Page 84 of You Can Run

He picked up the cold coffee, took a sip anyway, and settled in to wait.

THIRTY-FOUR

Dante kept his pace steady.Hands at his sides, shoulders loose. Just another man walking into a strip club on a Friday night.

The main floor was packed. Stages to the left, bar along the back wall, tables scattered between. The music was loud enough to make conversation difficult, which was the point—a room full of people who couldn't hear each other was a room full of people who couldn't hear anything else. Naked girls moved through the crowd in the practiced way of women who knew exactly how close to get and how long to stay.

He clocked the security immediately. Two men at the bar, trying to look like customers and failing—too still, too sober, eyes moving instead of watching the stages. A third near the illuminated staircase that led up to the mezzanine. Sonny still on the door behind him. Four.

Sofia had said four. So far, she was right about everything.

He found a spot at the end of the bar and ordered a whiskey he didn't intend to drink. It gave him a reason to stand there and something to hold. He positioned himself so he could see the mezzanine staircase in the mirror behind the bar, and he waited.

Three minutes.

He could feel the mezzanine without looking at it. Borya was up there. The man would have been watching the door feed from the moment Sonny called it in.

The whiskey sat untouched. Dante turned the glass once with his fingers and kept his breathing even.

Four minutes.

Movement on the staircase. He caught it in the mirror—three figures descending, one behind the other. The first two were security, wide and deliberate, scanning the floor. The last one was smaller, unhurried, one hand on the railing.

Borya Sokolov reached the bottom of the stairs and paused, adjusting the cuff of his shirt.

He looked exactly the way Dante remembered—older, obviously; his face leaner, his eyes more recessed. He wore a beige shirt, open collar, and pressed trousers. He looked like someone's grandfather.

The security from the mezzanine fanned out onto the floor, the two who'd come down with Borya joining the two at the bar, repositioning without making it obvious. A man at the base of the staircase stayed.

Five. Not four. Borya had added one more.

Dante let it go. One more body didn't change what he was here to do.

Borya crossed the floor. The crowd parted around him without being told to, the girls steering away, the noise and the pink light continuing as if the most dangerous man in the building wasn't walking through the middle of it.

Dante turned from the mirror and faced him.

His eyes found Dante's and held them, and what Dante saw there wasn't the satisfied collector receiving a long-overdue delivery. It was the controlled fury of a man who'd been givenhalf of what he'd asked for and was already calculating who was responsible for the missing half.

“Daniel,” Borya said. His voice was soft, pitched just below the music. “Come,” he said. “Sit with me.”

He gestured toward the back of the floor, where a booth sat in a recessed alcove. Dante didn't move immediately. He scanned the floor one more time—security positions, exits, the crowd. And there, at the edge of his vision, moving toward the mezzanine staircase with the unhurried ease of someone who belonged exactly where she was, was Sofia.

She didn't look at him.

The clock had started.

Dante picked up the untouched whiskey and followed Borya to the booth.

The alcove was quieter—the bass still thrummed through the bench seats, but the music dropped enough for conversation. Borya slid into the far side, back to the wall, and one of his men took a position at the end of the booth. The others spread to nearby tables.

Borya folded his hands on the table and looked at Dante, and the mask was in place now – the fury tucked away behind something calmer and more dangerous. The look of a man who'd decided to get what he needed from the situation in front of him before dealing with the situation behind it.

“You understand,” Borya said, “that this is not what I asked for.”

“What did you ask for?”

“I asked for the girl. I was very specific about that. I was specific with Sofia, and I was specific in my own mind, and I have been specific about it for two years.” His voice remained soft, almost conversational, but the temperature of it had dropped.