Page 135 of Shatter

Marc Laurent steps out into the sun.

Nice suit, nice haircut.

He's smiling, and there's a pistol in his hand, held low against his thigh.

"The prospect." He says it like we're old friends. "Right on time."

I keep walking.

I stop ten feet from him.

"Where is she?" My voice comes out flat and calm.

"Inside." Laurent lifts the pistol an inch. "Hands on your head, please. Turn around."

I lace my fingers behind my head and turn.

He pats me down and finds the Glock at the small of my back.

His hands move along my ribs and find the drive zipped into my cut, and he takes both.

His hands pass over my boots.

They don't stop at the right one, where Walt's old lineman's knife sits against my ankle.

"Clear." Laurent steps back and gestures at the door with the gun. "After you."

I walk inside, and the cold hits me first.

Then the smell, fish and bleach and diesel, so thick I can taste it.

He walks me down a long hall past a room full of steel tables and men in rubber boots who don't look up.

At the end of the hall, a door stands open.

Laurent pushes me through it.

A small, cold office, a space heater ticking in the corner.

And a man in a charcoal suit, standing at the window with his back to me and his hands clasped behind him.

He turns around slowly.

He's shorter than I pictured.

Lean, dark hair going silver at the temples, not one wrinkle in his suit, and pale gray eyes, calm and amused.

He looks at me the way a man looks at a delivery he ordered.

"You must be Hakon." Desmond Arsenault smiles. "The prospect who's been keeping her warm for me."

Every muscle in my body goes tight as a drawn cable.

She comes out first.

I don't move.

Laurent hands him the drive.