His frown is puzzled. "How do you know me, madam? I have been staking out this safehouse for a week, waiting for Pugli to arrive." He says the name with a different pronunciation than Jakob; Jakob said it "Pool-ee" while this man says it "Pool-yee." It's a subtle but distinct difference.
"YouareLash?"
He nods once. "I have been called Lash, yes. These days, however, I prefer the name my mother gave me—Nicolai. Nico, if you prefer." He gives a sweeping bow: elegant, courtly, and archaic. "You have the advantage of me, I fear. An unusual turn of events. You are?"
"Brys Bennett." I watch with a heavy heart as the Navigator disappears from sight. "They have Jakob."
Nico's eyes lose any hint of warmth or kindness. "Not for long. I have tracked Pugli all over the globe. He will die with my blade in his heart before the week is up."
"Do you know where they're going?"
He pulls a smartphone from a back pocket, wakes it up, and shows me the screen—a blinking dot traveling away from us. "I placed a tracker on the car last night."
"So let's follow them."
Nico eyes me, nodding. "As you say. My vehicle is on the other side of these trees. Please follow."
I touch him arm. "Nico?" I say, and he stops, looks at me expectantly. "Jakob said Pugli did something terrible to you. He wouldn't say what, as it's not his story to tell. It's none of my business, but I just wanted to say I'm sorry for whatever happened. Based on what Jakob did say, it must have been awful."
Nico lets out a long, rough sigh. "Yes, it was. I appreciate…Jakob's…tact and respect, but it is no secret. I was married.I had children." The pause before speaking Jakob’s name is interesting; I wonder what that’s about.
He turns and walks into the woods, compelling me to follow; once I've caught up, he continues. "Ileana was my wife. Leanora and Leander were my children, a son and daughter, twins. Precious children. Just babies. The whole story is too long for the telling at this moment, but suffice it to say that Pugli trapped my wife and children in our home, dragged me outside, set fire to the house, and forced me to watch as they burned alive. All because I had evidence of his crimes."
I shudder. "Jesus. And he didn't kill you?"
"Not for lack of trying."
We emerge from the trees a few minutes later, on the far side of a municipal park. The trees form a border along one side of a soccer pitch, with a baseball diamond beyond it and an elaborate play structure area farther yet, nearest the road. A battered but serviceable compact pickup is parked up against the treeline a few feet from where we're standing, and Nico heads for it with me in tow.
He opens the passenger door and produces a package of wet wipes. "I think you will like to clean some of the mess away."
"God, please, yes. Thank you."
He has a long, black, military-issue bolt-action rifle hanging from a shoulder, and he lays it on the rear bench of the truck while I clean up, then whips a handgun out from the small of his back, and checks the magazine with the smooth swiftness of a man who has done so countless times.
He also cleans off the pistol I took from Moon-Faced Fuck, checks its load, and then disassembles it so rapidly it looks like prestidigitation, cleans it using supplies he took from a small backpack that had been on the front seat, and reassembles it—again so quickly it looks like sleight of hand.
He hands the weapon to me. "I will instruct you in its use at a later date and safer location. For now, keep it, but do not use it. The safety is on. It is loaded, and thus live and dangerous."
"Jakob gave me the same run-down. I could use some target practice, though…clearly."
"Jakob. That is still a strange thing to me, to use his name.”
I frown. "Itishis name, isn't it?"
He shrugs. “So I have been told. I do not know—I have never met the man.”
"But he's your boss."
"It is a long story. I shall tell it while we drive."
As if to prove that the bow wasn't just for show, he opens the door and hands me in as if the truck were a coach, I'm an aristocrat, and he's a footman. Chivalry isn't dead, after all, huh?
Nico clicks the cell phone into a holder, plugs in a cord—the GPS screen pops up on the dashboard, and we're bouncing across the soccer pitch to the main road.
"Nico?" I say, after a few minutes.
He glances at me. "Yes, Miss Bennett?"
