He released EJ's face and opened a tool cabinet. A cold chill went through me as he selected a pair of pliers. "Let's find out, shall we?"
He came back to EJ's chair with the pliers and crouched. He found the smallest finger and worked it loose from the fist the kid was trying to make.
"Kastelani." I rocked my chair, and the bad shoulder paid me back for it. "Listen to me! Just fucking listen. He's nineteen. Twenty. He wanted to play vory, okay? So I let him. But I'm telling you he doesn't know shit. He was the gate operator. That's it. Kid wasn't even fucking armed."
"You see," K said to EJ, not to me, "how he talks? On and on. A man who knew nothing would let you go. A man who knows where my property is talks like this, to fill the room, so that I am listening to him and not working." He fit the jaws of the pliers around the first joint and EJ's breathing sped up. "Be braver than he is. You called yourself a Laskin. Bleed like one."
"EJ," I called, but the kid's panicked eyes stayed fixed on the finger he was about to lose. "Evander, look at me!" Finally, he looked at me.
I didn't know what to say, or do, or anything. Hell, I barely knew this kid, and he was willing to die for me. It was wrong on every level. If he wasn't a Laskin, he was sure as fuck acting like one.
"Ty svoy," I managed. "You hear me? Ty svoy."
You're one of us.
K leaned on the pliers. EJ's eyes widened, and his face twisted in pain.
And then K stopped at the sound of tires screeching outside.
Kastelani lifted his head and shouted something in Italian. His two bodyguards drew their guns and went out the door.
The pliers moved away from EJ's hand, and I slumped with relief.
K stood up straight and dusted off his suit, looking at me. "Looks like we're about to have a few more guests. Don't get any ideas."
He drew a gun from inside his jacket and pressed himself against the wall, waiting.
I turned back to EJ. "Whatever happens next," I told him, low and fast, "follow my lead."
For once, the kid didn't argue.
We found the roadbefore we found the hangar. Two cars shot to lace under our headlights, glass everywhere, and men on the pavement lying the way only dead men lie. I made myself look, because if one of them wore Aleksi's shoes, I needed to know before my heart did. None of them did. Niko said a word in French I didn't know and crossed himself with the gun already in his hand. Gregori put his foot down.
The tires screeched as Gregori halted the car sideways across the end of the access road. I was out the door before the car was in park.
I shouldn't have been. I'd no weapon and nine fingers and a plan that began and ended withget to Aleksi, which wasn’t a plan, it was a prayer with legs. But I was out, gravel under my borrowed shoes and the cold farm dark all around, and a single lit hangar sat out across the open ground like the last house at the end of the world.
"Stay behind me," Niko said, coming round the bonnet with the Glock already up.
Gregori got out and went around to the trunk to rustle around in there like he was searching for something.
"That's my man in there," I said.
"And he will be very cross with me if I let you get shot. Behind, Fin."
Behind us, Gregori hauled out the ugliest gun I’d ever seen. It was long with a stock that looked like your standard Russian AK-47, but with a ridiculous flat cap on top and a belt of bullets that fed into it.
“Putain,” Niko gasped, eyes glittering. “Where the fuck did you get a Stalin’s record player? Those things are antiques!”
Gregori grunted as he finished assembling the gun and took up a position crouched behind the engine block. “It’s not the size that counts. It’s how you use it,” he said, and then with the faintest hint of a smirk he added, “but nobody ever complains about it being toobig.”
There was a shout in Italian, then the muzzle flash, and then Niko yanked me behind the car.
Gregori opened fire.
I'd heard guns. Six months in a warehouse, a flat shot to pieces around my ears, Aleksi putting three men down in a tailor's. I'd never heard anything like the record player. It didn't crack, ittore, a long ripping bellow that ate the whole night and threw the dark orange, and the front of the hangar came apart where the two on the door had been standing. Corrugated metal screamed. One of them just dropped. The other dove and didn't come up clean.
“Stay,” Niko barked at me like I was some sort of dog.
