Seventy-Three

Michael looked at the woman in front of him and thought about what he’d come here to do. Whether she knew it or not, she’d just made his job a hell of a lot easier.

Pia’s gaze flicked upward, connecting with the guard again, before she resettled her attention on him. “I’d like to tell you a story,” she said, leaning forward, arms folded on the table between them, an almost wistful smile on her face. “It’s a sort of fairy tale. About a princess who goes to a faraway land and meets a boy and falls in love. This boy, knowing how much the princess loved her father, decides to travel to her kingdom to ask the king for her hand in marriage.” The smile soured and she sat back, letting her arms fall apart. “The king had no intentions of allowing this boy to marry his daughter, but instead of telling him no, he decides to send him on a dangerous journey to prove his worth. The boy agrees, willing to do anything if it meant a chance at winning the hand of the princess.”

She paused for a moment. “The journey the king sent the boy on was to another kingdom, this one ruled by an evil tyrant. This tyrant saw what the princess’s father had built and wanted it for himself, and he was willing to start a war to get it. It was the boy’s job to persuade him otherwise.” She shook her head. “But the evil tyrant would not be persuaded. He took the boy and did terrible things to him until the princess was certain she’d never see him again. The princess begged her father to rescue the boy, and so he in turn begged for the boy’s return. The evil king agreed. The father sent two of his knights into the wicked kingdom to bring the boy home … but while the evil king had agreed to return the boy, he never said he would return him alive.”

Michael could still hear the thick plastic beneath his boots, the way it crinkled when he shifted. Could feel the wet weight of the knife in his hand, blood dripping off his wrist while he worked it through the thick meat of the boy’s neck—hating himself for what he was doing but unable to stop. Unable to change the path he’d set himself upon.

“The evil tyrant kept a pet—a fierce dragon whose taste for blood was only rivaled by its love for his master’s wife and child … ” Pia tilted her head, a beatific smile, tinged black, playing across her lips. “Can you guess what happens next, Cartero?”

“I killed your boyfriend.” Michael leaned forward, closing his hands around the pen he’d placed on the table. “Me. Not Sabrina and sure as hell not the hundreds of kids you’ve kidnapped and sold to pedophiles over the past three years. Where’s your fucked-up fairy tale excuse for that one?”

“If the princess doesn’t get her happily ever after, then neither does the dragon.” She flicked her gaze upward, casting it past him. “I’m finished here.”

Without warning, something thick and unyielding was dropped in front of him and tightened quickly around his neck. Michael’s counter-moves, born from instinct and muscle memory, were fast. His right hand shot up, grabbing the belt before it tightened around his throat even as his left hand swept across his chest, twisting in his seat to drive the Montblanc into the meat of the guard’s outer thigh. Michael rocketed out of the chair before the guard had a chance to scream. He shot straight up, crashing the top of his skull into the underside of the man’s jaw, breaking teeth and cutting off his only chance to cry for help.

The blow loosened the guard’s grip on the belt, allowing him to pull it free. Stepping behind him, Michael slipped the belt around the guard’s throat, drawing it taut as he fell to the ground. Planting his polished dress shoe in the center of the guard’s chest, he gave the belt a vicious yank, snapping his neck in two.

The entire episode took less than ten seconds.

Pia sat staring at him, her smug look cooling into one of defiance and disbelief. She watched as he rolled the guard over to retrieve what he knew had to be there. A .22 with an attached suppressor was tucked into the small of his back, hidden by his gun belt. “Should have just had him shoot me.” He pulled the gun and held it up.

She glared at him. “But then I wouldn’t have been able to look you in the eyes while you died.”

“Best laid plans, right?” He shook his head, pulling the guard’s keys off his belt. “What was the plan—kill me, plant the gun? Make it look like I was hired to kill you?”

She licked her lips, a nervous gesture that told him that this was it. The entire sum of her botched revenge fantasy lay crumpled at his feet. “People know you’re here. If you kill me—”

“Let me guess … Estefan Reyes?” He smiled. “Trust me when I tell you he doesn’t care about you.” He stood slowly, the extended barrel of the .22 pointed at her chest. “Matter of fact, I’d be willing to bet he’s hoping I kill you.”

She must’ve heard the truth in his words because she held up her hands, the cuffs that secured her to the table sliding along her slender wrists. “I’m a defenseless woman, Michael. You couldn’t kill me three days ago, and you won’t kill me now.”

“You forget, I’m not the knight in shining armor in your story,” he said, thumbing the safety off. “I’m the dragon, and there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do—no one I wouldn’t kill—to keep what I love safe.”