Time to try another strategy. I locate the nerve where the jaw hinges, pressing there with two knuckles for two seconds, letting the pain blast through him before releasing. His breath catches, his eyes watering; he can’t fake the pain.
He blinks through it, then speaks. “You don’t need the Ferryman,” he rasps. “I don’t have a name. He’s the middleman, he brokers. He’s the one who set me up with the client. I don’t ask questions.”
“You asked one,” I reply, reading through the thread. “About the girl.” My voice is even and calm.
“He said no bonus if you die fast,” Marek says, swallowing. “He wanted to send a message.”
“Who ishe?”
“The Ferryman said the man who paid wanted a public scene,” he croaks, “Central Park public.”
Fucking hell. Then those weren’t Volkov’s men in the park. They were mercenaries.
Is Jack really behind this?
“Client name. Now.”
He says nothing. For men like him, giving up the name of a client is a career-killer. A moment ticks by as he tries to decide which is worse—losing his career or losing his life.
He sighs, his body slumping. “Winslow,” he concedes. “Jack. Through the Ferryman. A week before the park.”
There it is. The pieces had all been there but hearing them being put together is a game changer.
Anger boils within.
Jack. He wants me and his own flesh and blood dead. But why?
“Money?” I ask.
“Crypto. Wallets like nesting dolls.” He looks at his phone in my hand as if it might save him. “Proof-of-funds came from a trust. Old. Dormant.” He shrugs. “I don’t read names. I read the ledger.”
I do read names. Jack’s funding this with his own money. And that means he’s been planning it for a long while.
“Objectives.”
“Kill you. Do it loud. Shake your people. And if we could…” His eyes dart around the room, away from mine. “If we could pull it off, we were to take the woman. Deliver her breathing.”
“Deliver her to whom?”
“Different wallet. Different voice.”
“Different client?”
“Two clients working together.” He shrugs his shoulders. “Not the Ferryman. Not Winslow. Someone else. But I don’t have a name, I swear. The Winslow prick’s the only one I’ve met in person.”
Volkov could still be a part of this then. But Jack and Volkov working together? Seems odd, doesn’t quite fit.
I get the impression I’ve squeezed Marek dry. I lean forward, pressing on his brachial plexus again. He winces with pain.
“You leave New York tonight. You tell the Ferryman you were busted. You send him this.” I lift his phone, flip it to the camera, and snap a picture of him in the chair.
I type a caption beneath:Contract burnedbut I don’t hit send. I set the phone just out of reach again.
I step close, his breath warm on my face. “Or you stay,” I say, softer this time, “And you limp forever. Or maybe worse, depending on what kind of mood I’m in.” I tap his shoe with two fingers. “Your choice.”
He glances at the phone. Marek knows that if he chooses to send the picture, his career as a hitman is over—at least in New York. No gun-for-hire gets burned like this without his reputation tanking.
“Send it.”
