51
HIM OR ME?” I ASKED. Nic looked too shocked to speak.
“Or both?” Piet said. “I don’t need trouble.”
“But you still need help,” I said. “Or you wouldn’t even have bothered to talk to me. Nic thinks you’re a joke. He ever make fun of your sword?”
The corner of Piet’s mouth jerked. Sometime in those months, Nic’s disdain had been noted and filed. “Everything you said is correct,” Piet said. “Here. Fine.”
And he handed me the gun. “Kill him.”
Final test. If I was a cop or a plant, I wasn’t going to gun down an unarmed man. This was the line that no one with a shred of decency left would cross.
What decency did I have left? I raised the gun; my head crowded with Lucy and the baby. This man had helped kidnap and assault women, shipping them into slavery. He was smuggling weapons. He was hacking into government databases and stealing information. He was trading in photos of assaulted and abused children.
And I was what—a courtroom on two legs?
I guess I was.
Him or me. And with me, my family.
I fired.
The bullet caught Nic in the chest and he fell back. Bad shot. It didn’t kill him outright. Sorry, Nic. He looked at me with a wrenching stare of agony and hate and I fired again and his face didn’t matter anymore.
I wouldn’t see it again, except maybe in my dreams.
I pulled my shirt loose, wiped my prints off the Glock, and handed the gun back to Piet. My hand didn’t shake. And for one moment the past five seconds seemed like a life that happened to another man.
“Well,” Piet said into the silence. He stared down at Nic’s body.
“Well,” I said. Well, well, well. Who was I now?
“Let’s get to work.” He gestured at the goods. “I like your ideas, but I’ve already got a load of goods to use as camouflage. You reinforced my opinion as to what would work best.”
Nothing like brownie points from the trafficker. I inspected the boxes. Counterfeit cigarettes.
“You’re going to ship your super-duper top-secret stuff inside illicit cigarettes that you then sell in the United States and double your profit. Two birds, one stone.”
“I maximize my efforts.”
Piet was much smarter than he looked. He gestured at the boxes. “About a million euros’ worth.”
I pointed at the shredded, destroyed microphone. “You better hope there wasn’t a tracker in there. Whoever he worked for will be coming when contact gets cut.”
“Which is why we’re going to move everything right now. The women, the cigs.” He turned to the twins and started issuing hard orders in rapid-fire Dutch.
How could I get the women to safety without blowing my cover? Right now, I couldn’t. The thought hurt.
I heard a soft ping. A door opening. I couldn’t see the front door from here: the boxes and boxes of illicit cigarettes made a labyrinth between here and the front door.
I was counting on the arrival being Mila. Which meant I wanted Piet heading out the back with me, abandoning the captives and his goods. “Are you expecting anyone?”
“No,” he whispered. We leaned against the wall. Stacks of boxes barred part of our view. He gestured at the twins, who took up positions ahead of us, closer to the door.
I saw a figure step into view. Not Mila. A thin, young Asian man, walking in, wearing an ill-fitting jacket and loose jeans. He had thick black hair cut in a bad slash; tufts stuck up like little exclamation points.
“He works for Nic,” Piet said. “Hacker.” For some reason he retreated back toward the table.
The Asian kid stumbled forward into the dim light and I saw he’d been beaten. Really worked over. One of the twins—the bald one—said, “Hey, what are you doing here?”
The answer was a bullet that sang out and caught the bald twin in the throat. He sagged to the floor. His brother bellowed a shocked scream and started blasting the boxes with his assault rifle. Puffs of brown powder danced in the air: the fragments of cigarettes, tobacco exploding into miniature clouds by the impact of the bullets ripping through the boxes.
And someone, from cover near the front, shot out some of the lights. I saw the Asian kid scream and run, and then he caught a bullet and sprawled to the floor.
Chaos. Near darkness. I couldn’t let them shoot back—this could be Mila. Piet ran around one corner of the stacked boxes and I followed him.
Ping. Another light shattered. One light left, directly over the metal table.
I saw a figure standing near us, laying a round down toward the remaining twin. A dark-haired man. Piet fired before I could react and the man toppled, screaming in English. Both he and Piet raised to fire and I yanked Piet back, out of the line of fire. I needed him alive for now.
“God damn it, what the hell…,” Piet coughed.
“These have to be cops,” I said. “Who else would give Nic a wire like that? We need to get the hell out.”
We ran and an explosion of bullets tore through the cardboard maze.