I’ve sent a message to Inez letting her know we’re close.
Broken Arrows are all currently tied up, she’d replied.Contact will be Taj.She included, rather than an address, a set of coordinates. Easy enough to plug into my phone’s navigation app—looks like a parking garage near the city center.
A prickling runs up my spine…a feeling I’m intimately familiar with: danger. Something isn’t right.
“Naomi.” I call her name in a low voice, and her head snaps to me.
“Yes, Silas?” She glides over to me and leans across the hood, providing a tantalizing glimpse down her shirt—I doubt she’s aware of the view she’s giving me, or she probably wouldn’t do it.
“I’ve got a feeling. We need to go. Now.” I don’t wait for the tank to finish filling; we’ve got enough fuel to get us to Cincinnati, and the prickling up my spine, the unease in my gut is only getting worse.
I re-rack the pump and twist the cap into place. I’m about to sling into the car when I realize it’s too late.
A pair of black Suburbans are rocketing toward the gas station, squealing off the road and into the station lot.
“Get down,” I snap. “Keep your head down.”
The SUVs brake to a halt behind my car at angles and all four doors of both vehicles swing open, disgorging men in black business suits and white button-downs, sans neckties.
One of the drivers ambles toward me. His name is Gennedy Karkorov; I’ve worked with him. He’s a bad, bad dude, no one I care to fuck around with. We were good friends, once upon a time.
“Corky,” I say by way of greeting—a nickname he’s always hated.
“That is not my fuckink name, asshole.” He grins at me, but it’s more of a feral baring of teeth than a real smile.
I pull my pistol from the small of my back. “I got no quarrel with you, any of you. I just want to be left alone. I haven’t talked to anyone. I never will. I just wanted out.”
“Is not so simple, friend.” His eyes cut to my car, to Naomi. “Your new friend is quite pretty. Would be a shame if my guys got ahold of her.”
“Corky, you know me better than that. Don’t bait me.”
He spits. “Come with us. Boss men have offer for you.”
I shake my head. “You, and they, have got to know I’m not coming back.”
“You are. One way or another, you are.” He glances over his shoulder at the seven other men, each one openly wielding weapons—handguns, the big silver .45s the Cabal likes to issue their soldiers.
I used to have one just like it, with my name inscribed on the slide.
“Not here, Cork. Not like this.”
“Then come.”
“No.”
“My friend, you know how this goes. I respect you, Silas. If it is up to me, I am letting you go. But I am not making this decision.” He holsters his gun at his shoulder. “Only one time will I do this for you. Send your woman away somewhere safe. Come to Boston. Talk to the boss men.”
“I can’t, Cork. If I come back, they’re just gonna put a bullet in my brain. There’s no offer.” I slide my Glock back into the waistband at the small of my back. “I’m leaving. You guys have got to know the kind of guys I run with now. You don’t want to fuck with us, Gennedy. You really, really don’t. We used to be friends, right? Just let me go. Say you couldn’t find me.”
He sighs. “I find everyone. Is what I do. You know this. They would know I am lying.”
“I could shoot you in the shoulder, make it look like I got the drop on you?”
“Silas Cabot would not miss my brain. You were always as good with a gun as you were selling our product.”
“No one’s perfect all the time.”
He grins—it’s not friendly. “I can’t.” Yet…I can see in his eyes that he’s going to.
