Chapter 44

“Fuck,” Chloe said, taking the words right out of my mouth.

I almost missed hearing it, being in shock myself, but she so rarely swore that I couldn’t help but notice.

“Shakespeare himself couldn’t have said it better,” Psalter said with a note of amusement.

We all remained silent for the next few moments while my brain tried its best to catch up. I took in the oxygen tank and the attached mask ... the fact that he was bound so tightly in gear that was clearly meant for kinky sex.

Trust Astrid to add her own little twist.

“He flew all the way from Norway like this, didn’t he?” I finally asked.

“Yes,” Psalter said. He gestured to one of his men. “Royal here is an Army veteran who served as a field medic. It’s not a comprehensive medical examination, but he’s quite sure that Roger is alive and well ... just heavily sedated. It will likely be several more hours before he wakes up.”

I finally tore my eyes off my ‘gift’ to look at Royal. “Any guess as to how long?”

“No, sir,” Royal drawled in a deep southern accent. “All signs point to him being knocked by something strong. If I had to guess, he still has at least four hours to sleep it off.”

“What would knock someone out for that long?”

“There are a few drugs out there,” Psalter said. “Probably Prolonine. Prolo isn’t something used in hospitals. It’s a black-market transfer sedative. I’ll let your imagination fill in the details of its primary function.”

Of course the crazy bitch would have drugs designed and used by traffickers.

“Okay,” I said, pulling out my phone. I dialed Emiko, and she picked up on the second ring. “Good afternoon, sir.” Her voice was soft and pleasant, something that probably came as naturally as breathing, honed over years of practice.

“Afternoon, Emiko. You remember that apartment project you did with Helen just before I returned from Europe?”

“I do.”

“Are any of those rooms ready? I have another guest.”

“I’ve had the contractor fit them with the same standard precautions for noise cancellation, and the windows have been replaced with reinforced glass. None of them are RF-secure, and the doors are all operational from both sides.”

“How quickly can we get those changes made?”

“I can have the locks altered within the hour. RF-shielding will take significantly longer ... twenty-four to forty-eight hours.”

“Go ahead and get as much done as you can, please. Schedule the rest.”

“Yes, sir,” she said, seemingly unfazed by the fact that I’d asked her to prepare a prison. One day, I would have to sit down and find out a little more about her.

She continued, “Shall I stock the apartment with amenities? Linens ... toilet paper?”

“Yes, please.”

“And how long before our guest arrives?”

I asked Psalter.

“We can have him there within two hours.”

“Two hours,” I told Emiko.

“Of course, sir.”

“Thank you, Emiko.”

I hung up and turned back to Psalter. “Okay. Do whatever you need to do.”

“We’ll fly him in. I assume we can use the roof access?”

“Yeah. Use the outside elevator.”

I glanced at Chloe. “Could you get one of your guys to meet them on the roof in two hours?”

“Yep,” Chloe said, already texting.

I looked back down in the crate. “Does he have a phone with him?”

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t find one.”

“Astrid probably has it. Still, though, when you get him to his room, get all that shit off him and make sure he doesn’t have something he can communicate with. There won’t be a Faraday cage installed in his apartment for another day or two, so be thorough.”

“Consider it done,” Psalter said.

His men went into action, grabbing the lid and sliding it back into place. One picked up a hammer and started beating nails back in place.

“How do you think Astrid was able to find him?” I said, watching them. “You couldn’t.”

I inwardly winced as soon as I said it. I hadn’t meant it to come out as some kind of accusation—Psalter had been an invaluable part of my team, and I was grateful for his work.

Luckily, he didn’t seem insulted. “February of eighty-six ... I saw an eight-year-old win a fishing contest. Hundreds of anglers with combined centuries of experience, and not one of them came close to catching anything close to the monster this young man had. It was uncanny.”

His voice dropped lower, stare becoming glassy as he watched his men secure the crate. “The moral of the story is that no matter how good you are or what kind of bait you use, sometimes the proverbial eight-year-old gets the fish.”

“That’s your way of saying she just got lucky?”

He leveled a stern gaze at me. “Astrid Håkansson is a woman of extreme wealth and influence, with a killer’s instinct. A little bit of luck goes a long way when you have the right tools.”

I watched as the men finished securing the crate, trying to decide how best to handle Astrid. I had no idea she would be this much of a complication after we parted ways.

“You fish?” I asked.

“No,” he said, over the sound of them fastening ratchet straps around the crates. “I was working.”

I glanced from the crate to Henry. “Not the kid...”

He met my gaze and laughed as if I’d just asked the most absurd thing ever. “Heavens no! I’m not a monster!”

“Right ... sorry.”

He turned his attention back to his men. A heartbeat passed, then he said, “It was the boy’s father.”

Wednesday, October 9th, 4:10 pm

Tara brought an arm up to block my jab and immediately dropped a foot between my feet, closing the distance between us.

In my time learning to fight, I’d realized that with shorter opponents like Tara, distance was my friend. I had longer arms and legs, and if I was on top of my game, I could prevent anyone with a shorter reach from getting close enough to connect a blow. Distance was my friend.

As soon as she stepped in close, I tried to regain my advantage. I backed away instead of bullying her until she backed out of my space. Those few precious moments spent regaining my distance gave her the time she needed to get her shoulder under my arm, grab my wrist in some kind of funky lock I was still trying to learn, and drop to a knee as she rolled me over her back and shoulders.

The crack of my body hitting the mat resounded throughout the gym, and my head reeled.

But not enough for me to lose my grip on Tara’s arm.

My free hand hooked around her neck, and I twisted, flipping her onto her back so that we were in each other’s faces, our bodies splayed in opposite directions on the floor. I rolled onto my stomach and tried to get on top of her, but she flipped herself onto her front before I could quite get there. She had just started to get on her hands and knees by the time I jumped on her back.

Now on top of her, I wrapped my arm around her neck and curled a leg around her thigh, trying to force her prone again.

And then my world was rocked as she somehow flipped me over her head, once more landing on my back.

Next thing I knew, Tara was on top of me, straddling my chest as she bared her teeth at me in triumph. My arms were pinned to my sides by her legs as she leaned forward and placed one forearm on the ground just above my head. My face level with her sports bra, I had to look up to meet her gaze. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she grinned down at me, damp ponytail dangling beside her.

Our faces were enticingly close.

“Give up?” she asked.

I could have kept going, but this session had already served its purpose. After discovering Roger VanCamp had been handily delivered to me, I felt a mixture of elation and frustration.

It was almost impossible not to feel some level of happiness at seeing my enemy delivered to me in a nice package, trussed up in a gimp suit. Unfortunately, the fact that it was Astrid who had delivered VanCamp to me on a silver platter sort of spoiled the mood. The last thing I wanted to do was owe her anything, and she’d already messaged me, asking how I’d liked her gift.

I’d needed to expend some energy and had considered looking for Jessica to give her a hard time, but ran into Tara and remembered that I’d gone two days without a workout, so I decided to do this instead.