Margo wrapped the baseball hat around Truck’s head. At least that’s the way it looked as the bat splintered against his skull. The meat of the bat spun through the air and rattled off a wall. Truck took a staggering step forward, absorbing the force of the blow. He wheeled on Margo. Blood poured down Truck’s neck from a gash over his ear, but he paid it no mind. Judging by the look on Margo’s face, she’d expected the fight to be over already. She dropped the broken handle of the bat and brought her hands up in time to partially block the snap right hook that Truck delivered like a comet to the side of her head. It sent her crashing face-first across a table, and Truck sprang forward, wrapping one hand around the back of her neck, pinning her to the table, while the other rained blows down on her kidneys. Margo was strong, but Truck held her down effortlessly.
Gibson hit him low, driving his shoulder into Truck’s ribs, trying to force him away from Margo. Truck didn’t budge, and Gibson felt sudden solidarity with the bug that had splattered on his windshield. Hitting Truck reminded him of wrestling with his dad when he was six or seven years old. Truck pivoted with a ballerina’s grace and flung Gibson clear. Gibson tumbled to the ground, rolled, and found his feet.
At least he’d accomplished his goal—Truck had lost all interest in Margo. That was the good news. Bad news, he seemed intent on putting Gibson’s head in orbit. Truck closed on him in the blink of an eye. A man that big shouldn’t be that quick. Gibson anticipated the same snap right hook, ducked it, but that only delivered his chin for the lefty uppercut that lifted him clean off his feet. He landed on his back and listened to cathedral bells toll, wondering who’d died. You, dummy, if you don’t get moving. His head popped up, but he couldn’t get his legs or arms to cooperate. Truck loomed over him, took a step forward, and stopped. The big man swayed drunkenly and shook his head. A mighty dry heave, and then Truck Noble vomited through his hands.
“The hell?” he puzzled aloud and dropped to one knee.
Gibson’s arms and legs came back online, and he scrambled backward as Truck Noble toppled forward. The three of them looked at each other. Gulliver down.
“What happened to him?” Margo asked.
“Baseball bat must’ve taken a minute to register.”
“I need a drink,” Old Charlie said.
Margo told him to help himself. She fetched rope, and Gibson helped her hog-tie Truck. Badly concussed, the big man passed in and out of consciousness. It took both of them to drag him to the kitchen and lock him inside the walk-in pantry.
“Go,” Margo said. “I’ll mind our friend.”
“Thank you.”
“Try not to get her killed.”
Gibson left by the back door, still wobbly on his feet. His jaw felt dislocated. He walked up a block before circling around to Tarte Street. He could see Deja’s men forcing open the front door of the Wolstenholme Hotel with a pry bar. Swonger stood among them but distinctly not of them. Gibson could hear raised voices but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Whatever it was, it wasn’t any too friendly. But it did make for a nice diversion. The back of the hotel might be unguarded now, but he’d need to hurry.
Gibson broke into a run.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
From beneath her hood, every sound had taken on an ominous dimension—the rustle of a curtain, a man’s cough from behind her head, the indistinct murmur of men’s voices. The effect was disorienting. Lea thought she might be back in Niobe. Maybe. She’d lost track since the massacre at the airfield. When Emerson Soto Flores had introduced himself at gunpoint, she’d been prepared to die. But the sense of peace that had gripped her at the airfield had faded, replaced by a sensible terror. Perhaps not dying had brought her back to her senses. The clarity that comes only when death runs a finger along your neck. She wanted to live but wasn’t certain if that was in the cards any longer.
The only thing she could be certain of was the ropes lashing her wrists and ankles to this chair. That and the compact Walther still strapped to her thigh. At the airfield, Ogden and her father had been thrown to the ground and searched, but she and her mother hadn’t warranted such treatment. From the way Emerson Soto Flores spoke, Lea didn’t believe he held women in high regard. He and her father had that much in common. She hoped for the chance to make both men reconsider their prejudices.
A door opened, and the room fell silent apart from the whirl of an approaching electric motor. An older woman’s voice broke the silence.
“I send you for two, and you bring me four.”
“I’m sorry, Mother. It seemed wise to let you decide for yourself.”
Lea recognized the man’s voice from the airfield. Emerson Soto Flores’s words showed respect, but the tension in his voice suggested that son and mother did not see eye to eye.
“We will see. How many did we lose?” the woman asked.
“Five. Tomás will not see the morning.”
“So many?”
“There were more than we anticipated. It was . . . difficult.”
“That is disappointing. Make Tomás comfortable.”
“He is.”
“And their killers?” There was a silence. “Good. The airfield is cleaned up?”
“The cars will be discovered, but no one will make sense of what happened there. The bodies have been prepared.”
“Good. Then let me meet the two extras you have brought.”
A rough hand gripped the nape of Lea’s neck as the hood was tugged free. She blinked and looked around, confirming her suspicion—she’d been returned to Niobe. She’d never spent a night at the Wolstenholme, but there was no mistaking the faded opulence of the presidential suite. On her tour of the hotel, Jimmy Temple had recited the proud history of the hotel and shared anecdotes about its many illustrious guests. She wondered now if, in the last century, there had ever been a gathering quite as strange as this one.
Her fingers were numb and had turned a light frostbite blue. She flexed them, hoping to coax blood back into them, but the knots that bound her to this chair hadn’t been tied with her circulation in mind. Beside her, Damon Ogden groaned under his hood; he’d taken the worst of it at the airfield. Her parents completed the row—four fools tied to chairs.
She counted six armed men spread around the room, many of whom she’d served at the Toproll over the last few weeks. Emerson knelt on one knee beside a woman in an expensive wheelchair with a plush burgundy leather seat. The woman was a lion, a proud dignity to her posture. No jewelry. A conservative black dress fell to her ankles. Lea guessed her age as sixty, and thought she might once have had a kind, maternal face, but the thick scars that bloomed at the woman’s throat, fanning up her jaw and across her cheek, had burned all that away. The woman’s silver hair, drawn back in a modest bun, made no effort to hide the melted scab that had been her left ear. Lea saw no kindness in her eyes, no signs of empathy of any kind.
“It’s rude to stare, girl.”
“It’s rude to tie people to chairs,” Lea snapped back, before she thought better of it.
The right side of the woman’s face smiled. “Who is she?”
“Mother, may I present Chelsea Merrick.”
“That explains her manners. Welcome, my dear,” the woman said, and gestured for the next hood to be removed.
The guard moved down the row like a hostess in a game show revealing the prizes. Off came Ogden’s hood. A length of rope had been used as a crude gag. That interested the old woman, who held up a questioning finger.
“Why is the black one gagged?”
“It was either that or cut out his tongue.”
“Who is he?”
Emerson whispered in her ear, and Lea saw her smile.