I turn and open my arm to her. She looks at it. Then she looks at Renzo.
"Can I take your arm instead?" she asks him, pleasantly, as though the question is entirely reasonable.
Renzo blinks. He looks at me with the expression of a man who did not sign up for this situation.
"I—" he begins.
She slides her hand through his arm and says, "Shall we go in?"
Renzo looks at me and I walk ahead.
The venue is one of the older hotels on the east side, the kind that hosts charity galas on the upper floors and moves other kinds of business in the rooms below. Tonight it is dressed as a private collector's dinner. The ammunition trade has been running through events like this for three years and the cover is good because the people who attend these things have enough of their own secrets to make discretion a shared interest.
We take champagne from a passing tray and I watch Nathalie lift her glass and drink with unhurried elegance. After all, she was raised in rooms like this and knows exactly how to occupy them.Her back is straight and her chin is level and she has not looked at me since we walked in.
"Men are in place," Renzo says quietly at my shoulder, his eyes moving across the room. "Three at the east entrance, two on the floor above, Costa has the exit corridor."
I nod.
My eyes are on Nathalie. A man with a small bell emerges from a door at the far end of the room and strikes it twice and announces that guests are invited to make their way downstairs to the main event.
I start walking toward Nathalie, then I stop myself.
I turn to Renzo instead and I tell him with my eyes and the slight tilt of my head. "Go with her."
He looks at Nathalie across the room and he walks over to her and says something. She looks up at him and puts her hand through his arm again and they walk toward the door and I follow at a distance.
The cellar room is low-ceilinged and lit. The chairs are arranged in loose rows facing a raised table where three men in suits are already seated behind numbered lots.
The guests go in and find seats and Renzo brings Nathalie to two chairs midway and sits beside her and I take a position to the left where I can see the room.
The auction begins and I watch the door.
Our man comes in seven minutes after the opening lot. He is in a black suit and unhurried. He takes a seat at the back like a man who arrives late to things as a habit. He sits and crosses one ankle over his knee and then his hand comes up and taps his chest once. A signal so small that half the room would miss it.
I find Renzo's eyes across the room and he has already seen it and he gives me the smallest nod.
The man stands.
"Police!"
The room falls into chaos as chairs go over, people scatter, there are stomps on the stairs and the doors burst open. I slide the mask Renzo gives me out of my pocket and onto my face before pulling my gun out. The first man through the door takes the barrel across his face and goes down and I put the next one into the wall and there are gunshots from the far end and I hear my men returning them.
I aim and shoot at anyone who isn't one of mine who seems to be fighting back. The goal is to get the room under control. Renzoand my men are doing the same on the other side of the room and it is over faster than it started.
The room settles and three of the private SWAT officers are on their knees. Four paparazzi were beside them, cameras still around their necks, looking at the bodies on the floor with expressions of disbelief. After all, they were promised a scoop and had received something considerably more than that. They and the other SWAT men had blended in with the crowd at the dinner.
I straighten my jacket.
I sit down in the chair closest to me and I look at the kneeling men and I say, "Keller sent you."
"He just wants his daughter back," one of the SWAT men says. His voice is steadier than his hands.
I look at him for a moment. Then I turn and I look at Nathalie. Our eyes meet through the mask.
Then she steps forward. And then she drops to the ground.
Her knees hit the floor and she looks up at me and the tears are there, streaming, and her voice when it comes is desperate.
