Page 194 of King’s Ransom

He grabbed the gun, whirled and aimed . . .

. . . just as I grabbed a handful of concrete dust from one of my jacket pockets and flung it into his eyes.

He roared with pain, squeezing his eyes shut.

Then he just fired blindly, indiscriminately, not knowing where I was.

I dived under his gun hand, scrambling behind him and wrenched his Bowie hunting knife from Vasha’s throat, turned and launched myself at him.

I crunched into Garrett’s stomach and we both went tumbling into the side wall of the elevator. We hit the wall and fell apart . . .

. . . and there was the knife, buried deep in Merritt Garrett’s stomach.

Garrett gasped but his breath sounded weird. I’d punctured one of his lungs. Blood dribbled from his mouth. He was going to die.

I stood.

He clutched at his stomach, blood oozing over his fingers.

‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this,’ he coughed. ‘I’m better than you . . . I’m supposed to be . . . the world’s greatest detec—’

He slumped and his eyes closed and he said no more.

Merritt Garrett, the third and last client of Modern Alchemical Solutions, was dead.

But my work wasn’t done.

I went to the panel and released the emergency stop switch.

I made one brief stop on the way before I allowed the elevator to resume its rise to the roof.

With a soft ping, my elevator arrived at the roof.

The doors opened.

Uri was waiting for the elevator, with his pistol raised and aimed.

His eyes sprang wide at the sight that met him.

Blood and gore everywhere.

Merritt Garrett on the floor, a knife in his stomach, dead.

Vasha slumped against the back wall, riddled with bullet holes, her throat a grisly mess, also dead.

And me nowhere to be seen.

I was, of course, hiding on the roof of the elevator, watching through a crack in the hatch.

I watched as Uri hurried over to Vasha.

‘Vasha, moya sestra!’ he said as he crouched before her.

He was wearing his worn jacket with its sheepskin cuffs—the cuffs to which I’d surreptitiously attached one of Monty Woods’s tracking devices, the device that looked like fluff or lint, back when Uri had patted me down with the touch of an ironworker at Winnie’s mansion.

That was why I’d needed to consult the ‘Find My’ app.

It was how I’d known in advance that the Unperson and his team were here.