Pain is information.
The information is that I have ninety seconds before the adrenaline wears off.
I use the ninety seconds.
The fourth shooter goes down with a knee strike, followed by a follow-up that keeps him there. I drop the fifth with the first man's gun. The sixth turns to run. I let him.
I need the lead.
The lead has been hanging back near the gap, weapon trained on her, waiting for his men to finish the job. Older. Steadier. The one who knows why they are here.
I close the distance before he registers that his team is already gone.
He gets one shot off. Wide.
I take his weapon hand. I take his weapon. I put him on the wall.
Up close, I see the tattoo. Inside his wrist, just below the cuff. Black ink. A ship's anchor wrapped in something serpentine. Two letters underneath I do not recognize. Greek alphabet.Σand what looks likeΠ.
It means nothing to me yet.
But it will.
"Who sent you."
The lead spits blood onto the floor between us.
He says one word.
"Stavros."
He reaches for the knife at his belt. I take it away from him and use it on him before he uses it on me. He goes down, the way every other man has tonight.
The warehouse goes very quiet.
I stand there for two full seconds.
The pain in my left side announces itself the way pain does when adrenaline starts pulling out of the bloodstream. Hot and wet and real. I am bleeding through my shirt.
Federov is gone. So are most of his men. The two who stayed are dead on the cash side, caught in a crossfire that was not theirs.
The woman is still behind the table.
She is standing now. She is holding something.
It takes me half a second to recognize what.
My service weapon. The actual one. The one I keep in the small-of-the-back holster, I never advertise. She must have pulled it off me when I was working the third shooter. I did not feel it.
That tells me something about her.
She is pointing it at my chest.
Steady. Two-handed grip. Stance like someone showed her once, and she remembered. Not a natural shooter. There is a quarter inch of tension in her shoulders that a natural would not have. But she won't miss me at this range.
We both know it.
I look at her.
