Page 81 of The Blonde Who Came in from the Cold
“Sleep, sweetheart. Sleep. You’re safe here. I’ve got you.”
He had her.
And he hated that, very soon, he’d have to let her go.
Chapter Forty-Three
King
King didn’t have a lot of time, but this couldn’t wait. He needed intel, sure. But, more than that, he needed to hit someone and this was a good place to start.
“King!” Tyler threw open the door. “To what do I owe the—” King’s fist connected with his face, and Tyler stumbled back, cursing and bleeding, but King just brought his forearm up to Tyler’s jugular, pressing hard and slamming him back into a wall.
For a moment, Tyler just stood there, blood running from his nose and breath coming hard until he smiled and choked out, “—pleasure.”
He gave a bloody grin, but King didn’t think it was funny.
“What did you do to Alex?” King’s voice sounded like how midnight feels, but he kept his gaze locked on Tyler’s.
“Alex is...” Tyler couldn’t breathe.Good.“Alex is... fine.” He tried to push King back. “Let me...”
“What happened to Alex?”
“I don’t know!”
King had the element of surprise and a whole lot of rage, but Tyler was still a trained operative and, in a flash, he freed himself, pushing away from King and staggering across the floor.
There was a lamp on in the living room. The TV showed a soccer game from somewhere in the world, but the flat was dark and bare and basic. It wasn’t a safe house, but it wasn’t a home, and King wasn’t in the mood to be social.
“What the hell happened tonight?” King kept his voice low, his hands steady. His grandfather always said that there are two typesof people when things go wrong—the kind for whom the world gets slow and the kind for whom the world gets fast, and King had never been more certain he was the first kind. “What did you do to—”
“I didn’t do anything to her!”
“Then why is her blood all over my front door?”
That time, when Tyler stumbled, it was because the words had hit him. “What?” He looked stunned and shocked and... guilty. “Is she—”
“She’s alive,” King ground out. “No thanks to you.”
Tyler seemed a little unsteady as he headed for the tiny kitchen and poured himself a drink.
“What happened?” Even King was afraid of how his voice sounded, but Tyler just shook his head.
“Viktor Kozlov happened.” Tyler found a dishrag and held it to his bloody lip, but that wasn’t the reason King saw red. “He’s—”
“I know Kozlov.”
“Bullshit!” Tyler shouted. “You’ve read the reports and seen the data. I spent the last nine months up to my neck in his filth.Iknow Kozlov. I...” The fight seemed to go out of Tyler, and he threw the rag into the sink, anger turning to guilt that was coming off him in waves.
“What happened tonight?” King asked.
“He was expecting some kind of shipment, so I set up surveillance to see what it was. Alex was helping me. That was it. Hang out in the shadows and try to get a look at whatever Kozlov was buying.That was it.But we couldn’t get a good line of sight, so Alex and I split up.” He pulled two beers from the old refrigerator, but King didn’t dare reach for one because, at that moment, the bottle just looked like a weapon. “I didn’t know about Alex... I didn’t know.”
King’s mind had been noisy since the day he was born, but right then it was tranquil and calm. He could seeeverything. He could heareverything. He knew how this was going to end because there was only one outcome he’d accept.
“Okay. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to give me the names of anyone who might have seen her tonight. You’re goingto tell me where they are. And then you are never going to contact her again. Do you—”
“That’s not up to you, is—”
