During the quick exchange, the Count’s second guard had been speaking into the radio channel of his phone.
The General made a show of apprehension as he guided Sable through the rolling unpredictability of the group.
Eyes blind to the hall, Sable moved into the distance, reaching for the closed room. The metal doors clanged closed behind them while she battled through the raucous multitude, mind free of body, suppressing the desire to mourn the wreckage. Slow, slow, she told herself, quiet like the night. Heart beating fainter, looking farther, through the wall, searching for impressions, an image, something revealing in form when she found it crowded, the room was waiting, held in angry anticipation, impending violence, too many weapons, and then a sick fetish for pain. She recognized the man.
“Oh, go ahead. I promise we won’t tell your boss,” Lilly ensured the shots were still on offer.
“Ma’am, you need to return to your room.”
From the hall, a new voice emerged, “Well, John, if you’re not gonna take them, I will.”
“Marlow,” the guard responded, “if you’ll leave your men out here, I’ll see you through.” The drinks hesitantly stayed forward in his face, making him impatient. “Ma’am, please, let the lady pass.”
Behind them, the party was becoming muted, listening, with only a few now bantering.
“Actually,” Sable smiled and looked over her shoulder. She dropped her voice to confide, “Someone was smoking sunshine in the first room. I’m gonna go see if I can score a hit.” She stepped back, turning.
“They’re waiting for you, Marlow.”
Shrugging guilty mischief, “You know I can’t resist the scent.”
“Marlow,” he leaned to call past the older man backing away, covering her retreat, aware the younger of her companions was standing still, watching him. “Marlow, you’re already late. There isn’t time.”
“Ask him to wait.” She waved her hand dismissively over her head, mouthing silently, Invite me, to the soldiers while throwing her eyes into their room.
“Get the lady a drink,” enlivened the group, followed by, “What are you having?” and “Show her the selection.”
Laughing, she followed the invitations into the room and then spun, backing away to give the General space to enter before grabbing his shoulder to pull him down to her height, telling him quietly, “Radimir’s in there. The Count sold me out to General Marič’s weapons dealer.”
The Count
In the beginning, the Count had a more civilized idea of how his new life among the deviously wealthy might play. In the eloquent dialogue of an anodyne high, it ran like an old black and white movie where people dressed elegantly, spoke charmingly, and nothing more serious than a passionate slap might occur. He had even briefly changed his button-up knits for a sleek smoking jacket to act his part, but the garment hadn’t helped him in the slightest when the first client beat him senseless with the butt of a gun.
He didn’t know what begot what, but he quickly learned that people with money to hide were powerful, and powerful people were violent. It was reliable math: as the amount of money being conveyed increased, so too did the level of paranoia; the psychotic behavior of his clients increasing with every figure added to the sum.
It seemed every person he worked with anymore was either a sociopath or a psychopath, and his most powerful client, General Marič, had the most demented maniac of them all as a henchman. Radimir, Marič’s enforcer, a short bully with a round baby face full of fat. Crazy angry Radimir, sitting in the Count’s hotel suite with his pudgy fingers curled around a combat knife, kissing the blade like a teenage soldier that had never known a woman.
When Marlow came to him to vouch a payment in trust for the lunatic, she’d gotten him supremely high and somehow made it seem perfectly sane to work with a bank outside his control. Even knowing it had to remain hidden from General Marič, he’d agreed. Then Marlow disappeared. The Count took the news with stomach-turning disbelief. Radimir began to pursue him through Erria for the guarantee he’d made, erupting in fury in hotel lobbies, on the street, in restaurants, his tiny eyes disappearing in rage before his tongue would push through the gap of three missing teeth on the side of his mouth. And then the bellowing, “Vhat you take me for? Some pretty little girl you vant to fuck?” Radimir, never caring how much of a scene he made, assured the person he was threatening would smooth it over with any observers, screaming like a child, “I vant my money!” Pounding at all hours on the Count’s hotel door with his leering retinue of killers, waking up entire floors with the demand, “Let me in you drug vasted thief!” And once admitted, he’d pace the floor describing how he was going to “slice ewery last one of you from mouth to ass.”
For months, the Count had counseled patience, ensuring Radimir that he too wanted nothing more than to get the money out of trust, but he couldn’t until Marlow signed off on her end. Finally, convinced he was about to die, he paid the man himself. He still cursed his pride. Trying to maintain some image of dignity and not appear as terrified as he was, he claimed Marlow had signed, but then found himself in the center of his four guards and Radimir’s four, pointing pistols at each other over his head while Radimir slapped him from one end of the couch to the other for not turning Marlow over when she surfaced. And the hits were like nothing he had seen in any old movie, except they brought him close to tears, confessing he had paid the man himself. Radimir had left with the promise he would have both Marlow and the money he felt she still owed him.
Having anticipated his revenge for over a year, the lunatic went into spitting conniptions to hear she was making him wait longer to party with a crowd of traders in the hall.
“Go get her.” Radimir was standing red-faced, pointing the blade toward the door, and when the Count shrugged wondering how, he screamed, “Drag the bitch in here by her hair.”
Marlow was unsettling. She left the Count vacillating between warm endearment and cold chills, but Radimir was truly terrifying, and if he wanted her by the hair, the accountant at least needed to make a show of trying before she broke his arm. He motioned for one of his guards to follow, thinking, No, that will be your arm.
The door to his suite opened onto mayhem. Already on petrified edge, the sound from the hall made him quail. A drinking anthem was being bellowed but was interrupted with rowdy cheers when they saw him. It roared into, “Drinks for two more people,” while a group of women pushed up to meet him.
He leaned forward to ask John, “Where is she?” and was pointed to the farthest room away.
A brown-haired woman with her hair in a twist asked, “The redhead?” Before he could answer, she called down the hall, “The redhead still in there?” and from outside the room, a man returned, “We’ve got all kinds of redheads in here. Come down and take your pick.”
John told him, “You can’t be out here right now.”
But the Count was certain, “I can’t be in there either,” then indicated forward, “We have to get down there.”
John blocked one woman’s attempt to link the Count’s arm, but not the other. The faster brunette told the Count, “Allow me to escort you to a drink,” while the second guard ordered, “Ma’am, stand back,” but they were too drunk to mind.
The anthem was being chanted again and three unknown women had encircled them. Huddled together, John and another guard shuffled him down the teeming hall while hands kept jostling him with goodwill. Worse were the backslaps that disappeared before they could be blocked, and then the shoulder shakes, gripped and shaken, the accumulating group rocked as the revelers tried to draw the newcomers into the spirit of the celebration.
At the end of the hall, there was a sudden surge and shove through the door that the Count hoped would alert the last guard on his door that events had turned bad. His cry for help was drowned by the wild screaming happiness the three of them being twisted to the ground seemed to elicit.
Face in the carpet, the Count watched John on the floor beside hi
m yield to the pressure that bent his arm behind his back while his mouth was pressed into the wool pile; and then, muffled on his other side, he barely heard the ripping of tape silence the acquiescing groan of his second guard. Searched and found with nothing more interesting than his room card, the Count lay motionless with his hands secured behind his back and the weight of a man against his spine.
Hoots and hollers moved half the drinking cheerfully back into the hall, and while he watched them pretend to banter exchanges with someone in the room, a single red braid dropped before his eyes.
A cool hand found his throat and a velvet purr whispered, “Remember the night.” Giggling, “Remember how funny it was?” Marlow pressed her catching breath against his ear so only he could hear, “Do you remember? It was so funny,” until he was chuckling with her. “It was the funniest night,” she was choking to hold back how hilarious it had been.
And he had begun to laugh loud, “So very funny!” His amusement carried higher over the noise of the room and into the hall. But it was really not so funny to think his last door guard was relaxing while John was being dragged away with limbs bound, mouth taped, and head bagged blind.
~~~~~~
The cage to the elevator was open and the lift operator was asking another time, “Anyone coming down?”
Lieutenant Fallon looked back into the suite at General Berringer, and Sable lifted her head from the Count to implore with frustration again, “Please.”
Fallon told the operator, “No, sorry, change of plans.”
Seeing the General coming, Sable pressed low over the Count to speak slowly, drawing out the commands, “Hush. Be still. Quiet like the night,” so when Berringer hauled him up from under the soldier on his back, he was silent and stumbling weak. The General walked him into the crowded bathroom and dropped him on the toilet.
“How many people are in your room?”
“Husssh, quiet.” The Count was swaying drunk under Sable’s influence and his balance was not improved with his wrists zip-tied behind his back. He looked at his two guards lying on the tiled floor and told the soldier over them, “Be ssstill.”
Sable flipped on the vent and set the basin taps to full to cover the sound of her voice in the hard, resonating space. Cupping the Count’s neck, she pressed her cheek to his and whispered until he slurred, “I do trust you. I always have.” After Sable murmured some more, he admitted, “Well, there’s Radimir. He’s making out with a knife, pervert. He’s got five men: one to carry every part of your severed body. Radimir said he’d carry your bloody red head himself. That was after he choked you vith your goddamn braids.” He tried to mimic the maniac’s accent. “And I’ve got six,” but then he sighed, “Well, you’ve got two, but I’ve got another four.” He wagged his finger hoping Sable could see it over his shoulder. She pressed into him once again until he said, “No, no, not with that bastard in there. I sent all my tellers away.”
In the lull, the General asked, “Weapons?” and watched Sable’s fingers tighten around the Count’s neck until he swore, “Never. They were never meant for you.” But she was muttering through his every protest until he confessed, “Shotguns. My men brought them in bags. But everyone else has handguns.” Moments later, he whined, “Oh, I don’t know what type. Black things.” And then, “Clips? Maybe. I really try not to look.”
From the hall, a cry went up, “Two more shots for our new friends!”
Captain Adams discreetly informed the General, “The team from the stairwell is on the floor with us, and two from the lobby are outside watching the windows. Transport is on its way.”
Placing his hand on her shoulder to draw her up, the General spoke meaningfully but quietly to Sable, “You’re doing good with my trust, but you have to stay here. Understand?”
She returned even quieter, “You’re going after Radimir?” And when he inclined his head, she pulled him lower to speak secret, “Catherine is not going to want him dead, or imprisoned.” Feeling him tighten, she explained, “She knows who he is, where he is, and what he does, but most importantly, he is prepared to sell out General Marič. If we don’t utterly destroy Marič with proof from the Count, Radimir is invaluable. Give me the chance to finish recruiting him.”
Expelling aggravation from his chest, the General rose to tell her, “Stay in here. Listen to this man as if he were me.”
Once she lowered her head and made a sound of agreement, Berringer told Captain Adams, “It’s on you. You’re in charge of her. Remember what I said.”
~~~~~~
I’m a mercenary, Alowa silently reminded himself in his own language. Not a yes-man bodyguard. Watching the little white man throw a foot-stomping hissy fit, Alowa berated himself, What pink-titted demon possessed me to forget?
“Vhere? Vhere? Vhere the fuck are they?” Radimir was nose to nose with the Count’s last guard.
Alowa felt sorry for him. He’d been left sitting in a chair at the edge of the room; otherwise, Radimir would have had to knock him down to splutter rage in his face. Outnumbered six to one, he never should have stayed behind when the last two went to retrieve their employer. And it was too late now. He offered to find the missing parties, but Radimir returned the suggestion by putting a pistol to the man’s head with one hand and a knife to his throat with the other. “I’m not going to have my dick vanked no more. Call him.”
Alowa was not concerned when the guard reached into his jacket for his phone. The man was not going to go for a weapon with the odds as they were.
“Vhat? Vhat?” the little man was exploding red when the guard held the phone over his head, then tried pointing it toward the windows, and finally gave up only to frown over it.
“Service is out of range,” he read off the screen.
Radimir knocked it from the man’s hand with such force it bounced off the shoulder of an unsuspecting guard on the couch and landed back at their feet. Cursing in Sierran, Radimir stuffed the knife in his belt to pull out his own phone and check. Striking the guard across the cheek with the flat of the gun, he informed the bloody man, “They are blocking our signal, you fuckvit.”
The whole lot of them, nothing more than primitive knee-bending Errians. Alowa regretted ever coming to the continent. He’d told them to postpone the meeting. He’d told them the crew in the hall were not what they seemed. But nobody believed the redhead would turn. He’d asked them, “Where you think she be the last year if not in jail?” Of course she was rolling on the Count. He never thought he was racist, but the longer he stayed in Erria, the more he said it: Knee benders.
“Go see vhat is happening in the hall. I vant to know if that last cunt is still on the door.”
“Lo, he not be there,” not with the authorities having just cut cell service, but Alowa went anyway.
Cracking the door to peer out, he was greeted with, “Whoa! Big man! Come join us.”
“Ah,” foot braced behind the door, he shoved the pushy woman back by the head, “maybe not so good idea,” and slammed it closed. Returning to Radimir, he said, “They know we know now.”
“Vhy?” Radimir slapped the Count’s guard with the flat of the gun on every question, “Vhy? Vhy? Vhy?”
“I tell you, she no good after police have her so long.” Alowa freed the battered guard from Radimir’s grip by yanking him off the chair and tossing him behind.
“You stupid galoot.” Radimir pulled out his knife again. “You vant some of it?”
“Calm down, little man, they no come for you. They come for the Count. But you make big deal of this, they kill you.”
“Oh, that’s fucking sublime.” Placing his weapon filled hands on either side of his head, Radimir reeled with the idea. “I’ll inwite them in for a game of cards.”
“Maybe no. They no think they the guest of this party.” Alowa spoke over Radimir’s head to the other guards in the room, “We walk to the el-e-va-tor.” The accent made each syllable pronounced. “We leave this place free if we be calm,” he told Radimir.
“That’s vhat makes you a stupid galoot. The blubbering bank has already told them I came to kill her.”
“So? You give them no …” he was looking for the word proof but went with, “no blood, they let you go. She see you, be afraid, you get her later.”
“And vhat does the dumb galoot suggest ve do vith all these guns?”
“Lo, these things?” Alowa wiped his gun on his jacket and dropped it on the couch. “These little things be the Count’s.”
~~~~~~
When the door to the Count’s suite opened, the hotel phone was ringing for Radimir. The General could hear it through the handset he held to his ear and also shrilling down the hall to where he stood in the farthest suite. He passed the phone to Lieutenant Fallon and leaned into the corridor to watch a giant bend his head under the wooden frame.
“Lo … lo shre han,” the dark man was struck back to his native tongue, remarking with slow wonder at how the hall had changed. Gone were the revelers and in their place were black-masked professionals bearing short barreled rifles with large thermal scopes. By three, they were stacked for cover in the open doors. “We be very calm,” he assured with gentle composure, leading a trail of men with their hands splayed wide and empty before their chests.
“You are in the presence of the King’s Army,” a gunman identified the squad.
“Lo. Lo, we be very happy to leave the King’s Army.”
“You will all be going down then?” The unmasked General stepped between the soldiers and held his finger over the button to call the lift.
“We be very happy to leave.”
“Slow and steady,” the General cautioned. “We have no issue with any of you, but I’m going to ask you to clasp your hands behind your heads so no one gets jumpy.”
Putting his hands on top of his head, Alowa stepped slowly down the hall. “We be very calm. No one get,” he smiled quizzically, “jom-pee.”
Sister Sable (The Mad Queen Book 1) Page 31