"Now fill each glass halfway with water and pass them around."
A minute later, each of the four men had a glass of blue-tinged fluid before him.
"Bottoms up, gentlemen," Jack said.
Mr. Sweaty got sweatier. "No," he said shaking his head and staring at the glass like he'd been poured a shot of battery acid. "It'll kill us."
"Yeah, well, you gotta go sometime. Drink up; then I'm gone."
Dragovic snorted derisively, raised his glass as if he were toasting the room, and chugged the Berzerk. Then he hurled the glass across the table at Monnet, missing him by inches.
"I can't!" Brad wailed.
Jack put a bullet into the mahogany tabletop directly in front of Brad. The three executives all but jumped out of their seats; Dragovic was cool, though. Barely blinked. Under different circumstances, Jack could have almost liked him.
"I don't have time for this, so I'll tell you that we can do this two ways: you can swallow it, or I can shoot you in the gut and pour it in."
Mr. Sweaty drank his. He looked sick when he set his empty back on the mahogany. Brad choked halfway through his, and for a second or two Jack was afraid he was going to blow it all over the table, but he kept it down.
Monnet was the last. "Do you have any idea what this will do to us?"
"Firsthand. I got the dose you or Dragovic set up for Nadia."
"I have never heard of this Nadia," Dragovic said. "Who is she? Should I know her?"
"Then it was you," Jack said, staring hard into Monnet's eyes. He wanted so much to hurt this man. Instead he held up his free hand, the leather-clad thumb and index finger a hair apart. "This morning I came this close to hurting two people very dear to me because of you. I think you'd better drink up."
Monnet drank.
"Why?" Monnet asked when he'd drained the glass. "Why are you doing this?"
"Nadia hired me," Jack said, wanting to smash his teeth because Nadia was gone, maybe dead, because of this man.
"To do this!
"No. To keep an eye on you." Jack pointed to Dragovic. "To protect you from him. She thought you were in trouble. She was worried about you. She cared about you."
He watched Monnet crumble. "Oh, my Lord."
He surprised Jack by dropping his face into his hands and sobbing.
Jack reached into a pocket, pulled out the paper-towel-wrapped collection he'd assembled in the cafeteria, and dropped it on the conference table.
"For your amusement. Just remember the Law: not to spill blood. Are we not men?"
He enjoyed their confounded expressions as he backed to the door and pushed it open. He couldn't resist aiming a Parathion shot at Dragovic.
"Got any old tires you care to sell?" he said in the Thurston Howell lockjaw accent he'd used on the phone. "Oily ones, perhaps?"
"You!" Dragovic cried, rising from his seat. "Why would you do that to me!"
"Nothing personal," Jack said. "I was hired to do it."
With that he ducked out and slammed the door closed. Immediately he tipped the filing cabinet, letting it fall against the door, wedging it against the opposite wall. Then he ran for the elevator, praying he could make it to Monroe in time.
20
Luc was vaguely aware of what was going on around him… Kent moving to the door, trying it, unable to open it… he and Brad futilely throwing their weight against it… their panicked cries about being trapped.
Other words had a death grip on his thoughts… She thought you were in trouble. She was worried about you. She cared about you…
Each word, each syllable was a drop of acid eating through Luc's brain.
Poor Nadia. She was looking out for me while I was contracting her death. What have I become? What sort of monster am I? What brought me so low?
He raised his head from his pool of misery and found Dragovic staring at him from the far side of the table.
"So," the Serb said with a lopsided grin. "It is just the four of us again." He rose and moved along the table with a barely perceptible limp. The wound wasn't slowing him down. He pointed to the stranger's package. "Let's see what your man left us."
"He's not our man," Kent said. "We've never seen him before in our lives. At least I haven't."
"Me neither," said Brad.
"He said you hired him."
"Never!" Brad cried. "He said he 'was hired.' But not by us."
All eyes turned to Luc.
"You got rid of the Radzminsky woman without checking with us," Kent said. "Did you hire that man as well?"
Luc said nothing. He no longer cared what they thought.
Dragovic pulled at the paper towels wrapped around the stranger's package. They unrolled in one long strip until four carving knives fell free and clattered onto the table.
"Oh… my… God!" Brad whispered.
Dragovic picked up the longest and ran his finger along the edge. "Sharp," he said, grinning. He shoved the point toward Luc. "Want to feel?"
Luc gripped the front of his shirt and ripped it open, sending a button bouncing across the table. He thrust his exposed chest at Dragovic.
"Do it! Go ahead—do it!"
Luc was not bluffing. He was sick to his soul and could almost welcome ending it all right here.
"Don't dare me. Because I will—and your two partners as well."
"Don't even joke about something like that!" Kent cried.
"Who's joking?"
"Start with me," Luc said. "I don't care anymore."
It was something of a shock to realize that he truly did not care, and that granted him a bounty of wild courage.
Dragovic stared at him, his grin gone. "You will care when this bites into your throat."
"Stop this talk!" Brad said. "You can't get away with harming any of us. We're all trapped here until the cleaning service shows up." He glanced at his watch. "And they should be here within the hour."
"Right," Kent said. "You don't want them to find you here with a dead body and blood on your hands, do you? Even your lawyers won't get you off on that one."
Dragovic considered this, then shrugged. He tossed the knife onto the table. "Some other time, then." He leaned closer to Luc. "When you care. Because I want you to care."
"We've got to stay calm," Brad said. "That man, whoever he was, wants us to kill each other—expects us to kill each other. But we can outsmart him and have the last laugh if we just… stay… calm. We've all got Loki starting to run through our brains right now, enough to make half a dozen people crazy. But we're all intelligent men, right? We're smarter than Loki. We can beat it."
"Right," Kent said. "If we all sit quietly, saying nothing to upset anyone else, we can all survive until the cleaning service comes."
Brad moved to the far corner of the table and patted the chair there. "Milos, you sit here. Kent—"
"No!" Dragovic said, dropping into the chair opposite Luc. "I sit here."
"Very well," Brad said. "I'll sit here. And Kent will sit opposite me. That way we'll all be as far as possible from each other. Now: everyone be quiet and just… stay… calm."
Silence. Luc closed his eyes and listened to the faint hum of the air conditioning. After a few minutes he realized that his mood was lifting. He felt nowhere near as miserable as when the stranger first imprisoned them.
Thoughts of Nadia returned, but he found he could view them from a fresher, more realistic perspective. Absurd to blame himself for Nadia's demise when clearly it was her own doing. If she'd kept her attention focused on the task she'd been assigned, she'd still be alive and welL But no… she had to go sticking her nose where it didn't belong. If you play, you'd better be ready to pay.