Davie took a seat on one of the unopened boxes and started combing her fingers through her hair. “You,” she said, “are definitely not boring.”
“I aim to please.” I waggled my eyebrows suggestively. Davie didn’t notice, probably because I was looking through the glass of the windowed wine cellar door with my gun drawn.
“What are they saying?” she asked.
“The other Agents? The car’s stopped at the front door. Ami and one of the Metro officers are talking to them. We’ll know more in a minute.”
“It’s too quiet,” she said softly.
“Hm?”
“Just… People should be shouting right now. I keep forgetting what you are, and then…”
I shook my head. “You wouldn’t be able to hear them even if we weren’t Agents,” I said. “They’re pros. Silence is survival to these guys.”
“Oh.”
I glanced back at her. Davie had pulled her legs up to her chest and was hugging herself.
“Hey, Davie?” I took one last precautionary glance through the glass, then sat down on the box beside hers. She moved into my arms. “Honey, it’s okay. We’re just people.”
Davie glared up at me. “Yes, Josh, I get that now, thank you. But…”
She trailed off and looked at her bare feet.
“But?” I said as I kissed the back of her neck.
“But I’m pretty sure I’d be dead if it weren’t for you. If you hadn’t come along when you did, I wouldn’t be…” Davie waved at the room. “Now I’ve got a team of cyborg ninjas protecting me while I’m hiding in a millionaire’s wine cellar.”
“That reminds me.” I slid the muzzle of my gun under the cellophane tape on a nearby box and ripped it open. I flipped the cardboard flap aside and peered into the box. “What wine goes with a potential shootout? Please say merlot.”
Davie smiled. “Merlot.”
I handed my gun to Davie. “Point this at the door,” I told her as I took off my hoodie. I wrapped it around a bottle. “Want to see something neat?”
“How to remove a cork without an opener by hitting the bottom of the bottle?”
“Ah. You know that trick?”
“You’d be surprised how many places have wine and no corkscrews. Want to see a better trick?” Davie took the bottle from me and unscrewed the cap.
“Show-off,” I sniffed. “I want my gun back.”
Davie took a long drink straight from the bottle. “This is really good,” she said. “How much do you think this is worth?”
“Around six hundred bucks,” I said.
“Oh God!” Davie coughed on a mouthful of merlot. “Please say you’re kidding! It had a screw top!”
“Googled it,” I tapped my head. “Don’t worry about the cost. I have a standing arrangement with Mulcahy and money.”
“What’s it like?” Davie asked as she snuggled against me.
“He makes me work it off. Usually publicity stunts for OACET. It’s fun stuff I would have done anyway.”
“No,” she said as she passed me the bottle. “Having the Internet in your head.”
“Oh. It’s like having a smartphone,” I said after taking a swig. “Convenient. Connected. Once they fix of the security problems, I’m sure they’ll make the implant available for sale. It’ll replace the current generation of technology.”
“A world full of cyborgs,” Davie mused.
“Or, a world exactly like we have now,” I took another drink and handed her the bottle. “Only everyone’s connected to it.”
“Your created-world theory again?”
“Yeah. I can’t wait,” I admitted. “For one thing, me and the rest of OACET will stop being freaks.”
Davie was silent for a moment. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know there’s been a few times when I’ve treated you like one. I feel terrible about that.”
We shared a long kiss. She tasted of wine and sex and a lingering hint of apple pie.
“Move in with me,” I said again. “We could go home tonight.”
“What? No!” Davie grinned. “We’re going riding again in the morning.”
“Oh no,” I groaned. “Oh, my poor aching junk…”
“Josh?”
“Hang on,” I said to Davie. “Ami’s checking in.”
“They cut the lights to turn the whole house into a big, old doorbell. I guess they never heard of calling ahead. We’ve got it locked down if you want to come to the living room. Someone’s here to see Davie.”
“Who?”
Ami laughed. “I’m not ruining the surprise. Just come on up.”
“Let’s go,” I said. “Ami’s playing games, but it’s safe to go upstairs.”
We took a different route through the house, coming up through the second staircase in the kitchen. I brought the wine with us; no reason to let something like that go to waste. We turned the corner and entered the living room from the rear, so Davie and I saw the man in the leather club chair before he saw us.
Davie grabbed my arm and yanked me back behind the wall. “That’s Viktor Kumarin!” she hissed.
“What?” I took a quick peek through the doorway. Kumarin was a youngish guy, maybe ten years older than Davie and myself. He was solidly-built with dark brown hair, and was wearing khakis and a white Oxford shirt. Kumarin certainly didn’t look like a former Russian gangster. Neither did the three clean-cut men in business suits stationed around the room, surrounded by Agents.
“Why is he here? Why is he just sitting here?”
“I think he wants to talk,” I whispered back. “Do you want me to go instead of you?”
Davie glanced around the corner. Ami was sitting beside Kumarin, the two of them laughing over some odd story. She also had a shotgun pointed directly at his chest.
“I’ll be okay,” Davie said.
Davie entered the living room, light on her bare feet and her head held high. She crossed to the empty chair in front of Kumarin and sat, staring with dark eyes at the man who had tried to kill her.
“Ms. Costello,” Kumarin greeted her. “I’d stand, but…” He gave a curt nod to Ami and her gun.
“Mr. Kumarin,” Davie said coldly.
“I’ve surrendered myself to the Metro police,” Kumarin offered. His English was impeccable, with barely a trace of an accent. “They’ve given me five minutes to talk to you as a condition of surrender.”
He looked over his shoulder. “Agent Glassman,” he said to me. “You’re welcome to join us.
“I’m fine right here, thanks,” I said, and took a quick drink of wine. I made sure he saw the gun in my other hand as I lowered the bottle.
Kumarin turned back to Davie. “I had nothing to do with the attempts on your life. I am a businessman. Your accusations against me have caused our mutual friends overseas to pull back from business with my company.”
“You’re here to salvage your image.”
Kumarin nodded. “The days when clients found it acceptable to work with murderers are over. I was not in the country when you were attacked last night,” he said. “And I boarded a plane only after the shooting this morning. I have given the police consent to search my accounts for any suspicious payments.”
Davie laughed. “Public accounts,” she said. “Whitewashed money that’s just the tip of your financial portfolio.”
“Possibly,” Kumarin said. “Still, I am here, and I am allowing them take me to jail.”
Davie glanced at Ami, who said, “Metro will hold him for forty-eight hours. After that, unless they’ve got evidence, he’s released.”
“Forty-eight hours? Not much of a hardship for you,” Davie said to Kumarin.
Kumarin shrugged. “There’s an old saying in Russia. We say, ‘How well you live makes a difference, not how long.’ Many consider this to be a comment on good deeds done during life, but I am more literal. I put great stock in the quality of my food, the comfort of my bed, and those who share these with me. Two days is enough time for me to prove
my point.
“This is a goodwill gesture, Ms. Costello,” Kumarin stood, an arsenal of weapons tracking his movements. “I am not involved with this crime. I hope you find the person who is.”
He turned to one of the men from Metro. “Now we can go.”
Kumarin left, several bewildered officers in his wake.
The three men who had come with Kumarin turned to follow. I took a few steps forward and grabbed the forearm of the man closest to me. He turned with the attitude of someone who allowed a stranger to grab his arm once, and never again.
“Hold up, friend,” I told him. “The party’s just getting started.”
FOURTEEN
Liquor is the best tool in my arsenal. Not, you know, for the ladies. Definitely not for them. But when I’m trying to worm my way into the head of an opponent, the first thing I do is break out the alcohol.
Note how I didn’t say it was a unique tool.
Russians live up to their reputations as big drinkers. If it were me drinking alone, I would have been dead beneath the kitchen table in an hour. Fortunately, I had a rotating battalion of twenty-odd Agents who would casually drop in to check on us, join Kumarin’s three bodyguards for a drink, chat for ten minutes or so, then cycle out to let the next Agents join. Every hour, an Agent would appear with a new brand of high-end vodka they had just happened to discover down in the wine cellar. It was as efficient an inebriation assembly line as I could arrange on short notice.
Manipulating drunken Russians is like juggling knives; if you do it right, it's a spectacle, but the second you mess up, it turns bloody and the crowd flees for their lives.
I don't mess things like this up.
As bodyguards go, they were better than many I’ve met. Rather bland personalities, but very loyal to their employer. It took me until the far side of midnight to loosen them up enough to talk about Kumarin. Davie's pie had been the turning point. Davie was right when she said a side of vanilla ice cream with pie is a universal law, and Russians have a corollary in which vodka must accompany vanilla ice cream. When that first shot is gone, it must be followed by another, then another, and another... Throw in a rotating roster of Agents and a sampler of expensive alcohol, and even the most stoic bodyguard gets a little chatty.
A joke here, a nudge there, and I found myself walking around the sunken garden with Moriz. Of the three Russians, he was the oldest and the one who had paced his drinking. I had the distinct feeling he was the brains of their small outfit.
“This place, it is beautiful,” Moriz said. His English was not as polished as Kumarin’s, but he was fluent and we had no problems understanding each other. “It is not yours?”
“No,” I replied. “It belongs to my boss’s fiancée.”
“Yes, the crazy woman,” Moriz nodded. “I have heard of her. She does investments?”
“Day trading.”
“A good thing women work,” he nodded sagely. “Now we marry into money, too. I shall go wait on the beach in a little bikini, and a rich woman will come along and take me home.” He ran his hand over his bald spot, then slapped his paunch. “I will be waiting a long time, yes?”
We had a good laugh over that. When we had finished, Moriz took a drink from his large tumbler of chilled vodka. He lowered his glass and looked back up at the house to where the kitchen was all light and music. “I see what you have done here,” he said. “You have given us a party.”
“Yes,” I replied. “I love parties.”
“I have heard of you as well,” Moriz said. “You are the lover and the fool, but...” he paused as he took another drink. “Not so much a fool as you let us think, no?”
I winked and raised my own glass in salute.
“Za fstryé-tchoo,” Moriz said. “To our meeting.”
We both drained our glasses. When he was finished, Mortiz turned his over and placed it open-end down on the flagstones. “What is it you want to know?”
“The four men who came after Ms. Costello,” I replied. “Did you know them?”
“No.” Moriz was emphatic. “I went to the jail and spoke to those men. They know nothing. Are nobodies. Men hired off the street. They are not even Russian.”
“Oh?” I asked. “They seemed Russian to me.”
“Moldovan,” he shook his head. “Moldova broke away from us more than twenty years ago. Some men there have bad reputation and will do anything for money.”
“They sure didn’t act like professionals,” I said.
“They are not. They are hired guns,” he replied. “They make me angry. The one who hired them? He chose them because an American would think, ‘Oh, they are Russian,’ and the blame falls on us. Insulting, yes?”
“Yes,” I replied. “I'm sorry if I offended you.”
“Hah!” Moriz snorted. “No offense made. None of us know these things. I do not know American from Canadian, no? But those men, they say nothing, and your police, they think Russian and they look in the wrong places.”
“Where’s the right place? Where would I go if I wanted to hire a Moldovan?”
“You would go to a man like Kumarin. These little shits, always throwing themselves at him. They think, if we do a job for him, we are hired, we become important people in Russia.”
“But Kumarin said he is not involved.”
Moriz took out a pack of cigarettes and offered one to me. I took it; there are many assumptions that go along with smokers, and I use these when I can.
“Kumarin wants to be a good man,” Moriz said after a few minutes. “Is hard, you know?”
I nodded. “Very hard.”
“He has many employees. Some of them he trusts more than me. But me? I have been with him a long time. I know his moods. It bothers him, what happened. When the man in the van is killed, Kumarin becomes angry. He is not a man who becomes angry over nothing.”
I didn’t press him. I knew Moriz wouldn’t add anything that might incriminate his employer. Instead, I asked: “If I didn’t know a man like Kumarin, how would I hire a Moldovan?”
“You would go to New York, the expat community. You hire men there, men who have just come to this country and will do anything if the price is right.”
“It would explain why they didn’t have police records.”
Moriz nodded. “Soldiers have records. Criminals have records. I was both,” he said, and pushed up his shirt sleeve to reveal a canvas of tattoos, old and new. Some had white scars running through them; I recognized the pucker pattern of a bullet wound. “Such lives, they leave marks.”
“These guys were neither,” I said, and told him the story of how Squirrelface had abducted Davie. By the time I had finished, Moriz was roaring with laughter.
“No,” he finally managed to say. “No, they were not my people. Not soldier or mafiya. I do not think Moldova would claim them, either. Poor lost boys, with no one to take them home.”
“Someone did,” I said.
“Yes,” Moriz nodded. “Now, who would be fool enough to do that? A real fool, or another like you, hiding behind the fool’s mask?”
“That, my friend,” I said, “is an excellent question.”
FIFTEEN
An hour later, I had tucked a soundly drunk Moriz away in a guest room and was on my way back to Davie. It was almost two in the morning. I had expected to find her asleep and was looking forward to cuddling up beside her. Instead, she was pacing. She had changed into business attire and was deep in a fierce argument. I was tired so it took me a moment to figure out where she was directing her anger: a laptop was open on the dresser, with Chris Rinehart’s face displayed on the monitor. I pinged the line and found that someone had already scrambled Davie’s location; an Agent had set Davie’s connection to be untraceable.
“Nice to see you again, Mr. Rinehart,” I said as I nodded to the screen. “I’ll leave.”
“No, stay,” Davie said. “Back me up here, Josh. He’s being unreasonable.”
“It’s late,” I hedged. “Anything im
portant can be covered in the morning.”
“Thank you, Agent Glassman,” Rinehart said. “She’s decided the threat’s over, and she’s going back to the city first thing tomorrow.”
“I did not decide the threat is over,” Davie said harshly. “I decided if Kumarin is telling the truth, the threat might not be over any time soon, and I’m not spending the next few years in hiding.
“And if he’s lying,” she continued, “he’s proven he knows how to find me. There’s no reason for me to be stuck in a safehouse if it’s not safe.”
“Agent Glassman, help me out here,” Rinehart was practically pleading. “She’s putting herself at risk for no reason.”
“It’s up to Ms. Costello,” I said. “I just spent a couple of hours interviewing Kumarin’s bodyguards. I don’t have any proof Kumarin is responsible—” Davie started to interrupt, and I held up a hand. “—but somebody is. Racing back to the city to prove a point might not be the best way to end this situation.”
Davie looked mad enough to spit iron nails, while Rinehart nodded eagerly from the monitor. “Another few days, Davie. Let things settle down, give the police a chance to work… You never know what might happen.”
“I’m coming back tomorrow,” Davie said. “Stop fighting me on this.” She was talking to Rinehart, but the message included me.
Rinehart paused, then nodded curtly. “All right. Let me know if you need anything.” The monitor went white, and the connection timed out from Rinehart’s side.
I reached out through the network and undid the scrambled pathways that had had hidden Davie’s location. “Tell me before you use this again,” I said. “I have to redo the buffer.”
Davie grunted something and stormed into the bathroom. The door shut behind her like a muffled gunshot. I turned off my implant and stretched out on the bed, then held on to the sheets for dear life as the room started spinning. Russians and their alcohol tolerance, I swear.
I was asleep for all of one glorious minute before I felt Davie curl up against me. I gritted my teeth, knitted the room together, and rolled over to hold her.
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