Maya Banks - Shades of Gray

P.J.’s gaze narrowed. “Don’t fuck me over, Kristoff.”

He laughed. “I have money. What do I need Brumley’s for? Besides, I have a lot of money riding on you taking him down first. So don’t let me down, eh?”

“About the guns,” she said impatiently.

Kristoff got up from his seat, pushed a button and the far wall revolved, revealing an entire arsenal arranged on the inside wall.

“Take your pick. We’ll talk price after you make your selections.”

P.J. strode to the wall, examined a few of the weapons and then tossed one of the rifles in Cole’s direction. He caught it and examined the M-16.

“It’ll work,” he said.

She then tossed him a handgun.

“I’m assuming these will fire,” Cole said in Kristoff’s direction.

Kristoff immediately bristled. “I sell only the finest arms. You won’t find fault with any of my stock.”

P.J. chose her own weapons then tossed another smaller pistol in Cole’s direction.

“Give us what ammo we need and we’ll be on our way,” P.J. said shortly.

Kristoff lifted an eyebrow. “We haven’t talked price yet.”

“Ten grand for the lot,” she said coolly. “Cash. American dollars.”

“Fifteen. You picked six of my best pieces.”

“You get ten or no deal.”

Cole blinked, impressed with P.J.’s calm. The woman had balls.

Kristoff looked pained for a long moment and then he sighed. “Only because I’m planning to make twice as much when you take out Brumley. But if you fail, I’m coming after you for the other five grand.”

P.J. snorted and dug into her pocket, pulling out a wad of cash Cole hadn’t even know she’d had on her.

She tossed the bills onto Kristoff’s desk.

Kristoff meticulously counted each hundred-dollar bill and then went to a cabinet and pulled out boxes of ammo, setting each onto the desk.

“Still providing curb service?” P.J. asked.

“Of course. Can’t have you walking onto the street carrying all that shit. A car will be waiting at the end of the alley. I’ll have Franz take your purchases.”

“Nice doing business with you, Kristoff. I’ll do my best to make sure you win your bet.”

His teeth flashed. “See that you do. I’m a very sore loser.”

P.J. sat at the small desk in the hotel room typing an email to Katia while Cole lay sprawled on the bed, eyes closed. She doubted he was asleep. She’d known Cole to go without sleep for days when the situation called for it.

She’d purposely not told him much in the way of details before they’d flown to Vienna because . . . Well, he wouldn’t have gone, and worse, he would have carried out his threat to physically restrain her to keep her from going.

Brumley hadn’t just become another target, a mission she had to fulfill. He’d become an obsession.

When she slept at night, she saw him in her dreams. At times, she could feel the knife in her hands, and hear the gurgle of blood as he took his last breath. It was an image that haunted her day and night, and until she made it a reality, it would continue to haunt her.

She hit send on the email but left her laptop open and her sound up so she’d know the moment a response came in.

Then she crawled into bed next to Cole and laid her head in the crook of his arm.

As she’d suspected, he wasn’t sleeping. He turned in to her immediately and wrapped his arm around her body, pulling her in even closer.

“So is this what you did for the six months you were gone?” he asked seriously. “Hid out in shitty hotels, hung out in back-alley shady businesses with men named Kristoff or befriended hookers?”

“Basically yeah. I changed hotels every few days. I was always worried Brumley would find me, especially after I made the first kill and left my signature so to speak. He’s not dumb. He had to have known it was me. Especially when his right-hand man showed up the night he raped me with a knife wound to his back, reporting that I’d escaped.”

Cole let out a string of curses. “I don’t know what pisses me off more. That you got involved in this at all or that you didn’t trust me or your team enough to let us in on what was going down.”

“Would you drag the team into a personal vendetta, Cole? Really? If you were planning to murder someone, would you really ask the team to back you up? Because no matter how you color it, I’m killing these men in cold blood. It’s not self-defense anymore. I hunted them down and I cut them to ribbons before killing them.”

He went silent, and she knew she’d made her point.

“I hate that you’re even involved now. I hate that Steele and the others got involved. It tarnishes KGI as a whole. What happens when Resnick gets wind of this shit? And you can’t tell me he won’t. The man knows goddamn everything. I bet the president is even afraid of pissing that man off because he knows so much.”

He put a finger to her lips. “Shut up. It doesn’t matter what you want or don’t want at this point, because we’re involved. There’s no going back now. And we aren’t leaving you to do this alone, so just shut the fuck up and deal with it.”

She smiled and leaned in to kiss him when her laptop beeped, signaling an incoming email.

She scrambled off the bed and hurried to the desk. Her breath caught when she saw Katia’s response sitting in her inbox.

Must meet with you right away. Important. Come alone.

“This is it,” she said to Cole. “She wants to meet right away. Says it’s important and to come alone.”

“Fuck that,” Cole snarled.

P.J. held up her hand. “Of course I’m not going alone. If I was, I wouldn’t have bothered to bring you along, so keep your underwear on.”

He looked slightly mollified, but he rolled out of bed, stuffed the larger handgun in his shoulder holster, slid the smaller pistol in his ankle holster and then loaded a magazine into the assault rifle.

P.J. armed herself but placed her rifle into a duffel bag and then reached for Cole’s so they could get out of the hotel without their weapons being seen.

“You drive,” she directed as she threw the bag into the backseat. “I want you to park a block away from Katia’s apartment. I’ll go in, see what she has to say and then be right back out. I’ll need you to watch the building.”

His lips tightened but he didn’t argue.

They drove across town, gradually getting into an area that had deteriorated over the years. Many of the buildings were in disrepair and most of the businesses had moved closer to the city center.

Katia’s apartment was actually a nice place. On the inside. The outside was a crumbling building with graffiti on the walls and iron bars covering each of the windows.

She had told P.J. that the rent was next to nothing, and with the money she pulled in from servicing her wealthy clients, she could afford to make the inside a palace.

After instructing Cole where to park, P.J. armed herself and opened the passenger door.

“Give me half an hour. I don’t know what all she has to say, but if I’m not out by then, come in after me.”

“I’ll give you twenty,” Cole said bluntly. “She can’t have that much to say. I don’t like this place. I don’t like this whole situation. My gut is screaming like a motherfucker.”

“Okay, twenty,” P.J. agreed.

She wouldn’t admit it, but her gut was doing its own bit of bitching. She was uneasy about this whole thing.

She got out, closed the door and hurried toward the entrance to the building. She wasted five minutes waiting for the service elevator to grind to a halt on the ground floor. She rode it to the sixth floor and got off, making a beeline for the end of the hall where Katia’s apartment was.

She knocked softly, and the door squeaked open an inch the minute P.J. knocked.

P.J. made a grab for her handgun and carefully pushed the door open so she could see inside.

“Katia?” she called softly. “It’s P.J. You here?”

She stepped inside, gun up and pointed as she swept the living room. The television was on. Some European soap opera. She entered the kitchen and found nothing out of order so she headed for the bedroom.

The door was ajar and P.J. nudged it open with her toe, staying back before swinging around, gun aimed inside.

Katia was lying on the bed in a pool of blood.

Son of a bitch!

P.J. raced over, reaching for Katia’s neck to try to find a pulse, but drew up when she saw the macabre sight before her.

The woman was naked, with slashes to the insides of her thighs, under her breasts and one down her midline.

Her throat was so horribly slashed that but for a small piece of flesh at her nape, she’d been all but beheaded.

P.J. bent over, nausea so overwhelming that she had to suck in breath after breath through her nose to keep from emptying her stomach.

On the desk, her laptop was open to P.J.’s last email.

P.J. touched a finger to Katia’s arm to find it cold and stiff. She’d been dead for a lot longer than when P.J. had received that last email.

Her blood ran cold. This has been a complete setup.

It was then she noticed the note lying on the bed, blood smeared over the paper.

She picked it up and her stomach bottomed out.

If you have any interest in keeping your teammate alive, you’ll come to me tomorrow morning at ten a.m. Alone. Unarmed. It’s your choice. You or your teammate. If you don’t show, I’ll assume your choice has been made.

—B

What the fuck? No way they had Cole. It was a complete bluff. Did they think she was stupid? She turned and ran from Katia’s apartment, not bothering with the elevator.