, tightening the neck muscles and protecting the throat. Grey struck him, but the strike was ineffective.

But from Nomti’s stance Grey already knew he was protecting his throat, and Grey’s second strike scored. As Nomti wrapped his arms around Grey, Grey jabbed the fingers of his left hand into the pulpy nest of Nomti’s right eyeball. Nomti turned his head before Grey could wrench it out.

Nomti screamed, an ugly, throaty sound, but he also tightened his arms around Grey and carried him to the floor like a rag doll. Grey couldn’t believe Nomti hadn’t let go. No one held on through an eye gouge that serious.

Nomti landed on Grey with a heavy thud. He put his hands around Grey’s neck and squeezed. Grey gasped; it felt like five men were squeezing his neck.

Grey did a quick assessment of his options, and wrapped his left hand around Nomti’s pinky. He peeled back the isolated digit until it snapped, then pressed a finger into the same eyeball he had already gouged. Nomti screamed again, and this time he let go.

The fight had already lasted too long. Grey snaked his limbs around Nomti’s body and rose with him. He grabbed the back of Nomti’s head with one hand and threw liver shots with the other. Nomti tried to counter with a straight right, and Grey brush-blocked it aside. Grey grabbed the front collar of Nomti’s shirt with both hands, deep behind the neck. He crossed his hands with a scissoring motion, applying a front choke.

Nomti gagged and clutched for Grey’s hands. Grey head butted him and held the choke. This bastard was going out.

Grey tried to swivel to put Nomti between himself and the man he saw in the corner of his vision, the one coming at him with the raised knife. Grey let go of Nomti, but it was too late. The knife slashed at a downward diagonal, an amateur thrust, but one Grey didn’t have time to avoid.

Grey heard a loud shattering sound, and the knife cut Grey a glancing blow and clattered to the floor. The man with the knife staggered. Stefan stood behind him, holding the shaft of a broken beer bottle.

A number of things happened at once. While Grey’s attention had been diverted Nomti threw a low punch straight into his groin. Grey’s knees buckled, and he saw the man he had thrown into the wall coming at Stefan with a raised knife. Stefan held the shard of bottle out in front of him, and they faced off.

The other thing that happened was a police siren disrupted the jungle-like atmosphere. Everyone hesitated for the briefest of seconds, the reality of a civilized world having intruded upon the primal scene.

Grey recovered and went for Nomti, but someone hit Grey in the back of the head with what felt like the butt of a gun. Grey pitched forward, and two of the intruders hit and kicked him as he fell. Nomti stomped on Grey’s head and grunted a command. All three men went for the door. One man raised his gun on the way out, but Nomti screamed at him and he lowered it. Nomti slung the man Grey had knocked out over his back.

Grey tried to stand, and stumbled. Stefan looked like he was about to chase after the men, then went to Grey. Grey pushed him away and lurched to his feet. He limped into the hallway and saw the men cramming into the elevator. The door closed before Grey had taken two steps. He started after them, then looked back at Veronica in the chair.

He spit out a curse, and smashed his fist into the wall.

V
eronica started screaming as soon as Grey took the duct tape off her mouth. “I’ll kill that bastard! I swear to God I’ll kill him, I’ll put a bullet between his fucking eyebrows—”

Grey hushed her and she collapsed into his arms.

Three cops burst into the room, one kneeling over Utah’s unconscious body. Grey rushed through a description of what had happened. One ran out the door and another got on the radio.

Grey stroked Veronica’s hair and told her they were gone, they were gone. She couldn’t stop shaking. Grey walked over to the cop that had stayed. “Make sure they print everything.”

The cop nodded. “Ambulance and forensics are on the way.”

Grey saw Stefan slouched in a corner, arms folded, looking at the room with hooded eyes. Grey met his gaze with a hard stare.

•  •  •

Veronica was released soon after they arrived at the hospital. Her main injuries were to the spirit. Grey had a cut above his left eye, a shallow knife cut along his left arm, an extremely sore groin, and a huge knot on the back of his head. He didn’t care about his injuries. He wanted Nomti and his friends in a locked room, right damn now.

A different cop escorted them to a downtown hotel with a view of Ground Zero. Veronica had called a lieutenant she knew from another precinct. He was out of town, but had arranged for police protection for the night.

They met in Grey’s room, Veronica and Stefan filing in with troubled eyes. Veronica, clad in sweats and a long-sleeved nightshirt, slid onto one of the double beds. Stefan took a seat in the desk chair, and Grey sat on the other bed with his back against the headboard, a packet of ice pressed against the back of his head.

No one spoke for a few moments. Grey pushed himself off the bed with a soft groan and stood next to the window, his eyes on the brown sedan parked outside. “It’s time for some decisions.”

“I still cannot believe it,” Stefan said. “I cannot believe they came. When will this stop? How will this stop?”

“Those are the right questions,” Grey said. “And I don’t think I like the answers.”

Veronica traced a finger along her upper chest and looked away. “So what do we do? You have to tell us, Grey. This is your world.”

Grey put his hands on the windowsill and looked outside again.

“I can return to Bulgaria,” Stefan said. “I can hire men. But I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to live in fear.”

“I can’t live like that,” Veronica said. “Not knowing when someone will come to my apartment again. God, that man’s a sadist. I’ve never seen a look in someone’s eyes like that before.”

Grey swore to himself. He could watch his own back, but Veronica and Stefan might not survive another encounter. If Stefan hired enough men and stayed out of sight and waited long enough, he might be okay. Might be. But Veronica, in New York? He had no idea how many men these people had.

He didn’t like Veronica’s choices. Not at all.

“These men, they’ll do anything,” Stefan said. “They want their secret protected at any cost.”

“You got that right,” Grey said.

“But I think there is a solution.”

Veronica sat up, and Grey’s eyebrows lifted. “I’m open to suggestions.”

“What’s the one thing that will ruin a secret? That will make it irrelevant whether or not any of us know?”

“Exposure,” Veronica said. “But how? I thought they destroyed everything in the lab?”

“True.” Stefan crossed his legs and looked from Veronica to Grey. “We find more, or we find the research. We find it and we go public.”

Grey frowned. “So we find or steal more of this liquid, and what, we put it on the six o’clock news? And tell the world how we got it?”