I shuffle to a waste bin and toss the packaging away while the off-brand device powers up; my tail is next in line, making a big show of counting cash. I pull up the GPS app and input the coordinates; as I suspected, they're for an address in Rochester. A random house in the suburbs, it appears. A safe house, most likely, knowing Pugli.
Why Rochester? There's no answer to that—Pugli is unpredictable, paranoid, and an old hand at these spy games.
To most of the world, Roberto Pugli is an upper-level executive for INTERPOL—a suit whose work is done in a corner office at INTERPOL headquarters in Lyon. To some, he's a master manipulator, an organized crime kingpin too careful to let himself be connected to any of his nefarious dealings.
But to a very, very select few, Roberto Pugli is just his most well-known alias.
You see, before he became Roberto Pugli and climbed the ranks suspiciously fast, he was an analyst and operative for an intelligence agency… until his predilection for using his position to commit crimes became too obvious. He vanished, resurfaced years later as Roberto, and continued to be devious, cunning, and cruel…just with the might of INTERPOL as his smokescreen.
It's an open secret in many intelligence circles that he is a kingpin responsible for a truly shocking amount of awfulness around the world, mostly to do with arms dealing and human trafficking. It's just that he's too damned clever to leave any actionable evidence tying him to anything concrete.
Which is where Nicolae comes in…the man otherwise known as Lash.
But that's for later.
Right now, alarm bells are jangling in my gut. The fact that Pugli is Stateside and in New York is worrisome. After the events in Vegas, I'd have expected him to return to Europe.
If he's still here, it means he intends to personally make sure business is dealt with—said business being me.
More specifically, said business is what I know, and what Lash knows. What we have evidence of. What I personally witnessed several years ago — there are many reasons for my intense secrecy, and fear of Pugli’s retaliation is only one of them, and a minor one at that.
I put Pugli out of my mind for now—he's not going to be at that location by the time I get there, and I have a feeling there are much more pressing matters at hand. Those three calls to a burner, plus the thug tailing me, equal bad things for me.
I'm tempted to call Inez—Sophia, I should say. But then I think about all she's been through, and how she's just now finally found peace. Rafael is dead. She's free. All of my Arrows are free.
I don't call anyone. I know Lash is unlikely to simply let things be—he has even more reason to hate and fear Pugli than I do. Which means he's out there, somewhere, hunting Pugli.
That's good enough for me; Pugli is as good as dead.
But those three calls.
More than likely, he was putting together a hunting party.
The quarry?
Me.
A Yellow Cab squeals to a halt a few feet away, and a portly man in his sixties wearing an expensive suit emerges, phone clamped between ear and shoulder, jabbering angrily into it as he juggles shopping bags, a briefcase, and a paper Starbucks cup. I slide into the backseat before he can even let go of the door; he gives me an annoyed, puzzled glare before waddling off down the street, still awkwardly juggling all of his belongings.
"Go around the block," I tell the driver, handing him a hundred-dollar bill.
The driver, an old man wearing a Sikh turban, bobbles his head with a soft, "Okehhh, okehhh."
I twist in my seat as he pulls away from the curb—my tail takes a big bite from the gyro he just bought, sees me getting into the cab, and drops the tinfoil-wrapped sandwich into a bin and sprints after me. For a moment or two, I think I've gotten away. But he has his phone to his ear, and seconds later—as we're squealing to a halt at the next intersection—a black Suburban halts beside him, and he gets into the front passenger seat.
These bastards.
The light turns green, and we reach the corner. My driver trundles around, and we're stopped by an unloading cube van and oncoming traffic.
"Goddammit," I mutter. "Go, go, go."
"I cannot," The driver says. "Car come."
Oncoming traffic finally clears, and he guns it, the rattling old Impala groaning in protest. We swing around the cube van an instant before the arrival of another clump of oncoming traffic.
“Faster, please," I say.
"Okehh, faster. Yes, okehh."
