19

Jack had loved shooting Dragovic—took just about all he had to keep from pulling the trigger again—but relished the mix of terror and bafflement scooting across his face right now almost as much.

"You?" Dragovic said; then his eyes narrowed. "Yes, it is you! That mustache is fake. I have seen you!"

Jack found only a cell phone in Dragovic's suit coat. He dropped the phone on the table and tossed the coat back.

"No, you haven't."

"Yes. You were at my front gate!"

Damn security cameras, Jack thought.

"I knew it!" Dragovic shouted, purpling with rage as he pointed to Monnet. "You work for him, don't you! He hired you to humiliate me!"

Where'd he get that idea? Jack wondered, but decided not to straighten him out. This might work right into his plans.

"Just sit there and be quiet while I talk to these bozos," he said, dismissing Dragovic—which had to hurt him worse than another bullet. He turned to Monnet. "Where's Nadia Radzminsky?"

Monnet seemed jolted by the question. But maybe frightened too. Hiding something? Jack couldn't tell for sure.

"Nadia?" Monnet gave this nifty little Gallic shrug. "Why… home, I suppose."

"She's not. She's missing." He turned to the other two. "How about you guys? Any idea where I can find Nadia Radzminsky?"

"How should we know?" said the heavier, sweaty one.

"Radzminsky?" said the nervous ferret type. His eyes darted Monnet's way. "Luc, isn't that the new researcher we hired?"

"How do you know Nadia?" Monnet said.

Jack ignored him, concentrating on the other two. "How about Gleason—Douglas Gleason? He's another of your people who's MIA. Know anything about him?"

Bull's-eye, Jack thought when he saw the ferret's shocked expression. Here was a guy he'd like to play poker with.

Keeping a peripheral watch on Dragovic, Jack pointed his pistol at the ferret's head.

"Nice haircut, but I think the part would look better on the other side, don't you?"

The ferret clapped his hands against his scalp and ducked, crying, "Tell him, Luc! Tell him about Prather!"

Monnet closed his eyes and Jack stared at him, stunned. The only sound in the room was ripping cloth. Jack glanced at Dragovic and saw him tearing the silk lining from his suit coat and tying it around his wounded thigh.

'Tell him!" the ferret screamed.

"Shut up, Brad!" Monnet said through his teeth.

"Ozymandias Prather?" Jack said, and watched the three partners' faces go slack with shock.

"You know him?" Monnet said.

"I'm asking the questions."

"No-no," Monnet said, an excited look replacing the shock. "This is important! If you know him, then you must have seen the creature he calls the Sharkman."

"Yeah. Saw it a few hours ago." Where was this going?

"Then please tell this man," Monnet said, pointing to Dragovic. "Tell him how the creature looks, how it's at death's door."

"You kidding? It looks great—ready to bust out of its cage."

Monnet looked ill as Dragovic pounded his fists on the table and shouted something about liars and traitors, but Jack wasn't following because a sickening scenario was playing out in his mind.

He stepped closer to Monnet and pointed the pistol at his face.

"You!"

The doctor cringed. "What?"

"What did Oz and his boys do to Gleason?"

"Nothing."

Jack jammed the muzzle of the silencer against Monnet's temple, hard enough to make him wince. "You've got three seconds… two seconds…"

"He made him disappear!"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I don't know!" Monnet cried. "He just said he'd found an 'absolutely foolproof means of disposal' and we'd never have to worry about him again. That's all I know; I swear!"

You bastard! Jack thought, aching to pull the trigger. You rotten lousy bastard. He'd bet all he owned that Oz's foolproof dispose-all had yellow eyes and a scarred lower lip.

"And Nadia? What about her?"

Monnet closed his eyes.

"Only one second left on your clock," Jack said, then held his breath, pretty damn sure he wasn't going to like this answer.

Monnet nodded. "The same." His voice seemed caught between a whisper and a sob.

"Aw, jeez."

It now seemed a possibility that the suddenly healthy rakosh hadn't lunched on Bondy as Jack had first thought. Oz must have fed it Gleason… and Nadia was probably next on the menu.

He backed away, trying not to give in to the increasingly insistent urge to redecorate the room with this son of a bitch's brains. That was too good for him. Too good for all of them.

"All right," he said. "I want all pockets emptied onto the table. Everyone. Now. Do it!"

The three executives got to it with gusto. Jack could see relief on their faces: Emptying pockets meant robbery. They understood that, and it sure as hell beat getting shot.

Dragovic didn't move. He simply sat there pressing a hand to his thigh and glaring at Monnet. Jack remembered his shouts about liars and traitors a moment ago. Looked like this little business arrangement was falling apart. He let Dragovic be—he already had what he wanted from him.

"Hurry!" Jack shouted, and meant it. Gleason was probably gone, but maybe he still had time to save Nadia. "I want all pockets turned inside out."

He didn't care about the wallets that landed on the table. The cell phones were what he wanted. Three more of them joined Dragovic's.

"You," he said, pointing to Mr. Sweaty. "Rip out every phone in the room and dump them here on the table." As Sweaty hopped to it, Jack pointed the ferret—the one Monnet had called Brad—in the direction of the wet bar at the far end of the room. "You bring me four glasses and a pitcher of water."

When all the phones had been collected, including the conference speaker-microphone in the center of the table, Jack wrapped them in someone's suit coat and tossed them out into the hall.

"Now," he said, tugging the Ziploc of Berzerk from his pocket and sliding it across the table to Brad. "Put a handful of that in each of the glasses."

The look on Brad's face left no doubt about his familiarity with the powder.

"W-why?"

"Just do it."

Brad's hand was shaking like a wino with the DTs, but he managed to get the job done.

"Now fill each glass halfway with water and pass them around."

A minute later, each of the four men had a glass of blue-tinged fluid before him.

"Bottoms up, gentlemen," Jack said.

Mr. Sweaty got sweatier. "No," he said shaking his head and staring at the glass like he'd been poured a shot of battery acid. "It'll kill us."

"Yeah, well, you gotta go sometime. Drink up; then I'm gone."

Dragovic snorted derisively, raised his glass as if he were toasting the room, and chugged the Berzerk. Then he hurled the glass across the table at Monnet, missing him by inches.

"I can't!" Brad wailed.

Jack put a bullet into the mahogany tabletop directly in front of Brad. The three executives all but jumped out of their seats; Dragovic was cool, though. Barely blinked. Under different circumstances, Jack could have almost liked him.

"I don't have time for this, so I'll tell you that we can do this two ways: you can swallow it, or I can shoot you in the gut and pour it in."

Mr. Sweaty drank his. He looked sick when he set his empty back on the mahogany. Brad choked halfway through his, and for a second or two Jack was afraid he was going to blow it all over the table, but he kept it down.

Monnet was the last. "Do you have any idea what this will do to us?"

"Firsthand. I got the dose you or Dragovic set up for Nadia."

"I have never heard of this Nadia," Dragovic said. "Who is she? Should I know her?"

"Then it was you," Jack said, staring hard into Monnet's eyes. He wanted so much to hurt this man. Instead he held up his free hand, the leather-clad thumb and index finger a hair apart. "This morning I came this close to hurting two people very dear to me because of you. I think you'd better drink up."