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“Fine. No, he won’t be able to trace it back to me. Or you, if that’s your real concern. We left just enough clues to point him in the direction of a rival.”
“That sounds like the perfect solution. And just for the record, I never doubted you.”
“Perhaps you should have led with that.”
“But winding you up is so much fun.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing.
“Where are you taking Vulin’s family?” he asked.
“Someplace Janic will never find them.”
“Thank you, Vesna. I owe you.”
“Yes. You do.”
45
Like most mornings, Janic started his day with a swim in his villa’s indoor pool. He was on his twenty-third lap when he heard something slapping the water.
He stopped mid-stroke and looked toward the noise. Orin, one of his lieutenants, knelt at the edge of the pool and waved a hand.
Whatever he needed to tell Janic could not be good. Janic’s men knew never to disturb him when he was swimming, unless it was an extreme emergency.
He swam to the end and scowled. “What is it?”
“We have a situation.”
“What kind of situation?”
Orin’s expression was normally one of stony indifference, but now his eyes shifted uncomfortably and his mouth twitched, as if not wanting to say anything else.
“What kind of situation?” Janic repeated, spitting out each syllable like a gunshot.
“It’s our place on Salata Road. Someone raided it.”
Janic stared at him, sure that he’d misheard. “Salata?”
“Yes, sir.”
That was the building in which Andrew Vulin’s family was being held. “I assume you are here to tell me it was unsuccessful and whoever tried getting in is either dead or captured.”
Orin swallow hard. “No, sir. Our people were all... killed.”
It took Janic a second before he could speak. “Everyone?”
Orin gulped again. “Yes.”
“The hostages. What happened to them?”
“They... they appear to have escaped in the chaos.”
“Theywhat?”
“There’s no sign of them.”
Janic grabbed the lip of the pool and pulled himself out so fast Orin had to jump back to get out of the way.
