Two large men hustled Georg into the room. The man’s face was battered, his lip split. Older bruises decorated him as well, relics from his fight with Val in the hotel blooming under both his eyes, purple and blue. His teeth were clenched, except for the gaps where two of them had been knocked out by Val in the hotel. His eyes were wild with rage.
There had to be some way that Tam could turn this new wrinkle to her advantage, but if there was, she could not see it. She was too scared, too crazed with pain to crunch the data.
“There she is, Georg,” the old man crooned. “Your heart’s desire. The woman who plotted your best friend’s murder. But perhaps he was not quite such a friend as we all thought, eh?”
Georg’s thin, scabbed lips drew back like a snarling dog’s.
No. This could not possibly help, she concluded bleakly. Georg was bound hand and foot, a gun to his head. As badly off as she was herself. No, she needed a miracle. On the scale of an earthquake, a volcano, a tornado, a bomb, a meteor—
“Ey!” Georg shouted. He sagged to the ground between the two men who clutched his arms—and the room exploded.
Windows shattered with an enormous crash and glass flew, peppering her face and body with stinging shards. The mirror exploded and toppled backward. One of the men who had been holding Georg was hurled down onto his back. His jaw was torn away, a red, raw mess of torn meat, white glints from shattered bone and teeth showing through. He pawed at himself, eyes white-rimmed, rolling with panic.
Bam. The other man holding Georg clapped his hand to his throat. Blood jetted, black in the candlelight. It gushed through his fingers. His gun thudded to the carpet. He toppled, bounced, lay still.
The sudden silence was deafening. Georg sat up in a leisurely, unhurried way. He reached for the nearest gun, scanning the room through narrowed eyes. Cold air swirled through the empty window frames. The flames in the candelabra flared hellishly high. Tam watched the tableau, soul shaking with shock…and astonished hope.
Novak was curled on the ground, shaking. Blood spread quickly beneath his wasted body. His hand was pressed to his midriff. Gut shot.
Good, she thought viciously. Die in agony, scum.
Georg aimed the gun at the man whose jaw had been shot off.
“So you are the one,” he said. “Traitor and spy. I had to let all of my men be killed in order to identify you, Ferenc. This grieves me.”
The man gurgled, eyes bugging over his shattered lower face.
“I told the sniper to aim for your mouth,” Georg told him. “I thought it appropriate. Don’t you?”
Blood sprayed as the man shook his head. He clutched at Georg’s leg. Georg kicked him away. “The real punishment would be to leave you alive with that face,” Georg said. “But alas, it is not practical.”
He pulled the trigger. Bam. The contents of the man’s skull exploded from the back in a pink, splattering fan, over the carpet, wall.
Black-clad men bulked up with Kevlar, masked with helmets and bristling with equipment and weaponry were sliding into the room like shadows. One through the door and two through the space where the windows had been. Broken glass glittered everywhere.
Georg bent over to Novak’s shriveled form. He slid the barrel of the gun into the old man’s gaping mouth and jerked his face up with it.
“You’re not the only one who had an inside man,” he said. “I had one, too. Someone to take out your security at just the right moment. You got soft, old man. Complacent. Now you die, and I’ll take back my toy. And everything else you have, as well. It’s mine now. All mine.”
Novak struggled to speak. Georg jabbed the gun sharply, knocking the old man to the ground again. Then Georg turned and looked at Tam. That persistent white froth of bubbly spit dangled from his grimacing lips. His eyes dragged over her, lit up with unholy lust.
He licked his wet, foamy lips and started toward her.
Chapter
28
The first sentry’s eyes barely had time to widen before Val grabbed the side of his head, whipped it down, and smashed the man’s temple into his jerked up knee. The sentry thudded to the floor. A swift, brutal kick to the nose to make sure he was out, and Val darted on.
He felt a detached sense of unreality to be slipping through the corridors of this hellish place again. The palace was drafty and cold, with a pervasive stench of damp and mold. He’d found the place crushingly depressing when forced to live and work there in his youth, like the dismal castle of an absentee vampire. He almost expected to run into himself as he passed silently by the mildewed library with its treasure trove of rotting antique books.
He stopped, listened. Heartbeat slowing, time slowing. Battle ready.
A sentry rounded the corner. Val jabbed a punch into his face, grabbed his neck. A headbutt, an elbow raked across the the throat, a knee jab to the groin, and the man was felled. In relative silence, but for the grunts and thuds.
He froze in an agony of indecision at the top of the staircase.
Crash, gunshots, glass shattering. The noise broke his paralysis. He sprinted down the stairs. The Saints Salon, then. Novak’s favorite room with its baroque splendor and its creepy frescoes. Typical.
Georg had arrived and made his move. It was about fucking time. He experienced a flash of what almost amounted to warmth for the bloodsucking freak. Not that it would keep Val from killing the man at the first opportunity.
He began stepping over bodies, skirting puddles of blood. Novak’s staff, he assumed, taken by surprise by Georg’s attack force. Blood-spattered, water-damaged walls, and rolled in dark rivulets across the cracked antique tilework.
So he’d missed the first wave. Just as well. Not his fight.
The next corner he turned would put him outside the Saints Salon. With his sixth sense, he picked up the inaudible shush of fabric-clad thighs rubbing together, squeaks of rubber-soled boots against tile. The man turned the corner, whipping up his gun—
Thunk, Val’s knife sank into the man’s eye, before the shout had time to flash from the man’s brain down his nerve fibers to his throat.
He staggered, fell. Val sprinted forward and grabbed him under the armpits, dragging him out of sight of anyone around the corner.
Black-clad, heavy, slung with gear. The dead man was shorter and slighter, but the bulky vest might camouflage that for the brief moment that mattered. He whipped the helmet off the dead man—and gasped in a short, shocked breath. Staring at the corpse.
Cristo. He knew this man. Knew his name. A PSS agent, young, hired less than five years ago. Efficient, capable. Professional.
Val dragged his eyes from the accusing gaze of the pale, staring blue eye that remained. Unfortunate, but if he had not killed, he would have been killed, and Tamar had no time for moral ambiguity.
This man had made his choice. He had known the risks.
The fastenings of the Kevlar vest made a loud scritch as he wrenched them loose. He stilled, ready to shoot whoever might poke his head around the corner to investigate.
Seconds ticked by. Nothing. No one.
He donned the vest, ignoring the blood that stained it, put on the helmet, strapped on the chin guard. He angled his head for maximum shadow on his face and walked toward the other black-clad man stationed in front of the Saints Salon.
A gun crashed from inside. The man turned to look, distracted.
Val