He laid out his thoughts. “We’ll respond to the ransom that we agree to the transfer. We’ll tell Sterling the freeze was legally tangled, that unlocking it required a physical release at the bank. We will also bring the one asset he still needs dead to make himself safe—Marcus Calloway and the contents of the safe-deposit box—delivered together, in exchange for Cate. Everything that could hang him, we’ll offer it all in a single place at a single hour. A man that careful, that greedy, that close to losing it all, wouldn’t send an underling to collect. He’d want to watch every loose end burn with his own eyes.”
Brandt would wire the location. Her people—vetted, hand-picked, no leaks—would ring it. Dmytro would hold the money frozen no matter what anyone typed. It would only appear to transfer.
Draco would be inside, close enough to put his body between Cate and a bullet, the way he should have been at the hospital.
“It’s risky, a lot of moving pieces,” Hammer said. “A lot could break. Fall apart.”
“I know, but do you have a better plan?” Draco asked. He was already checking the load in his SIG. “Sterling’s not thinking clearly anymore. He’s in reaction mode, a man watching what he’s built crumble. A desperate man reaching for something to grab onto.” Draco holstered the weapon. “We give him something to reach for.”
He looked at the photograph one more time—Cate, pale and still, a woman who’d spent her life certain that everyone left—and he made her a promise she couldn’t hear.
Not me. Not this time. Not ever.
Chapter 14
Cate came to in a cold, echoing space that smelled of dust, moss-covered stone and the river.
An old customs warehouse, she guessed, from the loading doors and the rusted chains. Her wrists were zip-tied to the arms of a metal chair. A single work lamp dangled from the ceiling on an electrical cord, throwing a dull yellow circle across the concrete. Just past the circle of light, shapes moved in the dark.
Directly in front of her, a man, dressed in expensive trousers and a matching suit jacket, adjusted the crease on his pant leg, slowly and methodically. He had thick silver hair and cold gray eyes. There was no mistaking him.
Cate recognized him from her father’s Christmas parties: Garrett Sterling.
“Ah, Ms. Marsh, you’re back.” He smiled, strangely warm and frightfully regretful, as if they’d run into each other at an inconvenient time.
A chill slithered down the back of her neck.
Sterling continued. “Your father speaks of you often. He’s very proud of all you’ve accomplished. I want you to know none of this is personal.”
“Nine million dollars is always personal to someone.” Cate’s mouth was dry, her vision fuzzy, but her voice held. “It’s personal to you.”
A flicker of irritation crossed his face and was gone. Behind him, a broad man with dark eyes and thick eyebrows—the man who’d apparently jabbed a needle full of sleepy juice into her and wheeled her out of the hospital without anyone stopping him—checked his watch and the loading door.
A side door scraped open. Two strangers walked Marcus Calloway in, hands bound, and set him in a chair ten feet from Cate. Behind them came Hammer, hands raised, and the satchel that Cate recognized. The safe deposit box contents. Marcus. With the money transfer, he’d have all of it.
Sterling’s gaze moved over the case, his eyes narrowing. A fierce scowl crossed his face before the mask came back down.
“You brought everything,” he said. “Good. Then we can all be reasonable.” He nodded at a man seated in front of a laptop. “Confirm the transfer.”
“The freeze needs a release at the bank,” Hammer said evenly. “That’s tomorrow, first thing. Tonight you get the file, you get Calloway, and we get Cate back. That’s the deal.”
“The deal.” Sterling’s smile thinned. He rose and crossed to Marcus, looking down at him with his lip curled back in disgust. “Calloway is far from a deal. Do you know what this idiot did? He asked me for half. Half! After I made him. After I turned a mid-level paper-pusher into a wealthy man.” He shook his head, almost sorrowful. “I built that account over eleven years. Every franc of it is mine. And this fool thought he could blackmail me into giving him any of it.”
There it was. Every franc of it is mine. Cate didn’t dare look toward the dark corner where she prayed a recorder was running.
“So, he was a loose end you sent Sanders to eliminate,” she said, keeping Sterling talking, keeping his eyes on her. “And now you’re going to kill both of us, and now Hammer and the two men who escorted Marcus through the door. All so you can walk back into your office on Monday?”
“I’m going to recover what’s mine and remove the people who can complicate it.” He said it mildly, the way he might discuss a budget line. He drew a compact pistol from his coat and turned it toward Marcus. “Starting with the man who started all of this, who thought he could blackmail me.”
Marcus’s eyes widened. “He owns it,” Marcus shouted, twisting toward the shadows, toward Hammer, toward anyone. “All of it, the account, the vendor, Sanders, the certifications—he wrote the instructions in his own hand, I kept them, they’re in the box, it’s him, it was always him?—”
“Enough,” Sterling snapped.
“Yes, indeed, that’s enough,” said Inspector Brandt, stepping into the light with her weapon raised and a recorder held flat in her other palm. “Between the two of you, we have enough. Evidence, that is. Garrett Sterling, you are under?—”
The laptop guy leaped into the air and pulled the cord on the lamp, plunging the warehouse into darkness. Someone fired—the muzzle flashed white—and the warehouse dissolved into shouting and boots and the crack of return fire.
Cate didn’t wait to be rescued. She’d spent the whole conversation working the zip ties against the sharp edges of the chair arms. In the chaos, she wrenched her wrists the last quarter inch, tearing skin, but her hands were free. She threw herself to the side and hit the floor. A body crashed past her and rolled into the dark toward the crate where Sterling had been. Cate rolled across the floor until she came up hard against a leg.
