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And then I pulled. I pulled like I was trying to stop a runaway horse, fists tight against my shoulders while my kneepushed him into a backbend that made his spine crack. His hands scrabbled at his throat, tearing at the necklace.
“Don’t you dare break, goddammit,” I muttered to the beads. I tightened my hold and pulled up again and his hand came up, slapping blindly. He caught me on the temple, hard enough to blur my vision for a second, but I held on.
After several seconds, he sagged, but I didn’t let up. Helen was moving a little, and by the time she opened her eyes properly, it was over. I was still coiled around him, beads biting into my hands as he jerked one last time and then gave way, relaxing into a huddle on the floor.
Helen knew better than to question whether it was necessary. She eased herself up and came to look, pulling back his eyelid. After a second, she nodded. “Clear.”
“Good,” I said, easing my grip. Deep red marks streaked across my palms and the backs of my hands. “What the hell kind of jewelry is this, Helen?”
She shrugged. “It was made for the Helsinki job and I liked how it looked with this dress, so I kept it.” She pushed a bead aside to show me how it was strung. “Piano wire. I used it on the head of the Finnish national bank.”
She fastened the necklace around her neck and looked down at the slumped remains of Brad Fogerty.
“Still want to give him the benefit of the doubt?” I asked.
She pursed her lips. “Billie, far be it from me to criticize, but shouldn’t we have kept him alive to get the override?”
I looked at the timer, still ticking away relentlessly.
“Shit.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
I doubled over, whooping air into my lungs. Helen stood back until I took a full breath and stood up straight, one hand at my lower back.
“Alright?”
I gave her a short nod. “I wasn’t expecting that. I should have stretched first.” The truth was, it had been some time since I’d wrapped myself like a pretzel around someone I was trying to kill, to say nothing of choking someone out. It’s more a matter of leverage than brute strength, but you always feel it in your biceps and traps as soon as you’re finished if you’ve done it right. Too many people think it comes from the forearms, but that’s a good way to end up with a bad case of tennis elbow.
Generally, I was good with my age. Turning sixty hadn’t sent me into a tailspin or whipped up an existential crisis. Aging in our business was a luxury most never got. But it straight uppissed me off when I came up against something I couldn’t do as easily as I used to. Every day I walked ten miles and did two hours of yoga. I spent twelve hours a week pounding my fists into a heavy bag and lifting weights. I popped supplements like they were Pez, but once in a while some little shit like Brad Fogerty crossed my path and I felt every damned year.
I dropped to my knees on the carpet and put my chest to the floor, stretching my arms out into puppy-dog pose while Helen surveyed the device.
“Billie, again, I don’t mean to sound critical,” she said patiently, “but is this really the best use of our time?”
“Helen, my lower back has seized like a son of a bitch and I don’t know what the rest of this evening’s activities are going to require, so how about you hush up and see if you can figure out how to disarm that thing while I persuade my vertebrae to be friends again.”
It was a cranky reply, but I was annoyed. Helen had been one of the best—cool, reliable, unflappable. And now she seemed well and truly flapped.
But she’d regained something of her old spirit by the time I’d worked my way through child’s pose and a few sets of cat and cow. I pushed myself to my feet.
“Thoughts?”
She shook her head. “You know I’ve always hated these things.” She pulled a face. Bombs were messy; explosives left bits and pieces of people lying around like so much litter after a Mardi Gras parade. Helen liked things tidy. She took great pride in the fact that she’d once drilled a mark in a stiff wind at eight hundred yards, so cleanly that she put the rounddirectly through the socket of his eye, not even skimming the bone. She’d been given a commendation for that one.
I closed the case, snapping the clasps. “Then we have to take it with us.”
Just then Fogerty emitted an unpleasant noise accompanied by a smell I knew too well. The human body has over sixty sphincters, and every one of them relaxes in death.
My usual remedy was a Brach’s Star Brites mint—easy to carry and not suspicious—but anything peppermint will do. I went into the bathroom and grabbed his toothpaste, dabbing a bit under my nose. I knelt next to him and went through his pockets. He had his crew lanyard stuffed into one but nothing else.
“He must have stashed his ID and money with his means of escape,” I told Helen. “We should get going.”
Helen and I exchanged glances, then she heaved a sigh and dragged the cover off his bed, snapping it out as she draped it on the floor. We rolled him into it, then maneuvered him into the wardrobe. When we finished, Helen sprayed lavishly from the bottle of cheap aftershave in his Dopp kit. I surveyed our handiwork. Anyone taking a quick glance would think he had left a bundle of dirty bedclothes stuffed into his wardrobe. It wouldn’t stand up to a close inspection, but it might buy us some time.
Helen took the case, tucking it carefully under her arm and draping her pashmina over it while I closed the door behind us. Helen and I made our way up two flights of stairs to our deck, careful to look like we were having a nonchalant chat as we went.
“Ladies!” Heather Fanning found us just as we reached my cabin. “Everything okay? We’re missing a swell dinner! There’s even a lovely rose petal rice congee for dessert.” She pitched her voice high, the way tiresome people do when they’re talking to anyone older than they can ever imagine being.
