Page 116 of Unlocked

She fought. She got a hand free and raked it across his face. He howled, then grabbed her wrist and pinned it above her head and got his forearm across her collarbone, pressing, using his weight to hold her still, and she kicked and connected with his shin. He didn't even flinch.

He was looking at her with an expression she had never seen on his face before. The pleasant performance had evaporated. What was underneath it was something cold and jaded, and she understood, with the clarity that came from genuine fear, that this was who Josh had always been and everything else had been costume.

"Stop," he said quietly. "Just stop."

She stopped. Not because he told her to. Because she needed to think and she couldn't think while she was fighting. Besides, fighting wasn't working.

He was breathing hard. So was she. The garage was silent around them.

"You are such a nuisance," he said. The word was precise. Almost gentle. Like a verdict. "Do you know that? You have been a nuisance since the beginning. We had a plan, a very good plan, and you just kept pulling at it. Couldn't leave it alone."

"People lost their money," she said. Her voice came out steadier than she felt. "People lost everything."

"People made choices," he said. "And some people's choices cost more than others." He tilted his head slightly, studying her face the way she'd seen him study her mother's face a thousand times, looking for the angle, looking for the lever. "Your mother gave you everything, you know. This whole situation, the firm, the membership, all of it. She built that for you. For your future. And you just threw it in her face."

"My mother built a criminal empire," Tatum said. "And helped hurt people who couldn't defend themselves."

Something moved across his face. Not anger. Something closer to contempt. "She is extraordinary," he said. "And you have never appreciated her. Not once. Not for a single day of your life." The pressure of his forearm increased slightly. "She deserves better than you."

Tatum looked at him and understood something she should probably have understood much earlier. This wasn't about Bunny's instructions. This wasn't about the plan or the Curator or the Hamptons or any of it.

This was personal.

Josh had been devoted to Bunny for years with an intensity that went far beyond professional loyalty, and she had always assumed it was ambition, proximity to power, the need to attach himself to someone formidable. But looking at his face right now, she understood it was something else entirely. Something that had been building for years in the particular way obsessions built, quietly and completely, until they became the organizing principle of a person's entire life.

"You could have been part of something remarkable," he said. "You still could be. But you won't. You're too stubborn, too righteous, and too much like that miserable old man who thought he could keep your mother small." His expression hardened. "So we're going to the Hamptons, and you are going to listen. You are going to understand what is expected of you. And if you can't manage that⁠—"

He leaned in close.

"Then honestly," he said, very quietly, "you become a problem that needs solving. And I have been solving problems for your mother for a very long time."

She didn't look away. She made herself hold his gaze and not reveal just how terrified she was.

"With you gone," he said, his voice had dropped to something almost conversational, almost gentle, "I would be very happy to take your place. I should have had it years ago."

The elevator dinged behind him.

The doors began to open.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

The elevator doors opened, and Archer took in the scene in less than a second and lunged out of the elevator.

Josh was holding Tatum against the wall, his forearm jammed across her collarbone. The angle of his body, the quality of his grip, the specific expression on his face that Archer had seen before on other faces in other places, and knew exactly what it meant.

He was moving before the second was up.

Josh heard him and turned, and that was a mistake because turning meant releasing Tatum, and releasing Tatum meant she was no longer between them. Archer crossed the distance in four strides and hit him.

Not the way a man hits someone in a film. Not with warning or posturing or the particular choreography of a staged fight. The way Archer hit people was fast and deliberate and designed to end things quickly, because he had learned a very long time ago on the streets of cities that didn't care whether you lived or died that the only fight worth having was a short one.

Josh was not without ability. He'd gotten over a twenty-story balcony railing in the dark, and he'd subdued Tatum, which was not nothing. He threw a punch that Archer ducked, then came back with his elbow and caught Archer across the jaw. For a single moment, the garage tilted slightly.

Archer used the tilt. He let the momentum carry him in, rather than back, and got both hands on Josh, driving him into the concrete pillar. The impact of the crash was sickening, but that didn't stop Josh. He grabbed at Archer, got a fist in his shirt, tried to knee him. Archer shifted his weight and got his hand up.

He knew where to hit. He had always known where to hit. The body was a precise and specific thing, and certain points of it, struck correctly with the right force at the right angle, did not recover. He chose the throat. One strike, knuckles driving inward and upward. He almost grinned when cartilage collapsed beneath his hand.

Josh slid down the pillar.