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“Ah, ah, ah,” he whispered as he pressed the muzzle harder into my skin. “Be still, Fräulein. We wouldn’t want my gun to go off, now would we?”
Zollner kept dragging me along as a human shield.
In front of me, I could see the Range Rover…
And in the distance roared a river, its waters swollen with all the extra rainfall.
Zollner pulled me across a dirt road – now a mud road – and back into the forest.
A shadow ran out of the trees across the road and took cover behind the Range Rover. “Let her go, Zollner!”
“Why don’t you come out so we can talk, Herr Rosolini?”
“I thought you were calling me ‘Massimo.’”
“Well, you refuse to call me anything but ‘Zollner,’ so I assume we aren’t quite at that level of friendship yet.”
“Let her go and we can be friends. Plus I’ll pay you ten times what Aurelio’s paying you.”
“O-ho – the amount has gone up!”
“It has.”
“The offer is appreciated – but I already told you: if word gets out that I can be bought off, no one will ever hire me again.”
“I’ll never tell.”
“But Aurelio surely will – make no mistake of that. IF he doesn’t kill me outright.”
“We can keep this between you, me, and Lucia. We’re leaving tomorrow – you can just let us go.”
From the nearness of his voice, I assumed Massimo had followed us into the woods.
“And ruin my reputation? Tsk, tsk, tsk. I think not. That would be professional suicide, as well.”
As Zollner kept dragging me, the river got louder and louder behind us.
“Then name your price,” Massimo yelled.
“Alright… one beeeellion dollars!”
I swear the motherfucker said it exactly like Dr. Evil in Austin Powers.
Then Zollner burst out laughing. “Do you like my impression? I would do the pinkie at the corner of my mouth, but I must keep the gun at your fiancée’s temple.”
Let me tell you, being dragged through the mud with a gun at your head is no picnic.
But being dragged through the mud with a gun at your head by a certifiable whack job is something else entirely.
“I’m losing patience, Zollner!” Massimo roared.
“Then come out and let me shoot you!” Zollner called out cheerfully.
A second later, I heard a car door opening.
My heart leapt with hope. I thought for sure that Massimo would try to start the engine – after all, he’d hotwired the car in Treporti –
Although I had no idea what he would do once he got it started.
