Kenzie had always known these men would finally fix on that point. “The one that brings me Tremayne’s buyer’s location first.”
Cyrano nodded and Paul grunted, as if he’d been expecting her answer. Patric fired another question through his sidekick.
“Why is this man so important? The buyer of the Inca relics?”
“That is between him and me,” Kenzie said quickly, forcefully.
“And if I make it my business?” Cyrano growled.
Kenzie didn’t hesitate. “Then our deal is off and I go with Patric.” They were on prison rules now, where he that threatened hardest usually won the day, but he that threatened hardest must be able to back it up. Sooner or later, he would be called out.
“But Patric is slow and oh so fat,” Cyrano said with a chuckle. “He could not service a paid whore, let alone a sword-wielding goddess like you.”
Feet shuffled quickly. Men moved. Guns flew out of holsters and belts. Cyrano let out a huge guffaw.
“Ha ha. Ha ha. I am joking. Let us see what we can do, eh?”
Kenzie barely breathed. Even scratching an itch here and now would incite a blood bath. Tension stretched tauter than a high wire, thrumming in the wind.
“Seriously, you are not so fat, my friend. I have seen fatter. You see? I am full of compliments today.” The old man smiled as if the most stressful thing he would do tonight would be rolling over in bed.
Dahl’s hands were on his weapons. Kenzie had already decided which way she would dive when the shooting started. It just needed one nervous trigger finger, one goon who’d already snorted a line too much today. Cyrano tipped back the double whisky his man brought him, savoring the taste.
“My liver loves this stuff,” he said with a grimace. “So, Kenzie… what are we to do?”
All this time Patric bristled in a corner, surrounded by his men but still immensely visible. Sweat dripped from his brow. The sidekick, Paul, flexed the fingers of his right hand in anticipation.
“We should deal,” Kenzie said quietly. “With any other outcome — nobody wins.”
Cyrano nodded. “Of course. Except the police. Interpol. FBI—”
She stopped the old man’s prattle. “We came to deal. It is on the table. Decide now or don’t. I am ready either way.” She focused on Cyrano with a significant gaze.
Patric nudged Paul. As the room relaxed a smidgen, the sidekick brought his machine pistol up quickly, sighting on Cyrano. “If you move, old man, I will turn your brains to wallpaper paste.”
Kenzie fumed inside. Fucking relic hunters. You just couldn’t trust ’em an inch. “What is it now?”
“We want both vases and the shield.”
“Of course you do. You’re a fucking gangster.” She shook her head, now unsure if there was going to be a way out of this. She should have known better, being an ex-gangster herself. How often had she seen the spoils and gone after them wholeheartedly, jealously, with aggression in her heart? The same heart in which Dahl saw some kind of integrity.
Dahl now coughed and drew himself upright, moved his own hands away from his weapons. “I urge you all to remember that it is we that hold the artifacts. Our commodity. Our rules. We want the buyer, other buyers and the corrupt ties involved. I suggest the first man to get his ass in gear stands a better chance of winning.”
“Hallelujah,” Kenzie moaned. “And that should be man’s only motto.”
Patric laid a meat slab on Paul’s shoulder. The second man spoke as if receiving the speech through his subconscious. “You bring the English to a French bar? Are you mad?”
Kenzie knew it was a joke, but had reached the end of her tether. Her guns, one in each hand, targeted both leaders. “Fuck this,” she growled. “Make your decisions now. Deal… or die.”
Both men looked down the barrels of her guns and smiled.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In the aftermath of battle, a quiet peace and reflection reigned. Drake wished they had done more to assuage the villagers’ fears. Wished they had unmasked — or unclothed — at least one creature to categorically prove it was human. Just human.
But the illusion remained, as clear as natural water, that the black-clad figures were not human.
He shivered despite every facet of his training. He shied away from it despite every year of experience. Yes, they possessed arms and legs, a heart and a head, but normal people did not move and fight like that. They did not work as a horde like that. This was something… something abnormal.
He walked now in the cold light of dawn, following the bare trail back to Kimbiri. Alicia and Hayden were with him, and the old man Conde with three of his friends. The idea was to let the elders meet, discuss, and help with the solution. Drake’s main hope was that Kimbiri also hadn’t been beset in the night.
“We are grateful you helped Nuno last night,” Conde said to Hayden. “None of our people were taken for the first time in months.”
“We are happy to help,” Hayden told him. “Very happy. But you have to understand that our actions now raise a new question…” she paused, and Drake knew by her expression that she was thinking how best to delicately phrase her next comment.
“How will the mountain-spiders react?” Alicia said bluntly.
Conde stared at the Englishwoman whilst Hayden sighed. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t get it, old man, do you?” Alicia went on. “Right now they’re probably hanging around in their webs, licking their wounds, eating flies or something. But they’ve never been attacked like that before. Beaten away. It won’t stop them. It’ll make them come at you harder.”
Hayden held up a hand. “We don’t know that for sure. Alicia’s speaking from a soldier’s point of view. It’s what she would do. The creatures are a major unknown quantity, so we have to prepare for the worst scenario.”
Drake took in the scenery as they talked, which always lifted his spirits. Empty spaces ran as far as the eye could see; green slopes and forested hills, extensive mountain ranges and clear blue skies. He breathed deeply, savoring the freshness, enjoying the depth of silence that inhabited these lonely places. The trail ran ahead, undulating gently. He took out a bottle of water and drank, noting it was his last and wondering if there might be some fresh mountain stream where he could refill. Then he laughed at himself. Talk about getting carried away.
Alicia nudged him. “You with us, Drakey?”
“Yeah, just reminds me of home that’s all.”
The blonde snorted. “Really? Well, shit, I don’t see any power stations. Or steel mills. Or even chocolate factories, for that matter.”
“Nah, but I heard these hills are crawling with alpacas so watch your bloody back.”
Alicia narrowed her eyes as she studied the hills and mountains. “Nothing’s moving out there.”
“Ya think? Alpacas are shifty. They blend. They crawl. They can be upon you before you know they’re even there. The whole pack.”
“How come I never heard of anything as dangerous as that?”
“I guess you’re not a mountain girl.” He felt a moment of real concern. “On the other hand, of course, the creatures or their bosses or whatever are probably watching.” He tried to penetrate the far, high passes with his gaze. “And if the village does have a spy…” He shrugged.
“Nobody left during the night or this morning.”
“That doesn’t mean they won’t. They’ll play it safe. Fetch water. Hunt. Whatever it is they do.” He half-laughed, realizing he had no idea how the villagers subsisted beyond farming the land. “Of course, we’re being stupid. A spy would have a cellphone.”
“Not much service out here.”
“A satellite phone,” Drake amended. “Maybe we should ask—” He clamped his mouth shut, realizing he’d been about to finish the sentence with the words “Karin to trace it.” A torrent of past images rushed through him; images of people they’d lost and faces long gone. Kennedy, Sam, Jo and Ben. They lived only when he remembered them now, only when he let them.