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“There’s nothing else, no ID?”
“No, he’s a professional, he wouldn’t carry any ID. Molly, move our girl so we can restrain her.”
Molly said, “Domino, get up and walk with me to the radiator by the window. Keep pressure on your arm.” Molly zip-tied Domino’s uninjured arm to the radiator. She rose, dusted her hands, and walked over to Nero. “Now for this monster.” She gave him a kick in the ribs, hard enough to make him hurt.
“You bitch!”
“You bet, and don’t forget it.”
“You’ll never get out of here.”
“Quiet, Nero, or I’ll kick you too,” Sherlock said. “The zip ties aren’t enough to hold him, Molly.”
Molly said, “The boxes, Sherlock—there were sashes, ties, belts.” She walked over and rummaged through them, picked out anything that would hold a knot. She tied them together, pulled them tight, jerked on them. They held. She looked up at Sherlock. “We can pull him to the pool table and tie him to one of the legs.”
When they finished tying him, Domino said, “He’ll kill me once he’s free.”
Molly said, “Sherlock, maybe we—”
Sherlock shook her head, said to Domino, “You chose your path.” She paused. “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll solve your problem if you tell us how many guards there are and where they are.”
“How will you help me?”
“I’ll give you the knife I threw through your arm. You can kill him first, if you like. Talk to me. And don’t lie to me or the deal’s off.”
“Not a word, Domino, if you want to live,” Nero said.
Domino looked at him, paused, swallowed, and slowly shook her head at him. “There are two guards in the kitchen, both of them foreign, Serbian. Ilic and Stankovic. They’ve been with Nero for years, their loyalty is to him. They barely tolerated Pope or me. And there’s a guard patrolling outside. He was here when we arrived. His name’s Caruso.”
“Where are we?”
“Miles from nowhere, that’s all Nero would tell me. He keeps everything close to his vest, especially with me. Ilic and Stankovic know, they picked us up at a private airstrip maybe ten miles from here. It was too dark to see much of anything. And their cars have Pennsylvania license plates.”
“Who hired you?”
“Not Nero, that’s for sure. My service, and, no, I’ll never give them up or I’d get a shiv in my gut. Nero didn’t tell Pope or me who hired him. He just looked at us like we were the lowest of the low, said we’d failed, so he was brought in.” She laughed. “He likes to call himself the Fixer, like he told you. And look at him. You really did a number on him. That’s all I know. You promised. Please.”
Sherlock set the bloody knife down three feet from her. “By the time you get yourself free, we’ll be out of here. Maybe you’ll use it on Nero, maybe you’ll escape, maybe let him go, throw in with him, and the guys upstairs again. Up to you, but if you yell out, try to warn them, or you let Nero do that, we’ll all end up trapped down here in the basement, and neither of you will survive, I promise you.”
“If I were you, Domino,” Molly said, “I’d stick the knife through his heart.”
“You ready, Molly?”
Molly was terrified and excited, a roller-coaster combo flooding her with adrenaline. She gave Sherlock a manic grin. Now they had a chance. “I’m more than ready.”
Sherlock and Molly went through the basement door, closed and locked it. They were at one end of a long, well-lighted hallway. Sherlock looked for steps leading up to the outside, but there weren’t any. They walked down the hallway on the tiled floor, opened a closed door along the way that held only the furnace. They walked past a laundry room with appliances that looked to have been there since the moon landing, the smell of mildew thick in the air. There was a closed door at the end of the hallway. Sherlock quietly opened it. Basement stairs, wooden, narrow, and bare. Slowly, Sherlock in the lead, they walked up as quietly as they could, listening for any sound. As they climbed higher they saw the door at the top was partially open. They heard a man’s voice. “You pathetic bleater, you keep talking, and then all you do is lose and whine.”
Another man’s voice. “Yeah, yeah, bet you have a couple of deuces. You should fold, Ilic, no way you’ll beat what I’m holding.”
Two of the three men were in the kitchen, as Domino had said. Caruso had to be outside, and that could be really dangerous. Sherlock looked back at Molly. “Ready?”
Molly held up Domino’s Beretta, nodded.
Sherlock slowly opened the door onto a dogleg passage toward the kitchen. She didn’t see any way out except straight ahead. The two men were sitting at the kitchen table, Ilic skinny and bald, with a shiny face, and Stankovic built like a linebacker, big and beefy, his face pockmarked. She stepped into their view and said very precisely, “Ilic, Stankovic, both of you pull out your guns, drop them to the floor. Kick them over to me. If you do not, I will put bullets in your knees and work my way up. You know I’m FBI—so believe me, I can do it.”
Ilic slowly stood and reached for the gun in its shoulder holster, his eyes on Sherlock. Stankovic reached under the table, upended it, and threw it at Sherlock. Sherlock jumped away as Ilic pulled his gun. She shot him in the knee. He groaned, fired wildly as he fell to the kitchen floor. Stankovic jerked his gun from his shoulder holster, rolled to the floor behind the table, and fired, but Sherlock had already grabbed Molly and pulled her down. His bullet hit the wall where she’d been standing. They ran for the door followed by a barrage of bullets. The gunshots stopped. He was out of bullets. Did he have another magazine?
“Now, Molly!” They raced toward the back door and out into a large yard, firing back at Stankovic to keep him pinned. Oaks and maples pressed in, the grass and weeds growing tall. They ran around the side of the house toward the front, not knowing if one of them had hit Stankovic. “Keep an out for Caruso, Molly.”
