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It was time to go. Standing, I forced my pleasant smile back into place. “Thank you for the tea. I’ll be back on Friday. Good luck with the sale.”
The professor didn’t get up. He didn’t make any acknowledgment at all. He just sat there, hunched over and broken, so I left him there in his office. The shop front was all locked up, but I’d spotted the back door in the warehouse on the way up, so instead I went that way, smacking the push lever and emerging out into the reversing slipway for delivery vehicles.
I followed the slip road around aimlessly, not really caring where it led, so long as it was away from Wild Frontier.
The whole encounter had left me feeling strangely deflated and hollow. I usually enjoyed this sort of job. There was a strange sense of fulfilment in it, knowing you’d given a blind man a light to see with and shown him the path. It could even be fun smashing down their delusions of grandeur and importance.
There wasn’t any fun in threatening old and desperate men.
In New York, this had never been a problem. Don DeCampo had never lent a man more than he could afford to borrow, and if some fool had got himself so deep in the red, he would come begging the Don for a favour. It had always been so easy to settle. No money lender would dare refuse the Don, for fear me and my brother would come to his door one night to make him see sense.
But here, there were no civilised rules. Men like Mr Ritter would lend money to anyone, and then came to me to get it back. As if I could get blood from a stone.
“Please. I just need more time…” Riley’s desperate plea haunted my steps.
I might as well have been a thug with a bat.
My threat had been strong, but necessary. Riley thought he couldn’t do it. If you thought you couldn’t do something, you wouldn’t try, but put the fear into a man, make him desperate, and he could do the impossible. It worked, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.
Well, Riley was scared now. I just had to hope he didn’t disappoint me. Or I’d be obliged to break his legs.
After all, a man was only as good as his word.
Don DeCampo had been particularly fond of that expression and had drilled that lesson into his sons. He had always said, all we have in this world is our word and our balls. Without this, we are little more than beasts and Russians.
At the thought of Russians, my thoughts jumped back to the events at the Beached Whale, and my stomach gave a conspicuous rumble as I pictured my unfinished burger on the table. I couldn’t help but grin at the thought of what that girl might do if I turned up to collect the doggy bag.
It was true what they said. You really shouldn’t shit where you eat.
They’d probably let me back in after a few weeks, once everything had blown over. Debra might even put in a good word for me. She’d seen everything after all and knew I wasn’t usually trouble, but for now I’d best play it safe and stay scarce. Discretion was the better part of valour after all, and I had enough on my plate without Roy and his mates looking for a rematch.
Warm light from the street lamps burned up ahead as the road curved around and down between Wild Frontiers and whatever store was next door, emerging out into the car park. Following the sidewalk, I looked up, saw the broad body of a silhouette walking the other way, and froze.
I felt like I was back there, that night, in my bedroom above my parents’ shop in Brighton Beach, all those years ago. Once again, those icy fingers crept down my spine, just as they had when the monster came to my door.
Sabor!
The name was on my lips before I could dismiss it. Sabor was long dead. I had killed him five years ago. Anyway, this body was also far too short. Alexi’s favourite enforcer had been a giant and an enormous beast of a man, all muscle and tattoos. No, it couldn’t be him. But then why did I have this feeling like I was a deer? A deer that had just seen the hounds come bounding out of the bush at the hunter’s whistle.
Head down, I pushed on through the sudden discomfort and kept moving, yet I couldn’t help glancing around. No new cars on site, so where the fuck had this guy come from? And where was he going? No bags in hand, so he wasn’t out for a bit of evening shopping, and he certainly wasn’t dressed for an evening stroll. That fancy overcoat would certainly keep the worst of any chill off, but under it he wore a tailored three-piece suit. A high end tailor too, the sort you find on Savile Row, not the joint along Port Angeles main that would cut your keys for you while you wait.
There was something else, too. His movements weren’t right. There was just something about the way he walked as he stalked closer to me. It didn’t suit him. Like he was restraining himself, preparing, but preparing for what?
I shifted focus to his face as I drew closer, hard jaw rough with a few days’ growth, dark hair cut short, pale skin and Slavic features. He was looking my way, but his eyes, a hard ice blue even in the low light from the nearby streetlamps, were not on me. Watching, but not looking, careful not to hint what he was about to–fuck!
I didn’t know this man. He didn’t have any distinguishing features or markings I recognised. He could have been anyone from anywhere. Yet the one most important lesson life can teach is to trust that little voice in the back of our heads. Mine had saved my life more than once, and now it was screaming at me to get the hell out of dodge. This guy was a player. A Russian player, and I’d been made.
Only it was way too late for me to do anything about it.
Shit! Could this be one of Alexi’s men? No, Alexi would have sent a hit team. After what I’d done to his men last time, he would have wanted to make sure he got me, but if not Alexi, then who?
Careful to keep my movements slow, I balled both hands into fists, steeling myself to strike. This would need to be done quickly and in close quarters. Move too soon and he could throw down. Just because he didn’t look like he was carrying didn’t mean he wasn’t. That coat could easily conceal the bulge of a holster. That thought made me remember the gear I had stashed away at the barn, and my newly acquired knife sitting just over there in the door of the 911. All safely stored and of no use to me.
I’d really dropped a bollock this time.
Then the moment to act came and we were all but eye to eye. I steeled myself for the blow I knew was about to come, ready to return the favour with one of my own. Then his eyes flicked back to meet mine and instead, he and his overcoat veered to my right, casually stepping around me and kept on walking. I heard his footsteps tapping on the pavement, falling away into silence. It took all my willpower to resist the urge to look back. Instead, I forced myself to just keep walking like nothing had happened. Even so, I couldn’t help letting out a breath. Only when I got back to the 911 did I risk a glance backward and could just make out his form, still walking in the same direction.
“What the fuck was his problem?” I mused, climbing back into the car. I put a hand down to the knife in the door, as much to settle the screaming voice inside my head as reassure myself it was still there. It didn’t help, and I decided it was time to kick silver into gear and do the banana trick and split.
