Li moaned weakly, which was a good sign. At least, from Slaton’s point of view.
Head blows were a delicately nuanced art. Hit a guy too hard, and you got a brain bleed and death. Don’t hit him hard enough, and you’d just piss him off. Slaton had metered his blow with the Benelli just about right. He’d stunned Li, but he had never lost consciousness.
After hauling Li from the inferno that had been his house, Slaton needed a safe space for an interrogation that hopefully wouldn’t take long. Ten minutes, he guessed, twenty at the outside. If he didn’t have what he needed by then, he wasn’t going to get it. Thankfully, the house under construction, where he’d set up six nights ago, was still available. And it wasn’t too far to carry a dazed hundred-and-eighty-pound man.
Best of all, at this time of night it was bound to be empty.
Slaton found a battery-operated work light as he entered the place, and after turning it on he hung it from an exposed nail. He deposited his detainee in what would become the main living area of the residence. High above was the partially finished roof; the skeletal trusses he’d seen days ago were now half-covered with plywood, and the remainder was open to a starlit night sky. Below, mirroring Li’s residence, was a lower level basement accessed by a roughed-in stairway.
All around were piles of lumber, drywall, and boxes of screws. A thick sheet of glass, destined for a large window, stood vertically on a rack near one wall. Food wrappers and empty drink bottles accumulated in the corners. A half dozen power tools had been left behind haphazardly by yesterday’s crew—implying they were owned by the construction company and not the workers themselves—and extension cords ran riot across the floor. Li was presently propped against a mortar mixer in a sitting position, his shoulders covered with crumbs of dried stucco. His eyes were open but not entirely focused.
Slaton would remedy that soon.
He worked quickly against a running clock that he himself had started. Three hundred and six meters away was a house burning to the ground. In and around it were two dead bodyguards, and two witnesses who’d seen the victims killed with a shotgun by an assassin in fireman’s gear. And of course, one fireman, minus his protective clothing, was probably also back in the mix.
Tick tock.
Slaton began with the five-gallon bucket next to the mixer. It was half full of murky water, no doubt intended for thinning mortar during the mixing process. He held the bucket over Li, tipped it slowly, and three gallons of cold, thin mud splattered onto his head.
Li’s arms and legs spasmed, and his eyes saucered open. He sputtered and coughed, his overwhelmed lungs now violated by liquid after so much smoke. Slaton bent onto one knee, putting their faces level. Li stared at him with the eyes of a man who was alone and afraid. The eyes of a man who understood the depth of his disadvantage.
Slaton knew that Li spoke English—it had been in his file—but he didn’t know his level of proficiency. He would keep things simple.
“Do you know who I am?”
The round face calmed a bit, rational words setting the world just a little straighter. Li studied Slaton for a moment as he contemplated an answer. “I think so.”
“Good. Do you know why I’m here?”
Li’s dark eyes assessed the room, wondering where “here” was. And probably searching for an escape in a place that held none. “You have come to kill me,” he said.
“Originally, yes—four nights ago. But at the last moment, I changed my mind. I had you lined up in my sight, finger on the trigger, when it occurred to me that you might have some very valuable information. So I let you live. Consider that my gift. And I gave you another today, when I pulled you out of a burning house.”
Li looked at him disbelievingly.
“Yes, I know what you’re thinking—that I’m the one who put you in these difficult situations. But that’s not entirely true.” Slaton gestured to the half-finished house around them. “The truth is, you put yourself here, Qiang. You and whoever is controlling The Trident. And that’s what I want to talk about. Who gives The Trident its orders?”
Slaton let that sit for a few beats, watching Li digest the question. He would be weighing a great many things. He would wonder whether answering, or not answering, affected his chances of survival. He would wonder if a deal could be made.
Slaton himself wasn’t sure. He had been sent to Hong Kong to kill Li, but the very source of that order was now in question. Had it come from a traitor? The same person, possibly, who had sent Thomas after him?
Li said, “If I tell you what I know, you will kill me anyway.”
“Probably. But if you don’t tell me, I’ll definitely kill you. And it won’t be quick.”
Slaton reached into his pocket and Li tensed. It wasn’t an unwarranted reaction. There had been no way to keep the Benelli when he hauled Li out of his burning house, yet the Sig was in his pocket. That wasn’t what he was reaching for. Slaton had searched Li carefully after arriving and, as expected, found no weapons. He had, however, discovered two items in his hip pocket that were disturbingly familiar.
Slaton pulled out a high-end phone and a battery, displaying one in each hand.
Li’s reaction was slight. But it was there.
“I was wondering about this phone,” Slaton said. “It looks a lot like one I was issued when I came here. The fact that you’ve removed the battery seems suspicious to me.” Slaton pried the back cover from the handset and seated the battery in place.
“What are you doing?” Li asked.
Slaton turned the phone on, and after it spun to life, he rotated the screen and put it close to Li’s face. The phone unlocked.
Slaton tapped up the contact information. There was only one number in the entire registry. It didn’t look familiar. Slaton smiled, put the phone to speaker, and tapped down.
Somewhere, a phone began ringing.