“Did you get a gun?” Chapel asked, trying to throw the servant off balance.
“Wh—yeah, I—how did you—?”
As soon as he knew Stephen was armed Chapel brought up one foot and kicked down hard on Stephen’s knee. By speaking to him, Chapel had made the servant look at his face, not at his hands or feet. The blow wasn’t hard enough to break Stephen’s leg, but it made him stagger forward, right into Chapel’s body, letting Chapel throw his arms around the servant in a bear hug that would keep his arms out of play.
It should have been enough to leave Stephen at Chapel’s mercy. It should have given him plenty of time to get the servant into a sleeper hold, just as he’d done with Michael. There was one problem with hand-to-hand fighting, though. No matter how well trained you were, no matter how carefully you’d thought through every move and hold and grapple, the other guy could always counter your attack if he had a chance to think about it. Or if he just got lucky.
Chapel’s kick had left Stephen falling forward. Normally an opponent would try to recover his footing, which would be a mistake. Instead, Stephen kept falling, in a trajectory that would have left him flat on his face if Chapel hadn’t been in the way to catch him. It meant his entire weight came down on Chapel all at once, nearly two hundred pounds. His forehead hit Chapel square in the chin.
The impact was enormously loud inside Chapel’s head. He felt skull hit skull and his already bruised head rang like a bell. The hit wouldn’t seriously injure either of them, but it threw Chapel off just enough that his bear hug weakened and Stephen slipped out of his arms, sagging to the ground. Chapel took an involuntary step back, his hand moving to rub his chin.
He recovered swiftly—he’d been trained not to let pain or injury slow him down—but for a split second, Chapel lost all contact with his opponent. Stephen was quick enough to make the best use he could of that brief window. The servant scampered across the floor, away from Chapel, grabbing at the corridor wall outside the billiards room and dragging himself back up to his feet. And then he ran away.
Crap, Chapel thought, as he watched Stephen’s back receding down the hallway. Without any more hesitation, he dashed into pursuit.
12
Stephen didn’t shout out as he ran. Instead he saved all his breath for sprinting. He ran like his death was after him. Chapel had no desire to kill the man—his only mistake had been choosing the wrong employer—but Stephen couldn’t know that.
The servant led Chapel deeper into the house, toward a hallway lined with narrow tables on spindly legs. Silver platters holding wine bottles and pitchers of water stood atop the tables. Looking back over his shoulder, Stephen intentionally hooked one of the tables with his foot as he ran past. Cursing, Chapel dashed forward and caught a glass water pitcher before it could smash on the floor. Maybe Stephen had hoped to strew the way behind him with broken glass, or maybe he’d thought someone would hear the noise and come to investigate. Either way Chapel needed to make sure that didn’t happen.
Up ahead a pair of swinging doors led into a space lined with white tile. Stephen dashed through the doors and disappeared. Chapel barreled after him, wondering if he was running straight into an ambush. Stephen had a gun, now, and though he hadn’t had a chance to use it yet, that could all change in a moment.
So as he pushed through the doors Chapel brought his head down, making himself as small a target as possible. He just had time to veer to one side as he saw a middle-aged woman in an apron and a hairnet right in front of him. She was shouting something, but he didn’t listen until he’d had a chance to straighten up and look around. It took him a second to realize she was speaking Spanish, and demanding to know why people were running through her kitchen. Chapel caught a flash of something metallic in her hand and he grabbed for her wrist before realizing she was holding a spatula. She had to be the cook, and she was no enemy of his.
“Stephen,” he said, hoping he’d got the right name. He tried to think of the Spanish words, “Stephen, donde… vaya… where did he go?”
The woman’s eyes were very wide and her face was turning red. She opened her mouth to say something.
Then a bullet passed through the side of her neck, cutting the air just to the side of Chapel’s cheek. Blood erupted from the woman’s throat and she made a horrible gurgling noise Chapel had heard before. He knew she was already dead, she just hadn’t fallen down yet.
“Jesus,” he breathed, as he threw himself to the floor behind a high counter. Beside him the cook dropped slowly to her knees, unable even to bring her hands up to grasp at her wound.
A gunshot rang out and Chapel realized that in the general panic he hadn’t even heard the first one. A third shot shattered a jar of pasta on the counter and dry sticks of angel hair showered him from above.
It seemed Stephen had decided to make his stand.
13
Chapel crawled to the edge of the counter. Beyond he could see some chairs and a table. No sign of Stephen. He risked poking his head out just a little further.
Two gunshots in quick succession dug up long runnels through the linoleum tile Chapel crouched on. He jumped back as quickly as he could, knowing if he was going to be hit there was no way he could move fast enough. He pushed his back up against the island and sat down on the floor, trying to avoid the steadily growing puddle of the cook’s blood. Strands of uncooked pasta floated in the red pool.
Jesus, he thought. He’d really managed to compromise things in a hurry. He couldn’t have been free for more than ten minutes. And now a woman was dead… he hadn’t even brought a weapon to Favorov’s house. His mission had been purely about talking to the man, finding out a vital piece of information.
Now he was a prisoner in the house, pinned down by gunfire. Even if there was some way he could overpower Stephen, everyone in the mansion had surely heard the gunshots. There would be plenty more servants coming for Chapel, not to mention Favorov himself.
The poor cook hadn’t asked for any of this. He glanced over at her body, lying in a heap a few feet away. Immediately he wished he hadn’t looked. He closed his eyes for a second and just waited, waited for Stephen to come around the side of the island and shoot him. But no—that wasn’t good enough. He was Jim Chapel, damn it, and he didn’t just give up.
“Stephen,” he called out. “Stephen, will you listen?”
“What the fuck do you want?”
At least he’d gotten the name right. It had been either Stephen or Michael and he’d chosen correctly. When his odds were one in two, it seemed he still had a little luck. “Stephen, I want to talk about how this ends.”
“It ends with you having a big hole in your fucking face if you make a move right now.”
“Got it,” Chapel called back. “That’s how it ends for me, sure. So I’m going to stay right here and just talk. Is that all right?”
Chapel expected a gunshot in response. Instead he just got silence.
“Your boss wants me alive,” Chapel tried. “If you kill me—”
“Shit, I’m already fired,” Stephen said. It sounded like he might start sobbing soon. Clearly he hadn’t thought any of this through. “The boss doesn’t like people who fail him. And I’ve already failed him—you got away. Shit! Fired.” He chuckled.
“Something funny?”
“I know who he is, man. I know what he used to be. I’ll be lucky if he doesn’t strangle me with my own tie.”
“He’s a pretty dangerous guy, yeah,” Chapel agreed. “I’m a lot nicer. I can protect you.”
“Yeah, right. After I just took four shots at you.”