“Did they say anything else to you?”
“No! JesusChrist.”
To Kane’s left, Fletcher pushed away from the wall, pulling his gun. “Try again,” he growled. “This time with respect.”
Harvey balked. “I’m sorry! No, they didn’t say anything else. Not to me, at least. I shouldn’t have let them pass, but I believed them when they said you weren’t going to be around much longer, and I didn’t want to get hurt. They would have killed me.”
“I understand that,” Kane said calmly. “Had you been truly loyal, however, you would have reported that interaction to me immediately. Did you do that?”
Harvey didn’t respond. It was no matter; they both knew the question was a rhetorical one.
“Do you know what happened to Cleland and his pals, Solomon?”
Slowly, apprehensively, the boy shook his head.
“I take it you haven’t seen them lately, though.”
Another headshake.
“Then you can guess what happened, can’t you?”
Now Harvey began to panic. His narrow face turned deathly pale, all the color leaching from his cheeks and lips. “Please. I—”
“Relax,” Kane snapped. “I’m not going to kill you. Neither is Fletcher,” he added when Harvey’s attention flicked to the edge of the room. “Cleland is dead. His cronies are dead. They’re all piles of ash in Roberts’s factory furnaces. You’ll do better next time, won’t you?”
“Yes,” Harvey said, little more than a hoarse whisper.
“Come here.”
The boy obliged, approaching the desk with a hesitant, unsteady gait. Kane bent to withdraw an item from one of the drawers, then turned it over in his hands with no small measure of disgust. He thought of the agony he’d endured. The barrel of a gun pressed to Zaria’s head. The shot that had narrowly missed hitting Fletcher.
Harvey gave a jagged intake of breath. “What is that?”
Kane studied the item’s tiny whirring gears, its needle-sharp tip. He could be gentle. Could keep his hand steady the way Ward had never bothered to. Instead, though, he shoved it back into the desk drawer. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” The words sounded tinny, faraway. “This is a warning, and you won’t get another. Do I make myself clear?”
Harvey tried to glare, but the sheen in his eyes subdued the effect.“Yes.”
“Good. Let it not be said that I am not merciful.” Kane heard the final sentence in a voice that wasn’t his own. A voice that had haunted his childhood and his dreams. He gripped the edge of the desk. “Fletcher? Take Solomon back downstairs, would you?”
His friend nodded, analyzing Kane with something like concern. When Kane refused to meet his eyes, Fletcher gave Harvey a light shove. “Come on,” he grunted.
They disappeared into the hallway, and Kane went to latch the door behind them. A cold sweat had broken out across his skin. Nausea lurked in the back of his throat. He rested his forehead against the cool wood of the door, squeezing his eyes shut, and took a deep breath. Then another.
It was no use.
He collapsed to his knees and dry heaved, his body trying desperately to expel the emptiness inside of him.
ZARIA
The night before the meeting at Mansion House, Zaria couldn’t sleep.
It was raining lightly, the sound amplified as drops bombarded the roof. The air was dense with humidity. She’d done her best to relax, spending far too long in the bath and then on her hair. It was no use—she felt jittery with anticipation, her heart clambering around in her chest as though trying to escape. She pressed a pillow over her face and resisted the urge to scream into it.
Unable to bear the stifling heat any longer, she rose with a sigh, then crossed to the window and opened it. As she made to back away, she hesitated, catching movement in her periphery. Her bedroom had a partial view of the balcony connected to Kane’s office, and there was somebody on that balcony right now.
Zaria was unable to make out more than a silhouette, but it could only be Kane. What was he doing out there at this time of night?
Well. If they were both going to be awake, they might as well discuss the plan for the following day. As much as she hated to admit it, she needed to see Kane’s unerring confidence. He was always so sure of himself, so sure of his strategies, that it eased some of her own fears.
