Page 102 of Sins of Arrogance

“Your tracker had sound?” I ask. What else do they know?

“No, but he I was on cor­ner duty when he came a few days ago and I could hear him. The tracker stops work­ing once he’s in­side the build­ing any­way,” Gjon of­fers des­per­ately. “It took Wraith five days to find the en­trance.”

“Did it?” Sounds like Wraith would have found it with­out track­ing one of our guys.

Which makes me won­der why he both­ered.

“Don’t know what the point of the stake­out and tracker was any­way,” Gjon says petu­lantly, mir­ror­ing my thoughts.

Once I’ve learned ev­ery­thing Gjon knows about Ilya Darakov, I ask him about Wraith.

“Who is he?”

“Wraith?” Gjon sneers. “He’s just a merc my un­cle hires some­times.”

“Let me guess, the times you go out on a mis­sion.”

“My un­cle doesn’t think I need a babysit­ter!” But Gjon’s eyes tell a dif­fer­ent story.

I switch the scalpel for a six inch long nee­dle-tip Dam­as­cus stiletto. “Who does Wraith work for?”

Gjon eyes the knife war­ily. “He doesn’t. He’s a merc.”

“Mer­ce­nar­ies have han­dlers.”

“If he has one, I don’t know who it is. He and my un­cle know each other.”

“They’re friends?” I ask. You can’t trust a man you get to turn on his friends.

Ever.

“No. Un­cle calls him a fa­ther­less mutt. But he’s use­ful.”

I bet he doesn’t call him that in front of Ranger Rick.

The in­fin­i­tes­i­mal change in Wraith’s breath­ing tells me that he knows now what the Al­ba­nian gang leader thinks of him.

“From the look of things, Wraith is the only use­ful man your un­cle has work­ing for him.”

“I’m use­ful! I told you ev­ery­thing,” the mag­got claims.

“That doesn’t make you use­ful. It makes you weak and a cow­ard.” I hit him hard enough to knock him out.

Re­gard­less of the com­pli­ca­tions that would come with killing Besnik’s nephew, I’m still de­cid­ing if I want to let him live. We have drugs that will make it pos­si­ble not only to make him for­get the past twenty-four hours, but to plant false mem­o­ries.

He could be use­ful in re­cruit­ing Ranger Rick too.

When I glance over at my fu­ture mob sol­dier, his eyes flut­ter open, un­fo­cused at first. Woozy. Then they lock on mine. Panic flares and banks just as quickly.

Un­der the in­flu­ence of the drug.

Im­pres­sive.

But his blown pupils can’t lie. The drug is still very much in ef­fect.

“How long were you cas­ing our build­ing?” I ask.

How pa­tient is he? And when did the Rus­sian con­tact Besnik?