Gone Tomorrow - Lee Child [151]
Lila said, “Take your shirt off.”
I said, “I will if you will.”
She dropped her arm ten degrees and put another round into the floor between my feet. The bang of the silencer, the splintering wood, the smoke, the hard tinkle of the spent case.
Four left.
Lila said, “Next time I’ll shoot you in the leg.”
Svetlana said, “Your shirt.”
So for the second time in five hours I peeled my T-shirt off at a woman’s request. I kept my back against the wall and threw the shirt overhand into the pile. Lila and Svetlana spent a moment looking at my scars. They seemed to like them. Especially the shrapnel wound. The tip of Lila’s tongue came out, pink and moist and pointed between her lips.
Svetlana said, “Now your pants.”
I looked at Lila and said, “I think your gun is empty.”
She said, “It isn’t. I have four left. Two legs and two arms.”
Svetlana said, “Take your pants off.”
I unbuttoned. I unzipped. I pushed the stiff denim down. I stepped out. I kept my back against the wall and kicked the pants toward the pile. Svetlana picked them up. Went through the pockets. Made a pile of my possessions on the kitchen counter next to the nine loose rounds and the roll of tape. My cash, plus a few coins. My old expired passport. My ATM card. My subway card. Theresa Lee’s NYPD business card. And my clip-together toothbrush.
“Not much,” Svetlana said.
“Everything I need,” I said. “Nothing I don’t.”
“You’re a poor man.”
“No, I’m a rich man. To have everything you need is the definition of affluence.”
“The American dream, then. To die rich.”
“Opportunity for all.”
“We have more than you, where we come from.”
“I don’t like goats.”
The room went quiet. It felt damp and cold. I stood there in nothing except my new white boxers. The P220 was rock steady in Lila’s hand. Muscles like thin cords stood out in her arm. Next to the bathroom the dead guy continued to leak. Outside the window it was five o’clock in the morning and the city was starting to stir.
Svetlana bustled about and balled up my gun and my shoes and my clothes into a tidy bundle and threw it behind the kitchen counter. She followed it with the two hard chairs. She picked up my phone, and shut it off, and tossed it away. She was clearing the space. She was emptying it. The living room part of the studio was about twenty feet by twelve. I was backed up against the center of one of the long walls. Lila tracked around in front of me, keeping her distance, pointing the gun. She stopped in the far corner, by the window. Now she was facing me at a shallow angle.
Svetlana went into the kitchen. I heard a drawer rattle open. Heard it close. Saw Svetlana come back.
With two knives.
They were long butcher’s tools. For gutting or filleting or boning. They had black handles. Steel blades. Wicked wafer-thin cutting edges. Svetlana threw one of them to Lila. She caught it expertly by the handle with her free hand. Svetlana moved to the corner opposite her. They had me triangulated. Lila was forty-five degrees to my left, Svetlana was forty-five degrees to my right.
Lila twisted her upper body and jammed the P220’s silencer hard into the angle where the front wall met the side. She found the catch at the heel of the butt with her thumb and dropped the magazine. It fell out and hit the floor in the corner of the room. Three rounds showed in the slot. Therefore one was still chambered. She threw the gun itself into the other corner, behind Svetlana. The gun and the magazine were now twenty feet apart, one behind one woman, and the other behind the other.
“Like a treasure hunt,” Lila said. “The gun won’t fire without the magazine in place. To prevent an accidental discharge if a round is mistakenly left in the chamber. The Swiss are very cautious people. So you need to pick up the gun, and then pick up the magazine. Or vice versa. But first, of course, you need to get past us.”
I said nothing.
She said, “If you should succeed, in a mad wounded scramble, then I recommend you use the first round on yourself.”
And then she smiled, and stepped forward