The Last Minute (30 page)

‘Storage, I believe. Don’t know why it would be locked.’ She stepped forward. She opened the door with another key. I tensed
in case Jack Ming had set up camp inside the room. He hadn’t. It was empty. I tried not to breathe a sigh of relief. He wasn’t
in the building. I knew the access code now and I could pick the locks. I didn’t need Beth and Lizzie so best to get them
out of the way, come back and wait for Jack Ming.

‘You seem to be … expecting to see something here,’ Lizzie said when I finished twisting the knob as I stepped away from the
door. She leaned against one of the square tables.

‘Just counting the footage in my mind,’ I said.

‘I like math,’ Lizzie said. ‘I like to add things up.’

‘So,’ Beth said smoothly. ‘How would this property work for you, Mr Capra?’

‘I think it might work well indeed. How firm is the leasing price?’

‘Pretty firm, I would think. The original owner died a couple of years ago; his wife has it now, and she would rather hold
out than lease too cheap.’

I had my back to them, surveying the adjoining roof. Could he enter the building this way? No, I thought not. ‘Well, I think
I’ve seen enough,’ I said.

‘Enough to know Jack Ming’s not here,’ Lizzie said.

I turned. Beth had a Glock 9mm aimed at me. Lizzie was pulling from her oversized purse a metal chain, an iron weight at one
end, a steel spike at the other, firm in her grip.
Surujin
. A weapon I’d seen before in Japan, mostly used these days for individual martial arts practice. The weight dangled like
a pendulum; she started it on a gentle sway, just above her feet.

‘Hands still, where I can see them, please, Sam,’ Beth said.

‘Are you kidding me?’ I nodded at Lizzie’s toy.

‘You’re supposed to be a graceful runner. I brought it to leash you in case you ran. Don’t make me chase you.’ Lizzie’s smile
didn’t quite just look socially awkward; now she looked coolly cruel.

‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ I said.

‘We just want to talk,’ Beth – well, I knew now that wasn’t her name, but her name didn’t matter – said. Her aim steadied
on my chest.

‘Gun on the ground, please,’ Beth ordered.

I obeyed. Dropped it to the hardwood floor, kicked it over to
her. I kept my hands slightly raised, in front of me, where she could see them.

‘Hands on head. Lizzie, search him.’

She did with gusto, fingers dancing over me, exploring more than she should have, while Beth kept the gun leveled at my head.
She probed my arms, my groin, my backside. She ran her hands along my ribs and my legs. Lizzie found the thin blade at my
ankle. She ran her fingernails along the skin of my leg. She was so busy toying with me that her search was incomplete. She’d
not thought to pat down my tie.

‘Boys and their toys,’ Lizzie said. She flicked the knife at my face. I didn’t flinch; she stopped a good inch away from my
cheek.

It seemed to displease her I hadn’t given the reaction she wanted. ‘I
can
make you flinch,’ she said. ‘I
will
.’

‘Lizzie, step back,’ Beth said. Lizzie obeyed.

‘The preference is not to shoot you,’ Lizzie said. ‘It makes a mess.’ She stepped back, tucked my knife in her belt. She picked
up the
surujin
and began its slow swing again. There is a whole subclass of punk-ass killers who have seen a Hong Kong or Tokyo gangster
movie and decided to flash up their act a bit. One supposes they think it makes them look more dangerous. Most of them are
older than me and honestly should know better. I’d dealt with one back in Amsterdam with a Japanese sword fetish and now he
was dead.

Lizzie just kept smiling at me. Like she wanted to encourage me to ask her on a date.

‘Are you kidding me?’ I said again. ‘Put that down.’

She didn’t. She laughed. The little weight kept spinning, slicing the air; it sounded like a knife. ‘See, with this, I don’t
kill you, I knock you around a bit, bad bruises, yes, cuts, yes, but those
can heal without too much care. I can play with you a lot more. A gunshot takes forever to heal, trust me, it’s so annoying.
And smelly.’

The other one – Beth – looked embarrassed, for just the barest moment. ‘Where is Jack Ming?’

‘I don’t know. I thought he might be here.’ Truth. ‘That’s why I was eager to look in that locked room.’

‘And why you tried to shield me in case he was there with a gun. Oh, how sweet,’ Beth said.

‘I won’t shield you again.’

Lizzie started swinging the
surujin
, harder, higher; it made a steel halo around her head.

‘Why are you looking for him?’ Beth said.

Well, I wasn’t expecting that question. But I like the cards on the table in moments like this. ‘Why are you?’

Lizzie threw the
surujin
. The weight slammed into my shoulder with the force of a savage punch. With a flick of the chain she’d drawn it back to her,
whirling the weight in front of her. She actually knew how to use the thing. Where do you go to
surujin
school?

‘She can break your nose, shatter your teeth, shred your ears with it,’ Beth said. ‘I really suggest you tell us what we want
to know.’

‘Talk, talk,’ Lizzie hissed.

‘Because the people who have my child want him dead.’

‘That’s very moving.’ Lizzie walked to one side of me, the weight orbiting her head. The sound it made was an awful whirring
hiss. She was at both her weakest and her strongest when she threw it, if I could keep it from coming back to her. The spike
was to stab someone tangled or stunned by the weight and the chain. It was like a Swiss Army knife of weapons.

‘And these people, they just want Jack dead?’ Beth asked.

‘Yes. Kill him and I get my kid back.’

‘That is
so
sweet,’ Lizzie said. ‘You’ll be the bestest daddy ever.’

Beth said, ‘Jack Ming is going to die. You can see it happen, if you like. But we do the job. Not you.’

Something inside me broke. They had a gun on me, fair enough, and the one playing at samurai was crazy as hell. But this was
over.

‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t trust you to do what needs doing.’

‘We’re taking the responsibility off you, man,’ Lizzie said. ‘And then what?’

‘Then we talk.’

‘No. Then I go get my son if Jack Ming’s dead.’

‘No, that’s not going to happen, I’m sorry,’ Lizzie said. I wasn’t sure what she enjoyed more, the stab or the twist.

Beth said, ‘I would like to know where we can find your friend Mila.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘I think you’re lying,’ Lizzie said. ‘This – whatever you’re doing, on the side – it ends now.’

‘On the side?’

‘Working for someone other than Special Projects,’ Lizzie said. ‘We’re on the same side, babe.’ She made the last word sound
like a plop of poison. ‘You just have to stand aside and let us clean up this mess.’

Oh. These two were going to kill Jack Ming, all right, but they were going to kill August, too, and whoever came with him,
and they were going to kill me after I’d told them where Mila was.

Someone inside Special Projects was protecting Novem Soles and knew about the bounty on Mila, and had decided to kill the
proverbial two birds with one stone. And that someone did not
care one whit whether I lived or my child lived. August knew. Who else?

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You kill Jack Ming, then I get my kid back and walk away.’

‘You walk away if you give us Mila,’ Lizzie said.

I didn’t nod for twenty seconds, and let the agony play out on my face. Then I nodded, once.

‘Where is she?’ Beth asked.

‘She’s coming here. In an hour. To help me dispose of Jack Ming’s body. She got a confirmation he was going to be here. A
phone call to a friend.’

‘She’s hunting Ming?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why isn’t she here with you now?’

‘Because killing him is my job. Not hers.’

The
surujin
, wound in an increasing arc while I talked, lashed out at me.

It caught me in the side of the throat as I tried to dodge and felt like a baseball bat had swung into my flesh. I staggered
back, choking.

‘He’s lying,’ Lizzie said. ‘I know a liar and he’s lying. He’s not giving Mila to us.’

She flicked it again at me and this time I whipped out my hand and caught the weight. It hurt – like a hammer pounding into
my palm – but I yanked on the chain and Lizzie flew toward me.

I slammed a fist into her face but she kept her grip on the chain. So I threw her into Beth, who was holding fire to keep
from shooting her partner.

The two women hit the floor. Where was my gun? Beth had kicked it somewhere. I didn’t see it.

First things first. Don’t get shot. Lizzie clambered to her feet. I whirled and powered a kick into her chest, knocking her
back into Beth. The gun fired into the hardwoods; shards and splinters kicked up by Lizzie’s foot and she screamed. I couldn’t
tell if it was rage or pain.

Right now the biggest threat was the gun. Lizzie threw three brutal sharp jabs,
muay thai
-style, connecting with my jaw, my nose, my mouth, and then kicked me in the chest. Strong as hell. I staggered back and she
whipped the weighted end of the
surujin
downward, anchoring my hands, binding my wrists together. But now she didn’t try to drag me back; I was caught, she had the
other end of the chain. The spike gleamed in her hand.

She rushed me, stabbing at my shoulder, just as Beth charged at me, gun in hand, doing what I would do to subdue a prisoner
with useless hands: put the gun to my head, order me to stand down. So, no. I dodged two stabs of Lizzie’s, and since I was
bound to her, she was bound to me. Beth lunged at me and I drove an elbow into her nose. It broke and she staggered back,
for just a moment.

That was my advantage: they wanted me uninjured enough to talk, to give them Mila. I wanted them out of the way between me
and my son and that could mean hurt or dead. It made no difference to me, at that moment in time.

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.