“You picked a good place,” he murmured. His voice had gone almost dreamy, the accent softening at the edges. “Look at it. The moonlight on the water. Like a road to nowhere. Waves to wash everything away. Footprints. Blood. Mistakes.” He chuckled once. “If you must die, this isn’t a bad last view. I’ve seen worse ceilings.”
The surf hissed in and out, in and out.
Roman walked around behind him.
One of the suits stepped up, hand out. A pistol lay across his palm, metal glinting.
Roman took it.
Hedidn’t say anything else.
He just raised the gun, lined the barrel up with the back of Vlad’s skull, and pulled the trigger.
The sound was a crack against the crashing waves around us.
Vladimir’s body jerked and then went loose. He pitched forward, face-first into the sand, limbs collapsing under him. The tide wasn’t close enough to touch him yet, but if it was given time.
Roman lowered the gun. He stared at the corpse for a long heartbeat.
Then he handed the weapon back to his man.
“Clean this up,” he said. “I want no trace. Not a shell casing. Not a footprint that doesn’t belong to the tide. When you’re finished, dispose of him somewhere appropriate for a rat.”
“Yes, Boss,” one of them said.
They moved immediately, efficiently and quietly, starting to circle the black shape at their feet.
Roman turned away.
When he faced us again, the rage was banked. Not gone. Just pushed down into the place men like him stored it until they needed it.
“Thank you,” he said.
He looked each of us over as he said it—Blackjack, Liberty, me, Valkyrie.
“You’ve earned a night’s rest,” he went on. “Use it. Tomorrow, everyone will wake up to a different world. Tesauro will wake up and find his Russian gone, his play exposed, his leverage stolen. He’ll makenew moves. But so will I.”
His gaze settled on Blackjack.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said. “Frequently.”
Blackjack nodded once. “We’ll be ready,” he said.
“I hope so,” Roman replied. “Because this was nothing compared to what comes next.”
He turned and started back toward the path where his car waited, shoes leaving clean prints that would be gone by morning.
We watched him go in silence.
When the sound of his engine finally disappeared under the noise of the waves, Blackjack exhaled.
“Okay,” he said. “Enough foreplay for one night. Liberty.”
She looked over.
“You and yours are welcome back at our clubhouse,” he said. “We’ve got beds, booze, and bad decisions. You can rest up before you ride back north.”
Her mouth quirked. “You trying to sweet-talk me into a sleepover, Alice?” she asked.
