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“Hello,” I said. “Anybody home?”
“Babe?” Ranger said.
“Where are you?”
“I’m waiting at the service elevator for Semov.”
“On my floor?”
“Yes. And then I’ll stay with Semov.”
“Okay. Over and out.”
The man in the blue shirt ambled past me. He went to the end of the hall and used a key to open the door to the mechanical room.
“A guy in a blue shirt just went into the mechanical room,” I said.
“I’ve got him,” Tank said. “He’s FBI going in to check on the air handler.”
“Just saying.”
“Hang tight,” Tank told me.
People poured out of the convention center and filled the corridor. The noise level rose. Men pushed against the ballroom doors and tested the doorknobs. Everyone looked happy. Lots of laughing. I figured there was vodka tasting going on this morning in the convention center. Probably they had a vodka fountain at the breakfast buffet.
“Moving out,” Ranger said into my earbud.
The door to the service pantry opened and Semov’s six aides strode out, followed by Semov, followed by Ranger, followed by two men with the old-school earbuds who I figured were FBI. They cut a path through the crowd, a door opened at the far end of the ballroom, and they disappeared inside.
Moments later the remaining doors to the ballroom opened and everyone stampeded in. I looked down the hall at the mechanical room.
>
“Did the FBI guy come out of the mechanical room?” I asked Tank.
“I didn’t see him come out. He might have been told to stay there until the banquet is over. I can’t talk to him. He’s not on my frequency.”
I walked down the hall and knocked on the door. “Hello,” I said. “Are you okay in there?”
The door opened, an arm reached out and grabbed me, and I was yanked inside.
“Oh shit!” Tank said into my earbud.
TWENTY-NINE
I CAUGHT A glimpse of someone in a ball cap, and I was hit in the face and knocked off my feet. It was Vlatko. He looked down at me. His hair was dark brown under the ball cap, and he had sunglasses stuck over the brim. His injured eye was horrible, stitched together in a ragged, bunched-up scar that sliced through his eyebrow and ran into his cheek. He was wearing a lightweight gray hoodie and jeans. I could see the odd tattoo on his neck.
I tasted blood, and I didn’t know if it was from my nose or my mouth. I was on my hands and knees, still fuzzy from being hit.
“What?” I said.
The earbud was on the floor. Vlatko picked it up and smiled. “Are you listening?” he said into the earbud. “I have your girlfriend, and she’s going to be my ticket out. If anyone comes near me, I’ll gut her. You know I can. She’s already bleeding. It wouldn’t take much to finish her off.”
Vlatko dropped the earbud onto the floor and crushed it under his heel. He grabbed me and dragged me to my feet. I looked past him and saw the FBI guy on the floor in a pool of blood. His neck had been slashed so that his head was almost completely severed from his neck.
“That could easily be you,” Vlatko said.
“You killed him.”
