He doesn't look at me. He picks up my fake ID, turns it over between his fingers the way someone might fidget with a coin, then sets it back on the table with my photo facing up. "But it doesn’t matter. What matters is the message. We put his body somewhere visible. Maybe it doesn't scare whoever's running the operation, but the people working for them will notice? The small fry see a body and they start thinking about whether the money is worth it."
He says this the way you'd discuss waste disposal. I am logistics.
My heart rate, already elevated, goes into territory that I can feel in my fingertips and behind my eyes. The slick has stopped. Fear does that, overrides the arousal response, and right now the fear is winning comprehensively. My hands are still flat on the table and they are still not shaking.
"I'm not working with anyone," I say again. My voice is steady. I don't know how my voice is steady. "I can prove it if you give me time."
"How?" Novikov asks.
I don’t know. “I swear I’m independent. My car’s out in the lot. I’m at the Lazy Days motel, room 14 on route 6. You’ll find everything I own there.”
They look at me as if to say,“So what?”
It doesn’t matter. I’m gabbling now. “If I was part of a coordinated ring, I'd have backup. I'd have a handler. I don’t.Passcode to my phone is 1892. Look. You’ll find nothing. It’s notme.”
The two alphas exchange a look.
Viktor shrugs. “I still think we make an example. Doesn’t matter if he’s part of them or not. It sends the same message. Anyone caught gets the same treatment. It’s easier than trying to flag them one by one. I’m tired of doing catch and release.”
Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.
“I’ll help you catch them,” I blurt out. “Give me access to the data. The loss reports, the table records, the dealer schedules. Let me watch. I’ve been doing this for years and I’m good. I can show you the pattern. I can show you how the ring is operating."
I don't know where this is coming from. The words are leaving my mouth and they're not planned and they're not calculated and this is not how I operate. I plan. I calculate. I don't improvise. But improvisation is what happens when all your other options are gone.
The only way to stay alive is to make myself useful.
Novikov is quiet for a long time. The silence is thick with his scent and with the hum of the building around us and with the sound of Viktor breathing by the door and with my own heartbeat, which I can hear in my ears, too fast and too loud.
"Viktor," Novikov says, without looking away from me. "Give us the room."
Something passes between them.
"Dom," Viktor says. Just the one word. A warning compressed into a single syllable.
"The room," Novikov repeats.
A pause. Then the door opens, and closes, and Viktor is gone and I am alone with Dominic Novikov in a windowless room.
My stomach is a fist. The slick has returned, because apparently my body has decided that fear is no longer thedominant signal and has switched back to the other thing. Every cell I own is leaning toward this man like iron toward a magnet.
"The Bureau matched us years ago," he says. "You registered, you got the notification, and you disappeared. I got the same notification. I didn't disappear."
I am going to be sick. I am not going to be sick.
"That's a separate issue," I say.
"I’m not so sure. It would be stupid of me to believe it’s coincidence."
"It is."
He studies me, then says. "You have a choice. Viktor wants to make an example of you. The business case is sound. We need to send a message, and you're the most convenient message available."
He says this without inflection, as if he's describing a supply chain issue. Which, from his perspective, I suppose he is.
"The alternative is that you're telling the truth. You're independent, you're smart enough to be useful, and the offer you just made is genuine." He pauses. "If it is, then killing you would be a waste of a very good brain."
"I need to think about which option makes more sense," he says. "You're going to stay here tonight while I think it over."
