Elizabeth got the call from Danny less than twenty minutes after she hung up with Dylan. News travels fast. Bad news even faster.
So much for her Christmas shopping. She’d been sitting and staring at her phone in a Starbucks, waiting for Danny’s number to pop up. She hated Starbucks. She hated the tone of his voice even more when she answered.
“We need to talk,” he said.
“I know.”
“In person.”
“Yeah, I know.”
She offered to go to him, but he was in the office, the one place they couldn’t talk. He left his desk, grabbed a cab, and came to her.
There were two things she noticed when he walked in and spotted her at a corner table. First, he looked as angry as he sounded over the phone. Second, he was still really good looking when he was angry.
“So you already spoke to Dylan,” he said, sitting down across from her.
“And you’ve obviously spoken to Grigoryev,” she said. “I’m really sorry. This is all my fault.”
“You’re right, it is.” But he could only keep his stone face for a couple of seconds. He shook his head, even cracking a slight smile. “Damn,” he said. “You’re really hard to be mad at. It’s not fair. You suck, you know that?”
It was the nicest thing anyone had said to Elizabeth in years. At least, it felt that way to her. “Thanks for coming to meet me,” she said. “And I am really sorry.”
“It’s no more your fault than mine.”
“No good deed, right?”
“Yeah. Now we just have to see about the punishment,” he said.
“What did Grigoryev tell you?”
“He said what happened. His version, of course. Although I suspect it’s very similar to what Dylan told you.”
“Is that it?” she asked.
“Oh, and he added that only two other people have ever pointed a gun at him in his entire life, and they both ended up very, very dead.”
“What did you say in return?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“We didn’t actually talk,” said Danny. “This was all in a very, very pissed-off message. When he called I just had a feeling I shouldn’t pick up.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Us? Well, Grigoryev doesn’t want to kill you or me.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m sure he wants to kill Dylan, and I’m not sure I can stop him.”
“But we have to,” she said. “We absolutely have to.”
“It won’t be for a lack of trying, I promise. There’s only so many cards to play with a guy like Grigoryev, but I did buy us a little time with him.”
“How?”
“A text,” he said. “I told him to give me until tomorrow morning because there’s something extremely important he needs to know before he does anything rash.”
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know yet, but it’s going to start with what you’re about to tell me.”
Elizabeth knew what he meant. Danny had done her the favor, setting up the meeting with Grigoryev, based solely on trust. He never asked her why Dylan needed to meet with a Russian gangster. If Elizabeth vouched for Dylan, that was good enough for him.
Now, as the saying goes, the situation on the ground had changed.
“How much do you want to hear?” she asked.
Danny folded his arms on the table. “Let’s start with everything.”
Elizabeth drew a deep breath and sighed. “You know those things that you think you want to know, only to later realize once you know them that you were better off not knowing them in the first place? This might be one of those things.”
“I understand,” he said. “Now tell me anyway.”