Page 119 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
Moonlight fell through sheets of plastic. There were stacks of wood and piles of debris. The whole place smelled like sawdust, and King had spent enough time in a recently renovated castle to recognize a historic building under construction when he saw one.
He was just starting to ponder all the ways you can kill a man with construction tools.... Alex would have liked that game. He was starting to miss her—missthem—when he heard—
“It’s over, King.”
Footsteps on sawdust. A shadow on plastic sheeting.
“Maybe I’m just getting started?” King shouted back.
But Tyler’s voice was as dark and low as the night when he said, “Where’s the ring?”
King skirted around a pile of two-by-fours. “What ring? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” King was lying, and Tyler knew it, but sometimes you just have to play the game.
“I’m not leaving here without that ring, Michael.”
“Well, I’m not going to tell you where it is—for so many reasons.”
“Enlighten me.”
“Well, for starters, I don’tknowwhere it is.”
Tyler laughed. “Nice try.”
“It’s true. Whatever those goons gave us in Vegas... it didn’t just knock us out. We lost forty-eight hours or so—”
“You’re lying.”
“All the time,” King said because, frankly, King was in the mood to be sarcastic. It was like Alex was still with him after all. “The other reason I’m not going to tell you is... I just don’t like you very much.”
Tyler cocked his gun. “You’re going to tell me where it is, and then—”
“Why?” King cut him off. “Merritt wanted that ring burned seven years ago. Why does she want it back now?”
King was inching through the shadows. There was a heavy wrench not far away. If he could reach it... If not, there was always the gun in his hand. He was just starting to wonder if he could actually shoot someone he’d known since childhood when Tyler laughed again and, this time, it was different. Something in the sound made King freeze where he stood.
“Oh, I’m sure shedidwant it destroyed,” Tyler said, and King’s blood turned to ice.
“But not now?” King knew. He knew before he even asked, “Or nother.”
“Come on.” There were footsteps. The sound of plastic being pushed aside. “I thought you were smarter than that. The Great Michael Kingsley.” Another laugh, colder and darker somehow. “I thought you knew everything.”
And then Kingdidknow. He’d suspected, sure. But there wasn’t any doubt. Not anymore. “Merritt doesn’t need it.Youjust want it.”
“Very good. A-plus, Mikey my boy. Grandpa would have been so proud. And Daddy too. If Daddy were with-it enough to even know, of course. How is he? Still crazy? Oh. That’s right.He died.”
King wasn’t going to take the bait. He wasn’t going to get emotional and careless and sloppy. Or dead. King intended to be dead least of all, but that didn’t change the fact that his nails were digging into his palms and they were going to draw blood. But that was okay too. He welcomed the pain. It kept him centered there, rooted in that moment and that mission.
“Why do you need Viktor Kozlov’s nuclear option, Tyler?”
Tyler laughed again. “Very good. I knew you’d get there eventually. You might as well come out, Michael. You can tell me where the ring is, and then I can shoot you in the head.”
That time, it was King’s turn to laugh. It must have been the wrong thing to do—or the right one—because when Tyler spoke again, his voice was different. Sharper. The tone of a child who didn’t want to be treated like a little kid anymore.
“I can make you talk.”
“Torture?” King laughed harder. “There is nothing you could do to me that would hurt more than losing her.Nothing.”
It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t even an exaggeration, and suddenly, something inside of King broke free. He hadn’t just lost forty-eight hours—he’d lost a year. It was like he’d been sleepwalking and staggering along until he woke up in that shack outside of Vegas. Like he’d been half dead and it had taken Alex’s voice in the darkness to bring him back to life. Like—
