 
1

Nina saw her reflection in the floor-to-ceiling window. Her skimpy black leather dress cinched way too close to her body and kept her from taking an honest breath. She'd poured herself into it three hours earlier in preparation for this job, having to slather herself with lotion just to make it begin to fit. She knew the tightness of the dress was going to be a huge problem in a few minutes but there wasn't a lot she could do about it right now, so she dealt with it. Right now, she had to fit in. She had to blend into the background.

She looked at herself reflected in the glass some more and wondered how she'd taken this path. She was twenty-eight, had at least three-quarters of her life in front of her, but here she was, standing in a tight black leather dress organizing cigars. She could only see this as demeaning.

Beyond her reflection, Berlin sprawled to the east. Thousands of lights pulsed slowly and wavered in the night, illuminating millions of lives, millions of stories Nina couldn't bother herself with right now. She had enough on her plate.

She wasn't here to be a tourist, but Berlin wasn't what Nina expected. Then again, most of her memories of the city involve watching the wall come down when she was a kid, being upset that it interrupted her favorite cartoons. The city was indifferent to Nina's ignorance, and it had changed a lot since the end of the Cold War, but it still bore the identifying marks of its tortured past. Amongst the modern glass and metal buildings that dominated the city these days, a good number of drab, stoic Soviet-designed structures shot up from the ground, marring the city like dead teeth in an otherwise impeccable maw. The buildings were ghosts, reminders of what the city, the country, was going through just twenty years ago. The memories of hell, marginalized, trying to be forgotten.

Boats, most of them late-night tourists checking out the sights of the city, made their lazy journey down the Spree, the river that wound its way through the heart of Berlin. On the far bank of the river, clubgoers waited in front of blocked doors, adjusting their hair, their clothes, making sure they looked their best, or at least good enough to warrant enough attention to guarantee that someone would be taking them home later that night. Nina wished she could be one of them, with the uncomplicated life full of late nights where the only danger was a vicious hangover the next morning and a stranger in your bed next to you. The stuff Nina was facing down, sometimes you didn't wake up at all.

Nina couldn't bother herself with existential crises at the time, couldn't worry about what might have been if she'd chosen differently in life. This was a job, she needed focus, enough of it to get her through the night. Without that focus, she was sure to fail, and she hadn't traveled from New York on a red eye just to lose everything at the last second.

Back to work, then, she thought. Nina blocked the rest of Berlin out of her mind. As beautiful and as whimsical she imagined it to be, it wasn't important to her right now. She prepped her tray full of cigars and lighters and turned back toward the main room and toward the chattering din of conversation. The poker game she was supposed to be serving was ahead of her, but she was sort of dreading making her way back into the room. Once she began to move, she had to be careful not to tear her dress down the seam...not that the men she was going to serve would have had any opposition to that happening, as a matter of fact she'd probably get better tips. But right now, tips didn't matter.

She walked past Seth, who was mixing up a couple of cocktails. She gave him a nod and a slight wink. Not a wink of flirtation, a wink of knowing. The wheels were set in motion, and it was all downhill from here, for better or worse.

Nina approached the table. At first none of the men even acknowledged her presence, as they were wrapped up in their game, eyes focused intensely on the cards in their hands and the cards on the table. She was more decor than another person in the room, but such is the life of a cigar girl.

Even though they didn't know who she was, she knew exactly who they were. She'd briefed herself on them while she was flying over the Atlantic. Surrounding the table were six of the most influential men in the entirety of Eastern Europe's criminal underground. The number of lives these men were responsible for ending, both personally and by proxy, were staggering.

Immediately in front of Nina was Yuri Belikov, a Russian Mafiya head with a penchant for driving his rivals ten miles into Siberia, stripping them naked, and seeing if they could make it back to Moscow. None of the men that Belikov put out there had ever come back to the city, most of them probably fearing that the fate that awaited them back in Moscow was much, much worse than freezing to death. To Belikov's right was Nikolas Gikas, broker of high-price escorts all over the Mediterranean. Gikas liked to make sure people remembered his name, hence why so many unfortunate men in the Greek underground had the name Gikas branded into their chests, a permanent mark of the man they wronged. Considering the current company, Gikas' antics seemed quaint, especially with what Jacques Okafor was known for. Okafor was sitting right next to him, a son of poor Nigerian immigrants, Okafor decided to turn to a life of crime and really took to it. He quickly rose in the ranks of the Unione Corse, all the way to the point where he was now more or less in charge of the entirety of France's underground. Rumors had spread in the underground that he idolized the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin so much that it had been whispered for years that, much like Amin, Okafor was given to cannibalism with the irrational belief that it made him stronger to feast on the bodies of his fallen foes. Whether this was based on fact or a ghost of the latent racism that pervaded Europe's underground was always a question, but since Okafor hadn't said anything to deny it and everyone was too scared to ask him about it, people assumed that there was at least a bit of truth to it.

Two other guys, Robert Eddings from England and Giovanni Molinari from Italy were also seated at the table. Nina was familiar with them, but their exploits hadn't been infamous enough for her to care about them. Right now, she had her eyes fixed on the head of the table.

At the head of the table was Aldo Braun, the leader of Berlin's Die Hunde, a syndicate known for their particularly brutal, particularly public executions of rivals, allies and people who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Die Hunde were messy, careless and completely out of control, a kind of group that wouldn't survive for long in the United States once the FBI got their claws into them, but in the still recovering Germany, they flourished.

Despite his reputation, Braun himself was an unassuming man, one who didn't draw attention to himself with his physicality alone. The way his shoulders slouched in his suit, his pallid skin and vacant, watery eyes didn't exactly instill confidence or bloodthirstiness, but that was part of the danger of Aldo Braun. People assumed he was harmless up until the moment he had their head smashed down onto the metal base of a drill press, the hum of the efficient German-engineered motor being the last thing they ever heard as Aldo drove his point home, quite literally.

Aldo had organized this game, a game with a hell of a lot more than money on the line. The bits of the world these six guys carved up over hands of cards, over simple games of chance, anyone would marvel at. Truckloads of illegal drugs and weapons would shift their paths based on how this game turned out, and the fates so many hung in the balance. Poker games like this in the past had sparked massive international gang wars, hundreds of people dying over the fact that one man had simply bluffed about a non-existent pair of kings he was holding. Blood spilled over cards...it was absurd, but it was reality.

"Hey, hey, cigar girl!" Belikov's voice cracked over the chatter. His hand reached out for her. Nina went over to him, trying to put on the guise that she wanted to be there.

"Yes?"

Belikov didn't say anything, he just took one of the cigars out of the box and snatched up a lighter, then shooed her away, deliberately brushing her ass in the process. Not that she needed the money, but the asshole didn't even leave a tip in her still-empty cup.

The six men sitting around the table all spoke in English, even though it was all their second language, save for Eddings. They did it out of courtesy for each other, and also because they probably assumed Nina didn't speak more than a few perfunctory words of it. Guys like Braun loved to bring girls straight from Japan, China and Vietnam, squeeze them into tight dresses to do these menial tasks like passing out cigars. The benefit was twofold, as it allowed them to speak freely without worrying about the girls understanding anything, and it let them ogle the bewildered yet beautiful girls that were just happy to have a job.

Nina was only half-Japanese, but most of that side of her genetics came out in her face, with her wide-set, angled eyes and her jet black hair. Her generous helping of freckles betrayed her heritage a bit, but she didn't think any of these guys would be able to make the distinction, especially after a couple of strongly-mixed drinks.

The girl that was supposed to be at the game was exactly what Braun wanted. Her comprehension of English was limited to "yes" and "no", and when Nina talked to her, she discovered she didn't even speak Japanese all that well. It took Nina six times to explain to her, in Japanese, that she was going to give her eight hundred Euros, twice what she'd earn while actually working at the game, to give Nina her dress and point her toward where the poker game was being played. Seth had had an easier time subbing for the bartender, though his methods were a little less nuanced. Nina hoped that the guy's arm would heal eventually, but the prognosis on compound fractures never looked good.

"You, come over here." Braun said, motioning more than talking since, again, the assumed not being able to speak English thing. Nina walked to him. "You're very pretty, you know that?" He said, very slowly. He rubbed her thigh as he said it, and it took everything in Nina's power not to give a fuck about this whole charade and put his teeth into the back of his throat. But killing Braun wasn't what she was here for. Not now at least.

No, what she was here for was sitting right next to Braun's left leg. On the outside, nobody would give the briefcase a second look. It was a black polycarbonate briefcase with durable latches, and while it looked a bit ominous to the average person, it didn't stand out in the crowd too much to raise alarm. The contents of the case, though, was the whole reason Nina was here, the whole reason Seth broke that guy's arm. She'd been told what was inside the case, priceless art, yeah, yeah...whatever. What Nina saw sitting next to Braun was a huge fucking payday, a $500,000 payday to be exact.

"Would you...make love to that man over there?" Braun said, wrapping his arm around Nina's ass, digging his fingertips into the hollow of her hips, and pointing to Gikas. Nina looked at him inquisitively, trying to make it seem like she didn't understand him. But Braun wasn't going to just let it die that easily. "You don't understand, do you...would you..." he made formed one hand into a circle and poked a finger from his other hand into it. He was so subtle. "You know..."

Nina decided to keep up the facade a little bit longer and giggled into her hand, pretending to blush while turning away from Braun. Her face was flushed, all right, but it certainly wasn't from shyness, it was from pure white-hot rage boiling up inside her.

"Oh, come on, I know she would. Girls never turn down a big Greek cock." Gikas said, standing up from the table and grasping his crotch while looking at Nina.

The men at the table groaned and chattered amongst themselves, going on about their respective manhood. For as masculine and macho these guys purported to be, they spent a hell of a lot of time comparing and contrasting the finer points of their genitals. Nina giggled and smiled through the whole thing as they pantomimed the things they wanted to do with her, with any willing girl...and even some unwilling for that matter. Her giggling covered up the rage she was feeling for these six assholes, and she knew she wouldn't have a very hard time doing what she needed to do when the time came for it to happen.

Nina eyed the bodyguards that stood around the room. Some of them wore their guns in holsters strapped to their legs while others had them stuffed into the back or front waistbands of their pants. She examined the guns a little closer. For guarding six of the most powerful underground figures in Europe, these guys weren't packing much heat...the biggest gun she saw was a .45 caliber Colt M1911 stuffed into a holster on the leg of one of Eddings' bodyguards. The other guys were carrying 9mms and .32s, and none of them were carrying anything automatic. These guys took a lot of security for granted, they left a lot of holes, mainly because they thought that nobody else in the world knew of this meet-up. Nina had her prized Desert Eagle and three clips of .357 ammunition waiting for her at the bottom of the cigar box, and she was itching to put the gun to use.

While Nina was thinking about her gun, Seth was walking over to the table carrying a tray full of drinks. He had his hand placed underneath the tray with a towel draping down, hiding the Glock 20 he was holding in the hand. As he put down the first drink, double bourbon for Braun, he nodded to Nina and he saw the murderous intent flash in her eyes.

"Ci..ci..ga..ru, Mistu Bra-nu?" Nina said in her best terrible Japanese accent. Braun looked up at her, at first annoyed that she would speak out of turn, but when he saw the sweet, attentive look on her face, he softened. For a split second there, Nina saw a flash of humanity in Braun, but it wasn't going to save him at this point.

Braun nodded his head "Yes, yes I think that sounds very good." Braun said, and Nina reached into the cigar box. "Let me get you...best one..." She fished around in the box, putting on the show, and the men at the table were laughing so hard as she did this that none of them noticed her pull the gun from the bottom of the box and place it against Braun's head.

2

The room erupted into chaos as the men came down from their laughing fits and the bodyguards realized that Nina hadn't pulled a cigar cutter or lighter out of her box, but rather the very thing they were there to protect against.

"How does this one work for you?" Her accent now dropped, her tone deadly serious.

Braun turned his head against the barrel of the gun. All of the sudden, his cold exterior fell apart. He began to sputter "Do you have fucking any idea--?"

"--Oh I have a very, very good idea what I'm doing."

Nina looked around the room to make sure none of the bodyguards were stupid or bold enough to try anything. They were just as shocked as Braun was, so nobody was acting yet, other than Seth, who had taken out his own gun to join the party. He kept it sweeping over the guards, ready to put a couple into the next guy who twitched the wrong way.

"Your case. Give it to me and I'll let you live."

"But there's nothing--"

"Don't fucking play with me, Braun. I know exactly what's in that case. Now come on, hand it over or I'll paint this room red. Now, reach down there slowly, and if I see you move an inch in the wrong direction, it's over."

Braun, his hand shaking, reached down toward his ankle and pulled up the case. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, then slid it across his lap and put the handle of the case into Nina's hand.

Everything with the exchange was going just fine, but then Nina noticed Braun trying to make a quick move to the inside pocket of his jacket. A bit of light reflected off of the pistol Braun had inside the jacket. Maybe he would go for it, maybe he wouldn't, but Nina wasn't going to give him time to change the situation.

Nina pulled the trigger. The gun went off an inch from his head and all of the sudden the most feared man in Germany was a pile of meat slumping over in his seat. The force of the bullet sent what was left of him tilting in his chair, the body thudding on the floor. Nina fired a couple of shots into the descending flock of bodyguards while Seth laid down covering fire so that he and Nina could dash away behind something solid like the bar. Nina saw what he was doing and took his cue, doing a crouched run toward the bar while Seth followed her. With the bodyguards now returning fire, Nina and Seth slid on the marble tiled floor behind the solidly built bar. Bottles and highball glasses shattered as the hail of bullets peppered the back wall.

"Nice shot..." Seth said

"I try my best."

"You know it wasn't in our orders to kill Braun, right?"

"Yeah, but there's no fun in that."

"It makes things a hell of a lot more complicated" Seth motioned toward the pinging bullets with his gun "as you see."

"You think they wouldn't have started firing once we had the case? At least we got the opening shot."

"Good point..."

Nina smirked. It was at that point that Seth became worried that she was the kind of person who loved to put herself into this kind of trouble. Trouble he didn't like to be in. He popped up from behind the bar and fired off a couple of shots, hitting a bodyguard in the side of the neck, sending him to the ground. He heard a couple of bullets whisper threats in his ear as they sailed by. Seth ducked back down behind the bar, dropped his empty clip out and slapped a new one into the handle of the gun.

"So they're going to keep shooting, and we only have so many bullets. Any bright ideas as to how we're getting out of here?" Seth said, bracing himself against the bar to get ready to pop up again.

"Give me some cover fire, I'll show you." Nina smirked again. This being the first firefight Seth had been in with Nina, he imagined that smirk came up pretty frequently, and the chaos that followed those smirks was what lead to her reputation. This reputation made Seth fear for his life.

"It's your funeral..." Seth said, jumping up and blasting off some rounds to cover Nina "...just remember it could be mine too."

Nina, under the cover of the bullets, took off across the room toward the clutch of bodyguards standing in a ring around the perimeter. In one fluid motion she put two rounds into the chest of one of Braun's men, caught his body and then used it to shield herself from the rest of the bodyguards as she walked her way around the room. Amidst the distraction, Seth was able to put down a couple more bodyguards, leaving only three alive in the room.

Once her clip was emptied and her human shield had exhausted all its usefulness, Nina found herself in a bit of a bind. She didn't have another gun in front of her and she couldn't exactly scramble around on the ground to find a gun from a fallen bodyguard. She felt a pain in her side and noticed a thin slit in the black leather of her dress, her olive skin contrasting against it, and the fresh bullet graze contrasting against everything. It throbbed more now that she looked at it, but she didn't have time to worry about such a slight wound, and since she didn't have a bullet bouncing around inside her body, she could take it easier after the firefight, after people stopped shooting at her. Looking around, she found a hiding place behind a column in the middle of the room. The three remaining thugs were prowling, stalking, preparing to surround Nina. She'd lost track of Seth, but since she hadn't heard a peep from his gun for what seemed like a lifetime. She feared the worst.

Nina cowered behind the column, unsure what to do. She hadn't though this through quite enough, and now she was paying for it. She felt the sticky blood trickling down to her leg, and even though she'd been around her share of blood in her line of work, knowing that the blood was coming from her was making her queasy.

"Shit" Nina said to herself, almost silently. Slow, plodding footsteps thanked toward her. She gripped her side, which only made the singeing wound hurt that much more. The bodyguards got closer. The gun felt heavy in her hand, but it was useless to her without bullets. She didn't know how many rounds the bodyguards had left, but it would only take one of them to do what they needed to do. She sweated and thought about the possible paths she could take, paths that were dwindling to nothing with each step the bodyguards took.

Nina felt a hand clasp on her shoulder, and she did all she could to fight against it, but within a couple of seconds the hand had pulled her to the ground, her head smacking hard against the marble floor. Her vision blurred and she lost her bearings, and all she saw was a dark figure standing over her, a black gun gripped in his hand. Gunshots cracked in her ears, but she was so disoriented she wasn't sure where they were coming from. Looking up at the figure, she didn't think things would end like this, so suddenly, so...anticlimactic.

"Didn't think that one through, did you?" Because she wasn't familiar with his voice, it took Nina a second to figure out that it was Seth, a couple of seconds more she realized that Seth was connected to the hand that was now dragging her across the floor, the report of his gun echoing off the walls as he pulled her into cover.

After a few more shots from Seth, the room went eerily silent. A testament to his badassness, Seth casually checked the action on his gun and looked down at Nina. "You can get up now." He said.

Nina eased up onto her elbows and crawled up a chair in order to get back on her feet. "Uh...thanks for the save."

"You got hit?" Seth kicked a nearby bodyguard just to make sure he was all the way dead. It was occurring more and more to Nina that Seth wasn't a guy given to small talk.

"Yeah, it's a graze, but it hurts like hell."

"It's not gonna kill you in the next five minutes, is it? Could really ruin my plans for the night." So, he did do humor. Decidedly of the black variety, but Nina saw it as a start.

"I think I'll be alright. The dress won't fare so well." Nina said, checking the wound one more time to make sure she was telling the truth. It was already glazing over, it wouldn't need stitches, but it'd leave a hell of a scar if she didn't get to it soon. "So how are we getting out of here?"

Seth pointed at the window on the far side of the room with his gun. "That way."

"You know we're twenty stories up, right?"

"Ahh, roll into it as you hit the ground, it'll absorb all the shock."

Nina looked at Seth "What the fuck are you talking about?"

Seth smiled "I set up a window washer's cart against the building a story down. You think you can deal with a ten foot drop?"

"I'll do my best"

"Then get the case and grab a spare gun. We've got places to be...probably more people to kill along the way."

Nina shook her head at the dryness of Seth's humor. He may have thought of himself as funny, but in reality he came across as a bit of an ass. She went over to the case and hefted it. With the rip in her side the case now felt a lot heavier, but she was able to deal with it. As she was about to turn around back to Seth, she heard three sharp gunshots snap in the room, followed by a glittering shower of glass falling down to the ground of the room as well as to the ground twenty stories below. Nina hobbled over to the side of the room where Seth had provided the new ventilation, while Seth ran towards it and dropped out of view as he hit the edge of the building. Nina dreaded needing to jump down so far, fearing the exertion would turn her pithy little wound into something much more serious. She leaned against the steel frame of what was previously the windowpane and looked down to the cart below. Seth was standing there, looking up at her.

"Coming down?" He said "Or are you going to just stand there and keep giving me a look up your dress? I don't mind either way."

"You're really an asshole, you know that?"

"I've been told..."

Seth laughed a bit, stared at Nina for just a couple seconds more, but yielded and hit the button to wheel the cart up to Nina's level, saving her the drop. "Come on, it's not much of a drop now."

Nina leaned out the window and Seth caught her, leading her down onto the platform. The chill of the night air made her cut ache a little bit. Without the windows cutting down on the glare, Berlin was a glittering haze of lights, sounds and distant smells.

Seth and Nina descended the side of the building, looking as conspicuous as possible. They needed put as much distance between themselves and the chaos they'd created. It would be a while before the authorities came around, as the penthouse of the building was sequestered enough from the rest of the building that the businesses them below them didn't hear the reports of the guns, but the shattering glass would call some major attention.

"How's the cut?"

"Stings..."

"Here" Seth shuffled his shoulders back and slid off his jacket. He reached under his collar and untied his tie from around his neck. He wrapped the silk around Nina's waist, putting the widest part of the tie tight against the cut. "That should help a little bit at least."

"Thanks." Nina looked down at the tie. It wasn't exactly the most glamorous thing in the world, but it stemmed the pain, for now at least.

3

David Parker sat at his desk, looking menacing. It was what David Parker did best. His office enforced that menace, with dark wood and the occasional blood-red accent. There were no windows in the office. Parker and sunlight didn't have an amicable relationship. Parker was a very neat man, and his desk reflected it. Other than the folded laptop and a few notebooks, Parker's desk was neat, calculated and exact.

Parker was cold, planned to the last detail. Every movement he made seemed to have been planned hours ahead of time. His dark brown hair was slicked back into a perfect swoop. The pinstripes on his suit were all somehow perfectly perpendicular to the ground. His face was cemented into a permanent scowl, a reminder to everyone to not fuck with him, or else.

He looked across the desk at his two guests, his eyes moving back and forth, trying to decide which to bark at first. Neither of them appeared like they wanted to be anywhere near Parker, but they both knew that if they hadn't showed up to this meeting, they'd have gotten acquainted with the mean end of a shotgun. Parker was a man that got to the point when it came to things like that, and he wasn't known for ever giving an ounce of compassion to anyone, friend or foe. This is what made him one of the most powerful men in New York, so powerful he was rumored to have a friend in Gracie Mansion. That fact was unrelated to the situation at hand, but that didn't stop Parker from pointing it out all the time to whoever would listen.

"I work alone, you damn well know that, Parker." Seth said, settling down in his chair and averting his gaze from the criminal patriarch.

Parker grumbled and lightly rapped his knuckles against his chin. Parker was on the wrong side of his fiftieth birthday, but he still maintained a presence that made people pay attention to him. His chin was a slab of granite and his brow ridge jutted out like a shelf, giving him a Neanderthal look. His mind, though, was anything but Paleolithic.

"Yes, I realize you work alone, Mr. Harkin. Trust me, Ms. Kokuri told me the exact same thing about herself already."

"That's right..." Nina said.

"The thing is, the both of you owe me favors, big favors...favors I've decided to call in right now. What you're going to do for me, it's a two person job, no way around it. If I only had one guy go in there, he wouldn't be coming out alive. The two of you have a slightly better chance of survival as a pair."

Seth sat up in his chair and leaned in toward Parker, trying to cut Nina out of the conversation.

"If you need a two-man job, cut the girl out of it and let me bring a guy I know, a guy I can trust, in on the job." Seth looked over at Nina "No offense, you know..."

"Think you can just say 'no offense' and the person won't be offended? It doesn't work that way." Nina stood up from her chair and walked over to Seth "So, yes, offense...taken"

Seth rolled his eyes, more convinced by the second that he didn't want to work with this woman.

"You see this, you see what's going on here?"

"The fact that we hate each other already and we just met?" Seth said

"Exactly. I love it, it's great. Just what I want."

"You must be getting a little senile, Parker. You realize you're not making sense—"

Parker smacked his open hand on the desk and snapped Seth and Nina to his attention. "I'm not getting fucking senile, Jesus Christ I'm fifty-three years old! No, I'm putting you two jerk-offs together on this job because I know you two aren't going to skip out on me when you two pull in the heist. Both of you will be so fed up with each other, wanting to get the fuck away from the other one that you'll get back to me with your loot as quickly as you fucking can. That's why I'm making you two go on this together." A chill went over the room. If there was any doubt as to Parker's command of a situation, it was gone by this point. He'd put them into their place, and there wasn't much either Seth or Nina could do about it.

"He does have a good point, you know..." Nina said, looking at Seth.

"How do you think he got us into this situation in the first place?" Seth said.

"Shall we get down to business, then? You two gonna keep it together long enough so that my loot gets back to me in one piece?"

Nina and Seth nodded

"Alright, then. How much do you two know about World War II?"

"Nazis, Hitler, D-Day..."

"Internment, prosecution of peaceful Japanese-Americans..." Nina said "my grandparents could tell you some stories about that."

"I didn't ask that question to call a referendum on the social policies of the United States in the mid 1940s, I just wanted to make sure you two knew that something did in fact go on at that time, some serious shit. This is called setting the stage for my story."

"Go much longer Parker and I'll need to buy popcorn..." Seth said.

"You're going to sit here and listen to this, the whole thing, or I have a couple of guys standing outside this office who could fit you for some concrete shoes."

"You guys still do that? Seems so...I don't know, stereotypical." Nina said.

"Cram it, sashimi...now, listen, during World War II, it may be hard to believe, but the Nazis were into some straight-up evil shit. Stuff guys like me could only dream of doing. I'm not talking about the Jews or anything, I'm talking about the wholesale thievery of Europe. While those jackbooted SS weren't pumping bullets into the French Resistance, they were searching every nook and cranny of the motherland for anything that would fetch a good price on the open market. One of their favorite parting gifts was fine art, and they took tons of it. Cut it right out of the frame and rolled it up on their way to Paris and beyond. Thousands of pieces, nabbed from their God-given resting places and stashed away in tanks, on boats, under the helmet of every Klaus, Fritz and Dietrich who cared to partake."

"But the Nazis lost, that stuff got recovered..." Nina said

"Not all of it, not by a long shot. Hundreds of pieces are still floating around out there, and while most of it is useless, valueless bullshit, there's one mother lode out there under the control of a very evil motherfucker. And me saying someone's evil, that's a testament to how evil he is, right?" Parker let a bit of a laugh slip out.

"I'm really waiting for you to tell me my role in this..." Seth said, fidgeting in his chair and looking at the door. He could get there in three seconds, tops, and be out of this whole situation.

"Kids these days, goddamn, never willing to hear the set-up, the big build. Alright, here we go. That mother lode I was talking about, that's what I need you two for. This guy, Aldo Braun--"

"The Aldo Braun? Leader of Die Hunde. You know what he did to the last guy who just looked at him the wrong way?" Nina said.

"Of course the Aldo Braun...why do you two think I'm sending your sorry asses into this instead of sticking my own neck out?"

"How kind of you." Seth looked at the door again. So few steps to freedom, at least temporary freedom, until Parker's men took his fingers as souvenirs.

"Now if you two will let me just finish, word is that Braun has spent the past five or so years scooping up these formerly lost pieces of art. Turns out when he's not eviscerating his enemies, he's a bit of an art snob. He's been carrying this briefcase everywhere he goes for a while now, probably takes it into the bath with him. I can only assume that briefcase contains those pieces of art."

"Parker, with all due respect, what the fuck do you know about art?"

"I know enough that the artists in that case read like an Art 101 lesson plan. Picasso, Cézanne, Monet, Van Gogh...anything you could think of. These things have been missing for sixty years. They were worth a shit ton of money back then, so when they come back on the market, they'll be hotter than the fucking sun, and I'll be a much, much richer man. You think I care about art? Hell no I don't, but I do care about money."

"And you need me...need us to find this Braun guy and take his magic briefcase?" Nina looked at Parker skeptically. She wasn't sure she was buying this whole thing yet.

"The two of you don't need to find Braun at all. I can tell you right now where Braun's going to be..."

Parker laid out the details of the little poker game, what was going to happen and where everyone was going to be. Nina and Seth just had to put themselves in the right place at the right time. It seemed way too easy, all of it right in front of them, the worst thing happening being a little physical violence. Seth thought that all of this could be a trap, and so did Nina. At least they had something they could agree on.

But Seth and Nina didn't have a choice, didn't have anything even beginning to resemble one. They did owe Parker favors, big favors, so big that neither of them would have been alive had they not called on Parker's aid. Their only option was to agree with Parker, to go along with Parker's schemes.

"What's our payday?" Seth said "More importantly, what's my payday?"

"Of course, of course, it always comes down to the money. Can't any of you people do this just out of the kindness of your hearts?"

"No." Nina and Seth replied in concert. They seemed to be agreeing on more and more things by the minute. At this point, their record for agreeing was more than that of most married couples.

Parker laughed heartily, a bit of a departure from his usual expression, which resembled a maddened bulldog. "You'll both be getting half a million once I get that briefcase."

"What if she doesn't make it, do I get the full mill?"

"Motherfucker..." Nina muttered under her breath.

"No, Seth. Goddamn you're cold, aren't you? Nina, I feel sorry you have to work with this sorry asshole."

"Well, thanks for making it happen. I really appreciate it." Nina said, standing up from her chair and walking toward the door of the office. "We done here?"

"Pretty much. Your plane leaves tomorrow. Non-stop first class to Berlin...don't say I never gave you two anything."

"Yeah, yeah." Nina said, making her way out of the office.

Seth nodded to Parker "I think that's my cue to get out too."

"Get out of my hair, what's left of it. Next time I see you two, you better be handing me that briefcase. If you don't come back with the briefcase, don't come back at all."

Seth walked out without saying a word. He intended on bringing it back, he wasn't the kind of guy who looked for the double-cross. He'd worked with some guys like that, ones who pulled the rug out from under him once it was time to divide up the loot. Their fates were varied, but none of them came out of it able to walk ever again, Seth made sure of that.

##

Nina waited for the elevator to open up so she could get the hell out of the building. She'd be going along with Parker's plan, she'd work with Seth, even though both of the things were against her better judgment. She knew Seth's type, the tough guy who couldn't be bothered to care for anyone's neck but his own. Hell, she'd dated more than a handful of guys like that, and it never worked out in the end. She foresaw a similar fate with Seth.

Just as she was ready to get the whole situation out of her head for a while, she saw Seth approaching her, fresh out of Parker's office. He walked over to her and leaned in close as he hit the down button.

"I did that already."

"Maybe you didn't hit it hard enough." He bared his teeth for a split second, a whole lot less of a measure of humor and more of an expression of check out how much of an asshole I can be.

"OK, listen. I don't want to go into a whole 'I don't like you, you don't like me' thing, but we have to get along well enough to get this job done. After it's over, fine, fuck off, we're done and we don't have to speak to each other again."

"Then I guess I won't be expecting a Christmas card from you?"

"I'll tell you right now" Nina shoved a finger into Seth's chest, pushing him back an inch "stop the smarmy asshole routine. OK?"

"Can't make any guarantees."

"Of course you can't."

Seth and Nina turned away from each other as the elevator dinged and the doors opened up. Without much of a choice, they both got onto the same car, going down. They didn't speak the whole way down. The flight to Germany the next day wasn't exactly filled with witty banter either. It wasn't until the poker game went to hell, once Braun hit the ground, that Seth and Nina really thought they may actually have a bond.

4

"So...you going to open it?" Seth said, gripping the wheel of the Mercedes at the recommended 10-2 position.

"What, the case?"

"Yeah."

Nina looked down at it, thumbed the latches on the matte black surface of the all-important case. "I haven't really thought about it. The locks are tight anyway."

"There's no such thing as a tight lock. Especially for you."

"What do you mean by that?" Nina said, even in the pale reflection of the moonlight Seth saw she very much took this the wrong way.

"I've done my homework on you, Nina Kokuri. Before we jetted off to Berlin I spent some time down at the bars, spoke to a few people who know your name, for better or for worse. Your story's sort of unusual, I'll give you that. Daughter of a Yakuza father and a mom who was taken by his charm but too scared to ask for child support once he skipped town. Fast forward to today, and you're one of the top con game runners in all of NYC, and I know for sure you can pick the hell out of a lock given five minutes and a stiff paperclip. So I'm saying you could crack that thing open if you wanted to. Be happy I'm complementing you, it probably won't happen again."

Nina tapped her nails on the chrome latches, pressed her thumbs against the number wheels and flicked them around a little. "Parker would be able to tell if I cracked it open. Besides, I don't give a shit about what's in the case, I only care about the money I get afterwards."

"But doesn't it just make you a little curious? What Parker would pay so much for?"

"We already know what's in here" she tapped the case "are you testing me or something, just to see if I'll open it?"

"Not at all. Just, the sealed case, the mysterious benefactor, seems a little bit like—"

"—a MacGuffin?"

"Exactly."

"Well this MacGuffin is primed to be my biggest payday ever, so I'm gonna just go ahead and do things just as prescribed."

Losing his curiosity for the contents of the case as well, Seth stared ahead into the night. The countryside of Germany looked like the countryside of just about anywhere: boring, a rolling hill here and there and the occasional house. Once you got far enough out of the cities, places all started to look the same. After the excitement of the previous couple of hours, though, Seth welcomed the bucolic scene. Seth had always been a city dweller and had never lived in any place that didn't have less than a million residents, so these peaceful country scenes didn't trip the same nostalgic triggers as they did for most people. Seth saw the rolling countryside and wondered how people functioned out here in the remoteness, cut off from the pulse of the world. If they wanted to run out to get dinner on a whim, could they even do it? To Seth, these people were off the grid, forgotten, inconsequential.

With those thoughts in his mind and with Nina's mind wandering to what she'd be doing with her half million payday, they made their way up to the northern coast of Germany. To get back to the United States, they'd need to go via Denmark, Copenhagen to be exact. Flying out of Berlin would have been way too much of a risk, as Braun's former henchmen would be swarming the airport just waiting for them to poke their heads up, so instead it was to the land of Niels Bohr and Lars Von Trier before they could make their way home. They hit the coast just as the sun was beginning to peek out over the ocean. It wasn't time to sit there and admire the scenery, though, so they pulled onto the ferry and began their journey to Denmark.

5

Nina held a Coke in her hand. It was three dollars too expensive and could be forgivingly referred to as lukewarm, but it reminded her of home. Of America. In her other hand, a cigarette dangled from her thin fingers, and she was reminded of home once again. The ferry groaned and swayed in the choppy, white-capped waters. Even though it was only a short boat ride, Nina didn't want to stay in the car like Seth had, so she decided to get out and hang over the rail of the ferry. She looked at the never-ending ocean that seemed to go on in all directions. This view of the ocean made her think of Japan, and all the horrible shit that went along with it.

She was eleven years old when she and her mother went on their foolhearted journey to find her father and bring some closure to the relationship that, at that particular point in her life, Nina couldn't give a shit about. She never knew her father other than the occasional terse, impersonal letter written in Japanese that she received every couple of years. But her mother insisted on finding him, doing whatever it took to hunt the bastard down. Like it would change anything.

Their journey began in Tokyo, where Nina's mom Sally and her father, Toshi, had met and shared a few fateful nights in a cramped hotel room. Sally told Nina about those nights, thankfully editing out some of the more graphic details, painting Nina a picture of a passionate man. She described the tattoos that covered his back and upper arms, the ways he told her that he'd make his way out of the Yakuza in just a couple of years. She told Nina that in those days with her father, she knew he was a wonderful man, but he was a man who couldn't keep himself tethered to anything.

That lack of tethering, her father's unique ability to have no center of gravity whatsoever outside of the Yakuza, was what made the trip to Japan so painful and fruitless. They searched every pachinko parlor, every karaoke bar, every low-class strip club that would allow an eleven year old girl into their doors, but no sign of Toshi. They ran into plenty of Yakuza, with their swagger that Nina, even at that age found hypnotic, but none of them could tell them where her father was. Maybe they were actively hiding Toshi's whereabouts, or maybe her father was just such a low ranking member of the Yakuza that nobody gave a shit. Either way, the search lead to nothing.

During the whole search, Nina knew deep down that she wouldn't see her father, and even if somehow she was able to track him down, it's not like she would have had animosity toward the guy. She knew it was her mother's fight, her mother's quest to make things better for her daughter. But Nina, Nina couldn't care less. She was just along for the ride, and even though seeing the glittery pinball machine-like environment of Japan, it didn't feel like home.

When the trip ended at a hotel room in Kyoto, with her mother breaking down, crying, and admitting to Nina she'd never be able to be the mother for Nina she wanted to be, Nina didn't have a pang in her heart for her mother's quest...no, she saw her mother as weak, as a person chasing something she could never achieve. From that moment on, Nina never really respected her mother ever again. That explained the slide into crime, the slide into becoming a feared and cunning grifter. You know all those things they say about giving kids a good home, or they'll go bad? Bullshit, Nina thought. Nina's mother gave her everything, but she knew it was just a front, just an imitation of love. So Nina shot off in the opposite direction as quickly as she possibly could, first taking off from home on her eighteenth birthday and heading to Los Angeles where she learned to play three card monte games and rig dice from shady operators who wanted to get into Nina's pants more than they wanted to teach her about the craft. Nina ignored the passes, the gropes, the lingering gazes, and just paid attention to the game, to the ways to make a person think they have the advantage up until the second before you pulled everything out from under them.

From those early days, and after more than a few short stints in jails, she moved up in the world of crime, first running tons of fake husband-wife con games and her fair share of phony prostitution schemes. It wasn't the most glamorous of jobs, but it was a hell of a lot better than sitting behind a desk, wasting away.

"Enjoying the view?" Seth's voice jolted her out of her nostalgia. It was alright, she was sort of sick of mulling over her past anyway.

"Not much going on...but it's peaceful."

Seth turned around and leaned with his back to the railing, looking at Nina. "Ahh, peace, who needs it?" He smiled "Can I bum a cig?" Nina complied, lighting Seth's cigarette up and watching it burn.

"You know your life can't be just full of crime 24/7. You have to have some downtime, some period for reflection."

"Reflection? I reflect...I stop for a second to take a look at the past, and I'll see just the person I am. You think I want to see that?"

The waves clapped against the side of the ferry and distracted Nina from Seth, even though he was actually making an effort to get philosophical.

"It's your path, you chose it Seth. Nobody made you do anything."

Seth took a long drag from his cigarette. "You think this is what I chose, what I thought I was going to turn out to be when I was a kid sitting around my parents' house in Tulsa playing with blocks while I watched my dad get more and more drunk by the second? I didn't choose to get wrapped up in this kind of stuff, Nina. It just...happened. And now, there's no turning back."

"Just a victim of circumstance, right? The job chose you?"

"Listen, I didn't come up here to get an amateur psychology lesson. I just came to talk."

"I thought that's what we were doing."

"I'm talking, you're listening for a way to turn my words on me."

"Just wanted to see if you could dish it out as well as you can take it."

"Holy shit..." Seth shoved himself away from the railing and let the cigarette dangle from his lip.

"Quit getting so defensive..."

"We're not alone." Seth looked over to the far side of the ferry, across a bank of four cars, a man was crouching, and he wasn't just down there to check the air pressure in his tires.

"Who?"

"One of Braun's guys, I'm sure, someone who picked us out on our way out of country. I don't know exactly, it's dark."

"We have to deal with him." Nina said, not moving from her position on the railing.

"I know that. Keep cool, don't look back and I'll shuffle off and make it look non-chalant." Seth pulled himself off of the rail and did just that, casually walking around the outside of the ferry so that their unknown stalker wouldn't think anything of it.

##

Seth slinked along the side of the boat, sneaking around so that he would be behind the car, and behind their stalker. When he got to the guy, he was relieved to see that he hadn't been noticed. Nina was still there, bent over the railing and keeping the stalker's attention.

Seth walked on the pads of his feet and made his way to the front fender of the Fiat the man was perched behind. He reached down and grabbed the man by the collar of his jacket, slamming his back against the hood of the car.

"Hey, how's the view?" Seth said, shoving his face to within an inch of the unfortunate man who ran afoul of Seth

The man didn't say anything because, well, what could he say? He didn't have much of a reason to be there, and he and Seth both knew it. He wriggled under Seth's grasp, but he wasn't nearly strong enough to escape it.

"F—fuck off!" the man said, spitting it out between gritted teeth.

"Oh come on, how clichéd." Seth said, then he bounced the guy's head against the hood of the Fiat "Now give it up, who sent you?"

The man didn't say anything. Of course he didn't. Seth smashed him against the hood a couple more times, with no results. "I'm just going to assume whoever's now in charge of Braun's men sent you...am I getting close now?" He smashed his fist against the guy's jaw, cracking his lip open like an overripe orange.

"You...won't leave this boat with the briefcase."

"Really? You're in a position to make that claim?"

The man rolled out from under Seth's grasp and scrambled away from the Fiat. He made his way toward the Seth and Nina's car, toward the briefcase, and smashed the window with his fist. Hearing the window explode, Nina jumped off the railing and ran toward the car. He grabbed around inside the car, but didn't have enough sense to think Seth might have put the priceless briefcase full of stolen Nazi art in the trunk.

Seth and Nina caught up to the inept thief, and Seth quickly gathered him up, pulling him out of the car.

"You jackass, that's a rental! You think I'm getting that deposit back?" He pulled the man across the deck while Nina made sure they weren't making too much of a scene. Seth dragged the man, kicking and screaming, across the deck and onto the railing on the opposite side of the boat. "If you're not going to play along, you aren't leaving me with too many options, man..." He picked the guy up and took him over the rail, dangling him over the frigid water. "Gonna cooperate now?" Seth said.

"Seth, don't...don't drop him."

"He's really not leaving me a choice."

"Remember what happened to the last guy you dropped off that one boat?" Nina winked at Seth, but it was clear it was affecting the stalker, as he was shaking from head to toe, and not just from the cold.

"OK, OK! Aldo's brother, Klaus, is running Die Hunde now, he sent me to get the case from you two motherfuckers" The man said, his accent drifting around Eastern Europe with every syllable.

"Klaus is gonna be pretty disappointed when he finds out you weren't able to get it back, am I right?"

Without giving the man time to reply, Seth dropped him into the chilling water, leaving him screaming and thrashing around in the wake of the boat.

"Seth! Jesus Christ!" Nina screamed, driving both palms into the middle of Seth's chest.

"He can swim back."

"In the middle of the night, in fifty degree water?"

"Hell, he wants it enough, people have done more extraordinary things."

Seth shrugged and made his way back toward the car. He wanted to get back to relaxing, to not worrying about who was gunning for him. If that was the best resistance Klaus Braun could send his way, Seth was pretty sure he'd be able to handle it.

6

The twin jet engines on the plane created a dull hum that irritated Seth, but the two weak cocktails he'd thrown back in the first hour of the thirteen hour flight made things chill out a little bit, but even with the drinks it was still going to be one hell of a long haul. The accommodations in the plane were far from the first class claims that Parker had made, it was more like a nice business class, but Seth couldn't complain, it was a lot better than some of the flights he'd taken before. Cramped tubes of aluminum held together with hope and some duct tape, a pilot who was pretty sure he knew how to fly this thing but couldn't make any promises...those kinds of things were par for the course on the shitbag flights Seth was used to taking.

Seth fidgeted in his seat, boredom forcing him to read the Skymall catalog. The selections available on the in-flight TV were already getting old...I mean, how much reality TV and bad cop dramas can one person be expected to endure? The music being pumped through the plane was the same situation, far too mainstream for Seth to tolerate it for more than a few minutes. He wanted Tom Waits, he wanted some Velvet Underground...for fuck's sake, he wanted some music that made him feel something, not some shit cooked up by a guy in Switzerland for some coke-addled starlet to sing between benders. It was pretty short-sighted of him to not bring something along, even buy a shitty airport novel before he lifted off, but at this point he didn't have much of a choice. So Seth didn't do much other than scowl and brood. And while he was good at that, really good in fact, it didn't pass the time very effectively. Like he thought when the tires left the ground, it was going to be a long flight.

Nina, meanwhile had come prepared. She was wrapped up in the quirky world of Miss Angeline Vanderbilt, the unwitting detective with adventures such as The Pecan Pie Murders, Blood in the Fondue, and The Cookie Jar Caper. The stories were filled with haughty aristocrats and intricately-planned murders...murders Miss Vanderbilt always solved in the last five pages.

"I'm sorry, what the hell are you reading?" Seth said, giving himself something to do, finally.

"It's..." Nina flipped the book over to look at the cover, as she'd been so wrapped up in the story she'd forgotten the title. She didn't really need to read the title of the book, though, just look at the picture. A blueberry muffin cut away in the middle to reveal a gooey center of blood. "...Death by Muffin."

"The fuck is that?" Seth growled.

"Glad to see you feel free to judge my reading habits. It's a cozy mystery, you know, one of those that's tricky, with a leading lady who doesn't know she's a leading lady until she's already in too deep...and all through the book, she comes up with these wonderful recipes."

"Oh god, that sounds terrible." Seth couldn't contain himself from laughing. Skymall wasn't looking so bad now.

Nina rolled her eyes at Seth's gruffness "Now I bet you're going to tell me how lame this book is..."

"Well, yeah, I am. I mean, those stories like that are such bullshit, and you being someone involved in, you know, real crime, should know how much bullshit they are. Crime's not cute, murder's not just a convenient way to move a plot forward. It's brutal...fucking brutal, and to reduce it to some excuse to pass along hot recipes and make cute jokes...hell, that's worse than actual crime. Real murders, they're never intricately planned like the ones in those books. Almost all of them are the result of a person making a terrible split-second choice that ruins them forever, or worse, they get away with it and it ruins them even more. They have to live with that on their backs forever."

"You've killed people, it doesn't seem to affect you much."

Seth glared at Nina, daggers piercing into her chest. "Get to know me, you'll see how fucking much they affect me. You think I don't carry the ghost of every half-wit thug I've had to put a slug into? Not a day goes by I don't think about how things could have been different."

"The gunslinger thug with the deep soul...how original. These things, they're not supposed to be these huge overarching epics of crime and loss...fuck, I wouldn't read them if they were. I live with enough tragedy in my day-to-day life that sometimes I need to escape from all that terrible shit out there."

"You escape your life of crime with stories about crimes that could never happen. You know what, put me in one of those stories, with the baker who bakes cyanide-laced raisins into his coffee cake to kill of the mayor who wouldn't grant him a foodservice license, and I'll deal with the mayor without having to even measure out a teaspoon of flour."

"Yeah, but you have no finesse. I saw what you did in that penthouse."

"And without it you would've been cold dead and I'd be making this flight solo."

"Thanks then, I guess." Nina cracked most of a smile, it was obvious she liked this kind of banter. It wasn't often she was able to spar mentally with a person, as most of her partners in crime were barely able to tie their shoes.

The duel over, Seth and Nina relaxed back into their seats, and despite the fact that she knew it was completely stupid, Nina dove once again into Death By Muffin. Angeline Vanderbilt was just closing in on the dastardly gardener...

7

The plane touched down at JFK and Seth and Nina were both relieved to be on the ground once again. They were a lot more interested in their half million dollar payday now that they were on the same continent as the man carrying the money.

Nina and Seth deboarded the plane and emerged into the terminal. New York City was still there in all its glory, much to Seth's relief. Even though he was only gone a couple days, he always felt pangs of homesickness whenever he was out of the five boroughs. Nina didn't share the same feelings, and even though she enjoyed New York, it reminded her of too many bad things, too many deals gone wrong, too many con games that went south and went bloody in a split second. The city was full of ghosts for the both of them, it's just that Seth welcomed the ghosts in, bought them a drink, and sang with them into the night, while Nina tried to close them out, to eliminate them from her psyche. Nina wasn't very successful in it.

With the chaos of the main terminal in front of them, Seth was watching, on point, just waiting for that guy to spring out from nowhere to snatch the briefcase from him. The woman with the baby carriage, it could just be a disguise to distract them long enough to snatch the case right from under them. Anything could happen in the chaos of the terminal. While the man Braun's brother had sent wasn't exactly a huge threat, he wouldn't be able to retaliate in the way he preferred in the bustling maze of JFK. If someone lifted the case at this point, he was weaponless, and it wasn't exactly the ideal place to break a guy's kneecaps. He had to be proactive, because being reactive would only end up in chaos, arrests, and more shit than he wanted to deal with.

They moved quickly through the terminal toward the outside. They both had packed light, which for Seth meant the clothes on his back and for Nina meant one overstuffed carry-on bag. The only thing Seth had with him was the only thing that really mattered between the two of them and he gripped it with the fervor of a mother clutching her newborn baby. His hand gripped the handle and he was more than ready to defend it against anyone who might come up to him to take it away.

"You grip that any closer you know you might break the handle." Nina said

"So you have a better solution...pair of handcuffs, maybe?"

"I don't really use those outside of the bedroom."

This sudden upsurge in sexuality shocked Seth, and almost made him drop the briefcase.

"We'll get to that if the time comes, right?"

Nina just chuckled, but Seth wasn't sure if that was an "of course we will" or a "fuck off, no way in the world we will" chuckle.

Seth stepped through the sliding doors and walked out to the swirling circulatory system of cabs buzzing around the curb in front of the terminal. If Parker was a smarter man, or at least less of a cheapskate, he would have sent a driver for them, with the little sign with their names on it and everything, but no, they had to make it back to Manhattan a cab, a bit of an indignity for the cache of what they were carrying.

Nina found a cab coming up on them and flung her hand in the air. It seemed like ten cabs jockeyed for position to get in front of Nina and Seth, but the winner of the contest got there by edging his wheels up onto the curb itself, coming within inches of bowling over three other waiting tourists. In terms of what cabbies did on a normal basis was a pretty minor infraction.

"You need ride, get in" The man said, his Russian accent as thick as Stalin's moustache. He was in a hell of a hurry, but what cabbie in the world wasn't?

Seth and Nina approached the cab's popped trunk. Nina put her carry-on in the compartment and Seth decided to give the briefcase a rest from his iron fist by putting it in the security of the trunk. It's not like it was going anywhere without him.

...but, actually, that's exactly what it did. Immediately after shutting the trunk, the cab driver gunned the accelerator, his car at first lurching off of the curb but once the rubber took hold on the road it sped away.

"Fuck!" Nina screamed, but Seth only heard it halfway. He was already tearing across the pavement, his legs pumping faster than an Olympian trying to break a world record. He saw the cab about a hundred feet ahead of him, weaving through traffic. For once in his entire life, Seth was hoping that New York City's traffic would finally work in his favor, trapping the cab at a light or behind a stop-and-go delivery truck. His feet smashed the pavement, and he seemed to be running faster than his shoes could keep up. His chest heaved as he sucked in air, both in physical exertion and the anxiety that he was watching a half a million dollars speed away from him in the trunk of a yellow cab.

After two minutes of giving the cab chase, it had doubled back and swished around in the sea of identical cabs that there was no way Seth was going to catch it. He dropped to his knees and pounded his fist into an unlucky mailbox that happened to be beside him. He tore the hell out of his knuckles, but no pain in his hand was anything compared to the sucking wound that had just opened up in the middle of his very being.

He heard Nina's footsteps approaching him, she was running at half the pace he'd just bolted.

"Where'd he go?" She gasped for air and hunched over.

"He's just gone...that's all that matters now."

Seth stared at the cars that buzzed by in either direction, oblivious to the hell he and Nina were facing. The world didn't give a shit, and it wasn't going to help them in any sense. To get that case back, they were going to have to do it on their own.

8

Seth dropped another shriveled cigarette butt into the ashtray in the middle of the hotel room, and it joined the dozen or so others that had made their homes in it in the past half an hour. He was pacing, and he couldn't remember the last time he'd done it, because it only happened when the shit really hit the fan, when all the chips were down and he had absolutely nowhere to go.

"Any ideas at all?" Nina said, the phrase itself an exercise in futility since they'd both asked it to each other a hundred times in the two hours they'd spent in the hotel room trying to figure out where to go from here. They had about two days until Parker's men would descend upon them, doing who knows what to them trying to find the briefcase, thinking Seth and Nina had worked a double cross on their boss. Since Seth and Nina had no real info, Parker's men would just keep beating, keep destroying them until they made up a halfway credible lie or died from their injuries...it was a either/or thing when it came to Parker's men, but they didn't care which side of mortality their victims ended up on, as long as Mr. Parker was happy.

They'd decided to hole up in a hotel in Ozone Park, in the shadow of The Aqueduct. Seth thought that maybe if nothing would come to them to help them track down the briefcase, maybe he could let all he had ride on the number six in the fourth race to see if he could cash out and let his winnings carry him further than Parker's hands could reach.

It was a hotel that hadn't seen an update since 1954, the pastel walls and carpet echoing a time everyone remembered as innocent, simpler. The past fifty-five years hadn't been kind to the place, though, and the walls seemed to be held up more by luck than stability. Luckily for Seth and his addictions, it was the kind of place where the owners didn't care if you smoked in the rooms, since it wasn't like the conditions were going to get much worse. The faint echoes of a john's head bouncing against the thin wall filled the air as another hooker made her day's pay in the room next door. Yeah, it was that kind of place, but Seth and Nina were OK with the hourly rate, because who knows where the next couple days would take them.

Right now, they weren't being taken anywhere. Without a solid lead on anything other than the fact that a Russian guy in a yellow cab ran off with the briefcase, they didn't have much to go on.

"What if we fake Parker out? Give him a dummy briefcase, let us have enough time to skip town before he realizes he was faked out."

"Come on, you know Parker, he's gonna check it the first second we bring it to him. If we just filled the briefcase with paper, we'd have two holes in our heads a half a second after Parker opened that case."

"You're right." Nina dug her fingernails into her knee and tried to think about ways to get the hell out of the city unnoticed, since actually finding the case seemed like a pipe dream at this point.

"Holy shit..." Seth said, staring blankly at the fire escape instructions on the far side of the bedroom. It was obvious this hotel was a very safety first kind of place.

"You're surprised there are actually fire exits in here? Me too."

"No, no, no...have you ever heard of photographic memory?"

"Uh huh. Is this really a time to pull out obscure psychological conditions?"

"Shut up, shut up, just give me a pen and a paper." Seth had a fevered look in his eyes, like he was really onto something, so she scrambled over to the desk in the hotel room, grabbed a stationary pad and a pen and threw them over to Seth. He scribbled down a few letters and then turned the pad back towards her. It read 7XLT43.

"...and?"

"That's the cab number of the guy who ripped us off. I was looking at that fire escape diagram, saw the letters LT43, and all of the sudden it came rushing back to me, like a picture. It was the last thing I saw on the cab right before he pulled away, my hand rubbed up against the lettering...7XLT43 for American Cabs."

"And you're sure that was the number?"

"We don't have a lot more to go on right now, do we?"

"Guess not."

10

The dispatch center for American Cabs was in the heart of The Bronx, which made the subway ride during rush hour a huge thrill for both Seth and Nina. The dirty, squat brick building had a constant stream of cabs flowing in and out of it, along with a few clutches of drivers standing around outside eating bagged lunches and cawing to each other about sports scores as they waited for their shifts to start. Seth and Nina walked inside the glass door to the chilly interior of the office of the building. Truth be told, the office was just as, if not more, layered with dirt and decades-old grime as the garage was. Piles of yellowed paper shot towards the sky, the slightest bump in the wrong direction able to send them fluttering to the ground. The man in the office seemed at home amongst this chaos, as he was more or less a crumpled pile of yellow paper himself, with stringy gray hair and a jaw that had thrown a going away party for his chin at least thirty years ago. His eyes wandered out from behind smudged glasses as he looked up at Seth and Nina.

"Whaddaya want?" He said. The placard on his desk, obscured by papers but still visible, read "Randall Trowell"

"I think one of your drivers may have taken something of mine."

"Got a cab number? Can't really do—"

"7XLT43." Seth said, getting in close to Trowell.

"7..X...Ahh, Dmitri. Good kid, he'd never steal something from a passenger."

"I tend to disagree since I'm out an irreplaceable briefcase and one of your guys has it."

"Have you checked the baggage claim? Things get lost."

"Mister...Mister Trowell, listen." Nina stepped into the conversation, breaking up the dick measuring contest that was taking place in front of her. "My husband..." What the fuck? Seth nearly broke his neck spinning around to try to read just what exactly Nina was trying to do. "...my husband left some...pictures...in that briefcase..."

Trowell looked at Nina and slithered his gaze up her hips and beyond. "Pictures of you?"

Nina pinched her brow and inhaled sharply. "No, no, you see, they're pictures of him. Naked. It was a going away present for me while I go on a six-month trip to Africa, and I'm leaving tomorrow night."

Seth started to play along "Uh, yeah, I guess that's the reason I really don't want that briefcase falling into the hands of just any schmuck off the street...not calling Dmitri a schmuck or anything, but, you know..."

"I see, I see." Trowell looked more than a little bit disgusted at this development, but he kept his composure. "Let me check if Dmitri declared any lost bags when he came off his shift a few hours ago..." Trowell upended a stack of papers to pull out a stuffed-to-bursting green folder. It was all part of some intricate system, Seth thought...Trowell knew exactly where everything was. There was a bit of a charm to the utter mess this place was."Dmitri Petrov declared...no bags last night. None at all."

"Well I know he has my briefcase, and I'd hate for him to open that case and get an eyeful."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah...well, I wish I could help you."

"You could give us his address..." Nina said, putting on her puppy dog eyes and trying to plead with the manager.

"No, that's confidential information, I can't—"

"Sir, Mister Trowell, some of the things I was doing in those pictures...well, let's just say they were probably illegal in a whole lot of states."

"Sick fucks," Trowell knocked the folder out of the way, pulled open a drawer which sent some papers fluttering to the floor, all the while muttering under his breath various obscenities. "Don't tell anyone where you got this, OK?" Trowell scrawled an address onto a sheet of paper he pulled off of a stack. It was an address in Brooklyn. It was like they were trying to have Seth and Nina go as far as possible from their current location to get things done.

11

If you weren't paying close enough attention, you could have mistaken Brighton Beach for the middle of Moscow. The signs on the fronts of stores were exclusively in Russian, and the residents didn't care if you could understand it. Despite this, Seth and Nina were able to find their way to Petrov's aged brownstone standing between a sketchy electronics repair place and an all-Russian supermarket. The front door was loose, so Seth nudged it along its way to brokenness by shoving a discarded catalog in the jamb, throwing the door open and allowing them to get in. Petrov's apartment was on the fourth floor, and Seth and Nina weren't quite sure if the stairs were going to hold them up the entire way there, but they didn't have much of an option.

"Any idea how you're going to get this thing from Petrov?" Nina said, the boards moaning beneath her feet.

"I've had some inklings..."

"Inklings that don't involve you breaking his hands in his refrigerator door?"

"...damn you're good."

"Can I do the talking?"

"At first, sure, but we'll see how things go."

They reached the door to Petrov's apartment. There was a faint echo of a television behind the thin wood of the door. A man could be heard chuckling along with the laugh track on the show. Nina knocked on the door. "Mister Petrov?" she said, looking up and waiting. Thirty seconds passed, but there was no response. Nina knocked again, firmer this time, but still nothing. She heard a man's voice again behind the door, jabbering something in Russian, so it was obvious someone was home. "Mister Petrov, I can hear you in there. Come on, we just want to talk to you." Still no response.

"Alright, this is done, get back." Nina stepped back, knowing exactly what Seth was going to do next. He backed up a few steps, wound his right foot back and delivered a kick to the door, right above the doorknob, where the deadbolt should have been...the deadbolt that would have protected the door from blasting open and almost shaking from its hinges. Shards of rotted wood flew in every direction, and links from the flimsy "security" chain blew apart, clinking against the floor.

Seth made Petrov from the first second he stepped into the room. He was slight, with thin features, pale skin and coal black hair. He was still wearing the clothes he'd worn when he drove off with the briefcase: a brown jacket, brown khakis and brown shoes. Russia wasn't exactly known for its broad color palate, and Dmitri Petrov was proving that to be the truth. Upon seeing Nina and Seth burst into the room, Petrov flipped over the tray of food he was eating off of and dashed to the window on the far side of his boxy, cramped apartment. Petrov was going to run, as Seth had predicted. Obviously, Petrov wasn't all that experienced with running away from pursuers, though, since there was no way anyone who knew anything about it would have ran up instead of down. He escaped up the fire escape, and of course Seth and Nina followed.

Petrov worked his way up the three floors of fire escapes, his feet clanking heavy against the ancient steel. He was fast, they gave him that at least, since he seemed to stay five steps in front of him as they got into the roof.

In the shoulder-to-shoulder environment of Brighton Beach, combined with the fact that alleys just don't exist in the city, Petrov was able to effortlessly leap between the buildings without even risking his neck. Seth was right behind Petrov but just too far away. Petrov wasn't making it any easier on Seth, knocking down abandoned antenna aerials, putting them in Seth's path. They were slowing Seth and Nina down a bit, but Seth knew he was gaining and Petrov was going to eventually come to a jump he couldn't make without the risk of becoming crimson paint on the side of an apartment building. Good thing for Seth and Nina's legs and lungs that the jump he couldn't make came right before they were going to give up.

Petrov came to the ledge and looked down then back at Seth and he had to make the tough choice of which would hurt him more. Seth thought he'd be much better off picking the ground, but he was happy that Petrov didn't.

"Hey Petrov, remember me?" Seth said, moving another step forward to put the pressure on the cabbie, who was already scared senseless. To Seth's credit, it was senseless for him to take the briefcase in the first place.

Seth moved up some more on Petrov and jutted forward quickly, nearly putting his shoulder into Petrov's chest. Nina just stood there and watched things unfold. She knew that Seth had gone into unchained beast mode at this point, and the only thing she could do was avoid getting in his path. "You really should start talking or you're going to learn so much more about gravity than you ever have."

"No...no English." Petrov sputtered

"Oh, I think you can come up with a few choice words, namely where the fuck you put my case."

"A man...man gave me money to pick...pick you up and...and...and take your...your case."

"Now you're playing along, Petrov, I appreciate that. You've got me the outline, now how about filling in the details?"

"He was from...Middle East. He has your briefcase. All I know, I swear."

Seth pulled the .45 from his jacket "The Middle East's a big place, Petrov. You're going to have to get more specific."

This was the point where Petrov must have decided to take the other way out. Maybe he slipped, maybe he just didn't know anything more but figured he was going to die anyway, but in a series of skittering motions, Petrov edged himself off the ledge, dropping out of Seth's view. A disappointingly dull thud followed a second later as Petrov all at once became useless to Seth and Nina.

Seth looked down at what was left of Petrov splattered against the side of the building and down to the sidewalk below. Not to say there was a whole lot left of him, just a few scattered parts and a growing crowd of shocked onlookers. It took a lot to get someone in the city to pay attention to anything other than themselves, but it was at least reassuring that a body falling from a twelve story building still did it. Luckily for Seth and Nina, though, nobody looked up to see where he had come from. Suicide wasn't all that uncommon in this part of town, but it wasn't uncommon in any place with large populations of recent immigrants. The ones who killed themselves were usually guys who couldn't deal with the pressure of the big city or couldn't scrounge up enough cash doing the jobs nobody else would even consider, they would look for the easy way out of things. Guns, pills or other more favored methods of self-elimination were too expensive for someone without enough cash to buy their next meal. For most of them, the easiest, the most cost effective way out was straight down

"Well that's zero for two on your negotiation skills Seth. Did any of your job interviews ever end like this?" Nina said pulling Seth back from the ledge just in case someone did by chance look up.

"I don't think I've ever been in a real job interview. Besides, that one wasn't my fault."

"Oh, not at all. No, you just chased a man to the edge of the building and put a gun in his face. There's no way you were in any way responsible for this."

"Whatever it's over and we still don't have the case, just the clue that some Middle Eastern guy has it." Seth put the gun back into his jacket, checking the safety first...a safety he hadn't even turned off when he pointed it at Petrov. How embarrassing would that have been?

"That narrows our search to, oh...five hundred thousand or so in the city. Not counting Jersey or Connecticut."

"Better than we had when we came here right? It's a start."

Nina nodded, her expression sober, but she couldn't keep herself from smiling just a little bit. Maybe the smile was spurred from the sheer absurdity of the situation, a pretty basic smash and grab when you got down to it. A smash and grab of priceless art that went to hell in the back of a taxi cab, but still a smash and grab at heart. Then again, she may have been smiling because Seth just wouldn't give up, even though she would have just gotten on the first bus out of town, Seth was really determined to find that case. Seth's doggedness in the face of utter defeat was endearing if anything, but she knew it was the kind of doggedness that got a lot of people killed throughout history and she feared she and Seth would be the next to prove that sometimes you just have to let things go. She had no idea what to do next, but it seemed like Seth may have had a grand plan to follow. Where it would lead the both of them Nina could only assume it came with some degree of bodily harm to themselves or others, probably both, but it was all she had right now so she went along with it.

"Alright then, let's find the needle in the biggest fucking haystack in the world. Lead the way you seem to be more on top of this than I am."

"We need to regroup, go back to the hotel. I need to think and you need to let me do it." Seth said. They walked down the fire escape, hit the pavement and went back towards Queens. The back way this time, away from Petrov, away from the onlookers and the subsequent authorities who would ask just exactly where they came from and why they were on the roof when Petrov died. Suspicion of murder was the last thing they needed.

12

The sun disappeared behind the endless sea of buildings in the city, and night fell on Seth and Nina's hotel. The lights from The Aqueduct gave the entire neighborhood a silver glaze and made sure nobody would have a good night's sleep without blackout curtains. That was fine, because Seth and Nina were not at all ready to begin sleeping yet. With the reality of Parker rubbing them out becoming more and more realistic in their minds, the dread was beginning to bloom in both of them, causing Seth to once again pace around the hotel room, to once again suck down cigarettes while Nina read through another cozy. If she ever needed an escape from the harshness of reality, it was right now. Things were so bad Seth didn't even give her hell for reading it.

"There's someone I can call who might be able to help us out." Seth said, watching the excitement of the race in the distance. "But don't make me do it."

"What the hell do you mean?" Nina said, putting her book down. "If it helps us, you're going to do it."

"I mean, this person...I don't want to be in their pocket."

"Seth, I've got some news for you, if we don't find that case, we're going to find ourselves stuffed into a couple dozen trash bags and tossed out into the harbor. Being in someone's pocket is the least bad thing that could happen to us right now."

"You don't understand..." It was weird, Nina had never seen Seth like this, so skittish and worried. His tough-guy stoic attitude had been completely dropped, and now he was behaving like a kid getting ready for his senior prom. He paced quicker, sucked a cigarette to a nub in what seemed like three seconds, ashes fluttering to the floor.

"I think I understand enough. I think I understand that you're either going to go to this mysterious person who knows things or I'll save Parker the trouble of offing you and just do it myself."

Seth glared at Nina and began to say something but then backed off. He lit up another cigarette and said "I do this, and we get out of this alive, you owe me."

"I can't make any guarantees..." Nina said. "So who's this mysterious person that'll solve all of our problems and keep us alive?"

"The Middleman." Seth said, the mere action of uttering the words seemed deathly painful to him.

Nina had heard of The Middleman, just like anyone in New York who had ever needed something fenced would have known of him. He was, as far as fences go, the guy at the top of the totem pole. He was so good, in fact, that whenever something major was stolen, the police didn't even bother doing their own investigation in most cases, they just went straight to The Middleman, who would, depending on his mood for the day, let them know exactly where the loot was, who had it and how to get it back, or he would close the door in the officer's faces and disappear. Whichever he chose. Still, the cops never came knocking to put a pair of bracelets on the guy, as he was way too powerful and connected to just give up as a valuable resource. On the other side of the coin, the criminal element of the city never did anything to upset him either, and wouldn't ever consider putting a hit out on him since he essentially ran the entire economy of the underworld. The Middleman was in a unique position in the world, a place hardly anyone could stay for long. He was both feared and respected, allowed to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, playing both sides for his own benefit.

Nina knew The Middleman may have had an angle on where the case wandered off to, but she was stunned to find out that Seth would have any sort of in with the guy so that they could talk to him.

"Let's go talk to The Middleman, then."

"The Middleman's not someone you just go to their doorstep and ring the bell. Preparations have to be made, schedules matched up. Let me make a call, see what I can do."

Seth flipped open his phone and ran through his contact list. He punched the send button and Nina could hear the ringing through the earpiece. The ringing stopped and a voice came through on the other end. Nina couldn't hear what that other end was saying, only Seth's side of the conversation.

"Hey, it's Seth." Pause, Seth already had an exhausted look on his face, like making this call was the most laborious thing he'd ever done. "Yeah, listen, we can talk about that later. I need a favor from you. Yes, I know I'll owe you. Yes, I realize I'll be paying it off for the next six months." He shot daggers at Nina, making damn sure she knew that she was the reason he'd be paying his dues to The Middleman. Seth described the situation to The Middleman, who didn't really say anything back to him through the whole sordid tale. Once he was done, The Middleman delivered some choice words, much less than Seth had said, and Seth replied "Alright then, see you tomorrow bright and early. Yes, I'll bring donuts. It's the least I can do. Yep, fuck you too. I'll see you tomorrow." He clapped the phone shut and sat down on the bed, his hands hanging down between his knees, a hangdog expression on his face. He looked like a boxer who'd just gone six rounds and was considering just throwing in the towel.

"So...?" Nina said

"We'll have to wait for The Middleman to get back from a party on Long Island. Said we could come over tomorrow..."

"...bright and early? Yeah, I was listening."

"Then you probably also caught on to how fucking pinned to the wall I'll be once The Middleman does this favor for us."

"Uh huh." Nina walked around Seth, trying to figure out something to say that would cheer him up. This whole thing with The Middleman seemed to really affect him, more than Nina had perceived at first, but it was honestly taxing him, turning him into someone else. "I guess then we've got the whole night ahead of us then. How about I buy you dinner?"

Seth looked up and the ghost of a smile lit up on his face. "Sure. Sounds good." He stood up looked Nina straight in the eye. "When this is done, when all the money's been sorted out and before you go your merry way off to whatever life you want for yourself, I expect a thank you at least."

"We'll see..." Nina said with a devilish grin.

"Let's go, I'm going to find you somewhere ridiculously expensive to buy me dinner."

"I wouldn't expect anything less."

13

Club 19 was a restaurant of a dying breed. It was the kind of place where guys would sit for hours to talk, eat steak, smoke cigars and drink whiskey. At least you were at one time able to smoke cigars, although the prevailing politics of the era put that to a stop. It was classy, too, somewhere Sinatra loved to visit every time he was in Queens. Every light in the room was turned down just a little bit below normal, giving the place a hushed, calm feel. The dark wood paneling on the walls wasn't going to exactly win any modern design awards, but it made the place feel like you had to know someone to get in. The clientele reflected the old-school feel of the place, most of them were past their prime gangsters, too old to be dangerous to anyone and inconsequential enough to not warrant a hit on them. People don't frequently grow old in organized crime, most of the ones who survive either move up the ranks or are gently pushed out of the industry with one last shot of whiskey and a bullet between the eyes. The patrons of Club 19, though, were the forgotten men of the underworld. Arms runners, minor drug dealers, carjackers in their heydays, but since they'd gone to seed nobody cared about them anymore, so they sat, they drank, they talked. They were the lucky ones. The survivors of an industry that doesn't make an effort to produce anyone left to tell the tales.

It was obvious to Nina why Seth had picked the place, and it wasn't just for the $65 New York Strip he ordered without even looking at the menu. Nina knew Seth hoped to be one of these guys one day. Although the work he did was a hell of a lot more violent than the stock and trade of most of the guys sitting around in the high-backed leather chairs, she knew Seth entertained some sort of fantasy that he wasn't in deep enough with enough people, that he could give everything up in a day if he wanted to. She knew Seth didn't want to do this the rest of his life, and she could see him settling into something comfortable like nightly dinners at Club 19. It was obvious Seth had been here before, she watched him shake hands and talk with the old guys like they were his best pals in the world, getting close to them so that maybe, just maybe, he'd absorb some of their knowledge on how to stay alive in an industry that values youth and guile and cuts you down once it's done with you. She hoped that Seth would grow old, be one of these guys, since that would mean that they would come out of their present situation with their mortal coils intact, and that'd be a plus for her at least.

Seth sipped the last traces of a double whiskey from his highball glass and savored every bit of the steak that was so rare it probably could have walked off the table if it were so inclined. Nina picked at the dregs of her poached salmon and had a few bites of mashed potatoes. While this cuisine was certainly right up Seth's alley, Nina's more worldly view of food made her balk at the boring, pedestrian selections that made up Club 19's menu.

"Enjoying the salmon?" Seth said between bites of steak.

"It's...an old standard, I'll give it that."

Seth smiled. It seemed like he may have gotten more pleasure out of Nina's abhorrence to the food than eating the food itself.

"Sir?" A thin waiter approached the table with a bottle of wine older than either Seth or Nina.

"Oh, I didn't order any wine..." Seth said

"Ahh, not to insult you, sir, but this is from Mr. Marcuzzi..." The waiter indicated Dom Marcuzzi, a man who, rather famously, kept a stranglehold on a good portion of the Baltimore harbor for the Gotti family in the 80s. Seth looked over at Marcuzzi, raised his now empty highball glass, and toasted the air.

"Then tell Mr. Marcuzzi thank you very much."

"I will sir, I will." The waiter popped the cork out of the bottle and poured the wine into two goblets. The drink was as dark, blood red, but it tasted wonderful. Finally, it was a part of the dinner Seth and Nina both enjoyed.

The bottle of wine from Marcuzzi was followed by another one bought on Seth's dime, and soon both Seth and Nina were feeling warm and nostalgic.

"Alright," Nina grasped the edge of the round table, commanding the conversation. "Story time. The closest you've come to dying on a job..."

"Present situation excluded?"

"This one still has some time to pan out. I'm talking about knocking on death's door stuff, when you thought you wouldn't be coming back. You go first."

"Well, there haven't been many, I tend to not put myself in the position to get into a situation where I don't have an out, but..." Seth's puffery was irritating Nina even more now that the wine was swimming in her brain, but she didn't say anything. "It was on the border of Texas and Mexico, about ten years ago, just as I was making a name for myself, so I was taking jobs with any crew who would bring me aboard. It was a heist job, but I'm not talking about lifting jewelry or knocking over a gun store, this was a heist on a bigger scale. We were jacking gasoline."

"Gas? That's about as unglamorous of a heist as you can get."

"Yeah, you're exactly right, but you have to understand, down in these out of the way border towns in Mexico, you can't just pull up to a pump, swipe your credit card and be on your merry way. Nope, the cartels have their hooks in everything, including gas. But these cartels aren't just going to ask BP really nicely for a steady supply of the stuff, since that would cost them, you know, real, clean money. Instead they get guys like me and the other stupid fucks who were on my crew to jack tankers coming fresh out of the refineries in Texas, absolutely stuffed to the gills with high octane gasolina. They pay each of us a couple thousand bucks, most of the time one or two of the guys will die in the process so they only end up paying out five thousand max for a tanker full of gas that they can then parcel out and make thirty five, forty thousand on when it hits the black market."

"Good deal if you can get it."

"And they get it. And they don't want to risk their top guys on these runs, so they hire gringos like me to take it across the border for them. They give us some guns, the route where the truck's going to be heading, and a very specific place on the border to drive through. Oh, yeah, I did mention that the last thirty miles or so of the trip has to be driven off-road in the absolute middle of nowhere at about two o'clock in the morning, right? One false move, you don't see a rock, or an armadillo, or, hell, a big group of fence-jumpers walking through the desert, and guess what?" Seth made the sound of an explosion and drove the point home with detailed hand motions "That's it, game over."

"Well, that didn't happen to you, so tell me what did happen on this allegedly notorious trip down Mexico way."

"It actually wasn't the trip out of the US that was the problem, that part we did fine. We went ahead of where we knew the truck would be, acted like we'd blown out our tire in the middle of the road, then when the trucker came, he paused for a minute and that was all we needed. He was packing heat, a shitty little .22 that the oil companies give all their drivers around that area, like that's going to stop anybody, but we were all armed to the teeth with some AK-47s graciously supplied to us by the cartel. The driver gave the truck up in a second after seeing those rifles. The three of us took the truck and started driving to the border, leaving the trucker without much more than the shirt on his back, but at least we let him live...most crews don't. We got through the desert, drove the path the cartel told us to drive, and we made it across the border. About five minutes after crossing that border, that's when things got interesting. I didn't even see the guys at first, they were in a dark SUV and out in the middle of the desert, good luck seeing fucking anything that's not right in front of your headlights. But what I did see were the MP5s they were firing at us, lighting up the night like a fireworks show. They were doing a pretty good job keeping their bullets away from the tank itself, they peppered our cab and the engine with shots, though, but that thing kept going. I had my hands on the wheel and my foot jamming the accelerator down as far as it would go, but I knew something would have to give. That's when they pulled out the RPG..."

"You're fucking kidding me."

"No, no, not in the least. Trust me, you can get those things down there easier than you can get clean water. A guy popped out of the sunroof, and in my right rearview mirror I saw the RPG, but there wasn't much I could do...I mean, I was driving this thing ninety miles an hour and I couldn't exactly jump out of it or pull a quick one-eighty turn to face them, so I just tried to get out of the way. I saw the rocket scream toward me, but I juked the wheel to the left just as it was about to make contact so it didn't hit us straight on. It did, though, blow up right in front of my right front tire. Killed Mickey, the guy who was unlucky enough to be riding shotgun, killed him instantly, just tore him to pieces. Me and the other guy, Carl, we bounced around inside the cab of the truck as the thing must have flipped over three times before it finally stopped. When it did stop, I was hanging upside down and Carl was walking on all fours on what used to be the roof of the cab, an absolutely fucking huge piece of glass sticking out of his ribs. I watched Carl climb out of the cab and then I unbuckled myself. I heard the SUV pulling up next to us, pulling up to the side where Carl was getting out. Naturally I decided to go the opposite way, into the pitch black. I watched them from a distance as they executed Carl, put about three hundred bullets into him, but they must have assumed that he was the one driving the truck, that there were only two guys on the job. They probably should have done their homework. I stood there and watched some more as they hooked a winch up to the tanker to pull it back upright.

"Now understand that pulling something up that's that heavy is a pretty intense ordeal, something that demands everyone's attention. That little detail explains why I was able to pop the door open on the SUV as the three guys were busy hooking up the winch. Also explains why they didn't notice I'd taken the RPG from the back seat of the truck along with an extra round they must have been saving for a rainy day. They got the tank all winched up, and they were so damn close to pulling the thing upright that I almost let them do it just as a feat of modern engineering. But, that RPG round was really itching to be used, and I had always wondered just what a gasoline explosion would look like in the middle of the night. I, uh, I found out pretty definitively. It looks beautiful."

Nina had to go down to the basement of Club 19 to pick her jaw up. "Holy. Shit. That's either the biggest line of bullshit I've ever heard or somebody in Hollywood should really buy your life story."

"You didn't let me finish. All of that was nothing, par for the course for those days...no, on my walk back over the border, I got stung by a scorpion, huge fucker, my leg swelled to the size of a tree trunk. The doctor said I probably would have died if a border guard hadn't come by to find me passed out in the sand. That has to be the closest I've come to dying during a job."

Nina chuckled and knocked back another swig of wine. She didn't know if Seth was telling the truth, but it was a hell of a story and she at least wanted to believe it was real. She looked into Seth's eyes, saw the smarmy attitude he carried with him day and night, and began to feel things that she knew she would probably regret when everything was over. It was enough of a bad situation to be paired with someone she didn't trust enough to be completely sure he wasn't pulling her in only to cross her at the last minute, but it was even worse to have those dangerous stirs of yearning and flat-out horniness creeping up in the corners of her psyche.

"Your turn..." Seth said, leaning back in his chair, crossing his arms, just waiting to see what Nina had in store for him.

"Well this one doesn't have nearly as much action or bloodthirsty Mexican cartels, but it was in Miami, so there were some shady Cubans around when it happened. It was during a period of my life I'm not all that proud of, I was running badger games on tourists."

"Badger games?"

"Yeah, badger game...maybe you're not familiar with it because there's no way in hell you could ever pull one."

"I resent that..."

"Unless you grow a couple cup sizes and tuck in some essential equipment you're not going to dupe too many unassuming businessmen."

"Ahh, that kind of game..."

"Pretty much I was spending my nights hanging around in bars finding guys that had a lot more money than sense...and there were more than enough. Guys go down to Miami from the Midwest on business trips, they realize how shitty and unfulfilling their lives are up there in the land of corn and homely women. Then they go to bars, they see this girl sitting there all by her lonesome, she's some kind of Asian, they can't really tell, all they know is that they want it and they want it bad. And me, I'm all too happy to oblige to their whims. You see, they've always wondered what it would be like to be with an Asian girl. They've heard things about us, would you believe we're world renowned for fucking? What a proud heritage. We give you assholes gunpowder and mathematics and all you can do to thank us is to want to fuck our brains out and find out if what they say about Chinese girls' goodies are, well, you know. I let him buy the first drink, my dinner, and then another drink. We make out for a little while at the bar and they invite me up to their room for a little R&R. Now, before things would get too hot and heavy on the bed, I would always suggest drinks. And being the shrinking violet, subservient character that I played in these games, I'd always volunteer to pour them for the big strong man who was going to make-a me feel sooo good" She affected a stereotypical Japanese accent. Nina had some issues about stereotypes that Seth wasn't even going to touch, not with a ten foot pole. Nina sighed, disappointed that Seth wouldn't take the bait. "When I made the drink, I'd always put in a little something extra for them, namely a huge dose of Diphenhydramine—"

"Benadryl?"

"Pretty much. If the cops ever caught me with a couple dozen of them in my bag, they'd just think I had a really bad reaction to sun and palm trees. But four of those pills dissolved in a White Russian will put a guy to sleep in about a half an hour. Once he was down, I'd go through everything he had, rip off his cash, laptop, cell phone, everything he had going for him. Once all was said and done, he'd be way too embarrassed to go to the cops about it since, hey, he was cheating on his wife and/or sort of patronizing a prostitute. In other words, he would be so fucked he'd just go back to Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, wherever, with his tail between his legs, whimpering while trying to explain how he got swindled."

"Sounds like a solid con."

"Not the most glamorous thing in the world, but, yeah, it was profitable." Nina paused, taking a gulp of her wine. "Anyway, it was June, peak time for conferences, seminars and all that crap, and I was running the game on this guy, Paul. He seemed like one of the stupidest marks I'd ever pulled in. Fat, slovenly, totally played into my game. So we went up to his room and started going at it. I offered the drinks, but he wanted to keep going further. Somehow he got me naked, and right there is where I knew I should have stopped this whole thing and walked away, but this guy was carrying two Blackberries and had a Rolex, so I knew he was fucking stuffed to the gills with cash. Eventually I was able to convince him I really needed a drink because I was getting so nervous about being with an older man, and thankfully he agreed to have a drink, too. I mixed it all up, mind you I'm naked while I'm doing this. And I brought the laced drink to him. He looked at it, and he must have seen a chunk of the pill floating in the drink or something, and all of the sudden he rolled over to his bed and pulled out a .357 revolver and had it pointed at my head. I was standing there, without much of anything in terms of defenses, being completely naked and all, and I had no fucking clue what to do next. But when he fired off a shot that nearly hit me in the hip, I had one choice: run. And that's exactly what I did, I ran through the hotel with nothing but a room service menu to cover me up. This being Miami, it probably wasn't the strangest thing the bellhops and lobby workers had ever seen, but their gazes did seem to linger a little longer than usual. The guy didn't give me much of a chase, but I still had to walk three blocks back to my hotel, had to ask for a duplicate room key since, you know, I didn't exactly have somewhere to keep mine. I got into my room and left Miami the next day, but that night I was pretty sure I wasn't going to come out of it alive."

"Looks like you did pretty well..."

"Yeah, guess so."

They both drank some more of the delicious wine, simmering over the conversation that had just involved a lengthy story of Nina being naked. Seth had imagined what she looked like under her clothes, and her little story only did more to make him want it.

This explains how they ended up back in the hotel room, tearing each other's clothes off before they could even close the door. Their bodies didn't do so much as entwine as they collided, passionately, violently, lustfully. Seth felt the soft curves of Nina's body and reveled in them. It'd been a long time since Seth had been with a woman he hadn't paid for, and even longer since he'd been with one of Nina's caliber. It had been too long for Nina as well, and she felt, despite all the horrible things going on around her, safe in Seth's arms. They went on for hours, not saying a word to each other, just endlessly fucking, letting out all their frustration upon each other. In those hours, thoughts of Parker, thoughts of Braun, the briefcase weren't in either of their minds. They didn't care about how this would affect the rest of their time together, because now it was completely sure that things were going to be more complicated than they were before they fucked. But that night they didn't care, they were with each other, fueled by wine and anxiety, and at least for one night they were able to enjoy themselves.

14

Seth heard the knife sliding under the frame of the window, a back and forth clicking that shook him from whatever bliss he may have been feeling with Nina. He looked over to the small window on the far side of the hotel room and saw the silver blade of the knife glinting in the streetlight. He couldn't see who was attached to the knife, not yet, but he was sure that they weren't exactly coming for turndown service.

He worked his way out from under Nina, as much as it pained him to do it. If he could have just sat there with Nina forever, that would have been alright by him. But too many people were out to kill him, too many people wanted his blood, and he knew that would stand in between any happiness he may ever want to have in his life.

After pulling his boxers on, since he wanted to give the intruder a surprise but not that kind, Seth pulled his .45 out of his bag and walked to the other side of the room. He was going over to the window to see how far along the guy was to actually opening the window, but before he could get all the way over, the window began to slide open. Two ripped, muscular forearms with more tattoos than exposed skin shoved the window upward. The intruder must have thought that stealth wasn't needed despite the fact that two experienced criminals were sitting inside the room he was going into. But Seth wasn't going to criticize the guy's invasion skills...if anything, it would just make this next part that much easier. Seth waited in a shadow next to the window and watched the guy come in. In most contexts, he would be threatening, the kind of guy Seth would try to stay away from at all costs. He was big...well, big would be an understatement, but so would huge. He had to have been at least six three, two hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle. His short-cropped mohawk made him look ex-military. It occurred to Seth that he was completely the wrong kind of guy for the job he was supposed to be doing. These breaking and entering guys have to be small in order to sneak around. This guy didn't sneak, he shook the damn floor whenever he stepped. Maybe Seth wouldn't have survived going toe to toe with the guy, but right now he was out of his element and Seth had the upper hand. He didn't notice a gun in his hand, just the four inch combat knife he was packing, but that didn't mean that he was unarmed. Seth had to play this carefully.

He let the intruder walk a few steps into the room until he slithered behind the guy and placed the barrel of the .45 into the small of his back.

"I wasn't really expecting any guests." He growled. He felt the guy tense up, but he didn't crumble to pieces as he hoped he would. Seth thought there was a good chance he might need to actually use the gun he had in his hand. "What the fuck are you here for?"

The man spun around, but Seth kept the gun pinned against him. "Braun sent me for the case, said you two had it."

"Guy's really doing his best to live up to his brother's legacy, isn't he?"

"Just give me the fucking briefcase and I won't kill you."

"That...that's not happening. The giving the briefcase part. The killing me part, we'll see."

And that was all it took for the intruder to snap. The problem is, he snapped a little quicker than Seth thought he would, and because of it he was able to knock the gun out of Seth's hand and onto the floor. So it was going to be that kind of fight. The big guy got another one over on Seth by grabbing his arms and throwing him on top of the coffee table that was, while maybe a little bit flimsy, solid enough to hurt a ton. Seth crashed down onto it, splinters of the wood tearing into his skin. Seth looked up at the intruder. The man was standing over him, imposing, looking like a predator getting ready to claim his prey.

Seth rolled over when he saw the intruder bringing both his fists down to smash them into Seth's chest. All in all, he was just happy that the guy had probably forgotten about the gun. Seth popped up to his feet and square up with the guy. They both circled, trying to find an angle of attack, but mostly they just looked like that Star Trek episode where Spock and Kirk went at it. The big guy threw a monster haymaker that Seth saw coming from a mile away and was able to dodge. Seth tried a couple jabs into the guy's chest but it was like throwing wet paper against concrete. There was no way Seth was going to match this guy one on one so he had to improvise. He was also wondering how Nina hadn't been awakened by the disturbance in the room but with the guy bearing down on him it was pretty low on his list of priorities.

Seth looked over on the side table that was next to the couch in the room. There was a large vase on it, and while the vase would have been pretty spectacular to smash into the guy's face, he also saw a letter opener perched on the edge of the desk. It was one of those letter openers that looked like a rapier, the thin silver blade not good for a whole lot more than cutting through paper, but it was all Seth had right now. The guy threw another punch at Seth, and while he was recovering from going off-balance, Seth picked up the letter opener and drove it down into the guy's shoulder, and he must have hit just in the middle of the joint, because the blade slid in without catching on anything...that combined with the way the guy screamed at the top of his lungs confirmed Seth had driven the knife right where he wanted it. C'mon, that had to have woken Nina up, along with everyone else on the floor. The guy stumbled, unable to move his arm but still able to swing it like a club. A generous trickle of blood poured down his arm and onto the light-colored floor of the hotel room.

"...Watching something in here or something...?" Nina said, not even bothering to put any clothes on, also not bothering to open her eyes to the situation in front of her.

"Uh, Nina. Look out." Seth said as he saw the guy lunging for the new occupant in the room. Nina gasped and tried to cover up her nudity in the face of the stranger, but in doing all that she forgot to actually dodge the guy. He slammed into her at full speed, shoving Nina into the drywall. When she bounced away from the wall, Seth saw her outline impressed into the broken plaster.

Seth knew this had to end, and it had to end as quickly as possible. Because noise wasn't an issue at this point and they'd have to escape the room soon anyway, he went over and recovered his .45 from the ground and stuck it against the guy's leg. He fired a single shot that caused the intruder's upper thigh to explode into shreds of muscle, sinew and bone. The man collapsed to the ground and gripped what was left of his leg.

"Now talk, before I make sure you can't fucking walk again. Braun knows we don't have the case because he had that cabbie steal it from us."

"Cabbie?"

"Yeah, the cab driver...the...dead cab driver. Braun sent him to get the case back."

"I don't know a fucking thing about a fucking cab driver." The man said between gasps for air.

Seth placed the hot tip of the gun against some of the shredded flesh. "It's really not a good time to be lying, considering your situation and all."

"Just give me the case—"

"Oh for fuck's sake! We don't have your fucking case!"

As their negotiation continued, Seth heard someone beating on the door to the hotel room. Whether it was management, another patron or the police, it didn't matter, as none of them would look lightly upon the gunshot victim in the middle of the room. The guy wasn't going anywhere anytime soon, so Seth went over to Nina, who was still recovering from her smash into the wall, shaking bits of drywall out of her hair. "You alright?" Seth said.

"I've had better evenings..."

"Can you walk?"

Nina got to her feet after a little bit of wobbling. "Sure."

"Well we both better get to doing that. Put on whatever clothes you have, we're going out of the fire escape in about thirty seconds."

They threw on their clothes, got their weapons and their bags and made it out of the window just as the manager was opening the door for two police officers. It was a close one, but at least they made it out alive, and with a lot less police attention than they could have had if they'd stuck around for another minute.

After a couple of late-night subway transfers, both of their bodies aching with the weight of their injuries, they ended up in Brooklyn, at a hotel that had even lower standards than their previous one. Seth and Nina both hoped that they wouldn't attract as much attention the next time around.

15

Nina was surprised that somebody as notorious and ruthless as The Middleman would live in Greenwich Village, in a building more reserved for supposedly starving artists that were laboring over their work while somehow finding the cash to pay four grand a month in rent, plus utilities.

They weren't talking about what had happened last night, not the sex or the intruder. Despite the fact that he was really into it last night, Seth didn't seem to carry any of the emotions on his sleeve. He was focused solely on his meeting with The Middleman, which, again made him more nervous than Nina had ever seen him. He clutched the bag of donuts in his hand, his fingers nearly tearing through the wax paper. Seth had made a special trip to Manhattan to get the donuts even before Nina had woken up in the fleabag motel they'd been forced into after last night's fiasco. She knew Seth was beholden to The Middleman for something, but this seemed more than a little extreme.

They walked up to the building and got into the freight elevator, which lurched its way up the five floors to the Middleman's apartment

"Nervous?" Nina said, eyeing Seth's clenched fists and sweating brow.

"Uh, no, um, the food last night, I think it was bad or something."

"You're welcome..."

The elevator snapped to a halt and Nina pulled the doors open. There was a vestibule of about eight feet wide and three feet deep coming out from the landing of the elevator, probably to avoid the awkwardness of having the door to the freight elevator being the door to your apartment. At the far end of the vestibule was a black industrial-style metal door with a peephole big enough to give the person inside the apartment a pretty good view of the surrounding three blocks, not to mention the small parcel of land in front of the door. Seth approached with trepidation, Nina picked the only emotion she could at the time and went with confusion. She didn't know what kind of deal she was entering into with The Middleman, but considering the clock was ticking on Parker's goons coming to crack the whip on them, anything should be better than that fate.

Seth knocked on the door, the sound of the metal echoing in the small space. A few seconds and about ten turning latches later, the door popped open a couple of inches. Nina was in front of the gap in the door, so she was the first to see the person on the other side of the door. It was a woman...well, a girl really, couldn't have been more than thirty years old. She had a thick tangle of blonde hair arranged to resemble a bird's nest. Her skin was nearly translucent, like it would crack into a million pieces if you just brushed against it. She was wearing a black corset inlaid with panels of blue fabric, a pair of matching panties and nothing else at all. She had a good assortment of tattoos on her arms and chest, with plenty of piercings to make sure they had company. Nina had no idea what The Middleman's type was, but rejects from Suicide Girls would not have been Nina's first choice for the kind of girl that would appeal to an underworld boss. Her sculpted eyebrow arched as she caught a glimpse of Nina in the doorway, and through lips slathered with glittery lipgloss, she said.

"I didn't order any fucking sushi takeout..."

The door slammed shut, the latches clicked back and she heard the girl walking back across the apartment.

"That bitch..." Nina said, shocked that The Middleman, a guy known for his shrewd dealings with people on both sides of the law, would let such a petulant, entitled cunt answer his door. Nina always had a thing against blonde girls in the first place, and this was only making it worse.

Seth winced and knocked on the door again, then gently moved Nina out of the way as the door opened once again, this time accompanied by a string of profanities.

"You fucking bitch, get away from my fucking apar—" The blonde's eyes lit up upon seeing Seth. "Hey, Seth! You didn't say you'd be bringing the geisha along!"

Nina wanted to tear this girl's hair out, then get a pair of pliers and re-arrange her piercings

"Hold on, let me get the door..." The blonde said. When Nina met The Middleman, she was going to have a long conversation with him about the company he kept.

The door shuddered and groaned open on rusted hinges. The blonde stood in front of a two-room apartment packed with things from floor to ceiling. Guns, drugs, jewelry...and a surprising assortment of dominatrix gear made the small apartment look that much more microscopic.

"So I hear you have a problem, and you need me to come in and fix it." The blonde said.

...and, right then it occurred to her that The Middleman wasn't actually a man at all. Nina felt like shit having Seth ask this horrible person for help. She was alright dealing with scummy lowlifes, but this might be too much for her. She could also tell why Seth was so nervous in all the lead up to this meeting...it was obvious that they had something before all of this, before he and Nina even knew of each other's existence...but, yeah, there was some history, a history Nina didn't even want to begin to detangle.

The Middleman turned to Seth and stared straight at him. "I can help you, but we need to talk."

"Now? We need to talk now?"

"Alright, then." she threw up her hands and began to usher Seth out of the door "If you don't want to talk, you two can have a great time trying to find that briefcase."

"No, no no" Seth stammered, trying to get back in The Middleman's good graces. "We can talk. Is that alright, Nina?"

Nina looked around the room, shrugged her shoulders, found the couch and plopped down. She'd resigned to going along with this, since it was all they had right now. "Go, talk, do whatever you two need to do."

With that, The Middleman pulled Seth into her kitchen and closed the door, leaving Nina alone with her thoughts, which was dangerous as hell to do. She wanted to tear apart the apartment piece by piece to find that briefcase and just be done with this. She was trying to ignore the fact that she hated The Middleman because she was involved with Seth, but she mainly didn't want to think about that because she wanted to really convince herself that what happened last night didn't mean anything to either of them. Maybe it didn't mean anything to Seth, but Nina felt a connection. It probably wasn't real, though, just spurred by the loneliness and the wine, but she thought she might have been falling for him...and the worst part was, she hated herself for it, but she also hated that bitch that now had him cordoned off in the kitchen.

Nina had to distract herself from entertaining the worst company she could think of, herself. She stood up and walked around the apartment, running her hand along the tops of picture frames and examining everything in The Middleman's life. She picked up a discarded corset from the ground and held it up to her body. Nina was pretty excited by the fact that she wouldn't fit into the cups even if she tried. With the smallness of her breasts she rarely was able to best anyone in that category. Nina put the corset back down and smiled to herself. She didn't have a lot of time to behave like a normal woman, but any opportunity she got to be a typical catty bitch she savored.

She heard them talking in the kitchen, but the door was substantial enough to block out the details of the conversation. It was all mumbles of varying volume. She didn't know if they were talking about the case, their relationship, or even her.

16

"So...how's the sex?" The Middleman, or as Seth more intimately knew her, Erin, said.

"What?" Seth gripped the coffee cup in his hand, nearly crushing it in anxiety. "What the fuck kind of person leads with something like that?"

"Then you are fucking her." Erin said, a Cheshire cat smile flashing on her face. She ate a few crumbs of the donuts Seth brought. "These suck, by the way."

"Erin, do you ever wonder why we didn't work out?"

"Not really, you're way too goddamned weak willed for a woman of my stature."

"You ever get sick of being so sure of yourself?"

"Not for a minute...trust me, if the alternative is living like you do, I wouldn't want it."

Seth didn't know why he put up with this, especially now that he had no reason to keep Erin happy. This abuse had been the main theme of their two year relationship that had ended when Erin set fire to Seth's apartment with a can of paint thinner and some matches. Seth was able to put the fire out before it caused any real damage...physical damage, at least. Seth imagined her abrasiveness, her ability to say the very thing that would piss you off the most, was the reason that, in addition to being a fence, she was a top-notch dominatrix that commanded thousands of dollars per client each visit. Being mean was what Erin did, but for some reason she was like a car crash. As much as Seth wanted to look away from it, he couldn't help himself.

"Me and Nina, Erin, we got assigned to this job by this guy, David Parker. He stuck us together to pay off some old debts. I swear it's just business."

Erin leaned back in her chair with a cigarette hanging off her bottom lip. She flicked her thumb across the wheel a couple of times before the lighter sparked to life and lit her up. "Seth, come the fuck on! Lying to me isn't going to get you too far on this whole case thing, you know that, right? Just fucking be a man and admit to me how the sex is. I've had Asian girls before, more than you I'm sure. Let's compare notes."

"It was...it was one time, that's it."

"And, how was it?"

Seth wanted to tell her that it was better sex than he'd ever had with Erin herself. There was passion, real intimacy to what happened between Seth and Nina last night, as opposed to the rough, self-fulfilling sex that he and Erin had plodded along with for two years. Unlike Erin, Nina didn't feel the need to leave her mark on Seth...literally, every time they had sex. He still had a couple of scars from Erin's more adventurous outings. With Nina, It wasn't all about her. It was about the rawness of it, the emotion. But the situation being what it was, Seth wasn't going to tell her that, because he knew it would only stir things up to a point where Erin would either put her cigarette out in the middle of his forehead, punch him in the throat, or call off the whole search for their briefcase. With Erin, it probably would have been all three.

"It was mediocre at best. She needs to work on her variety of positions."

"Was she better than me?" Erin arched her brow and stuck her chest out, which was already being shoved into Seth's face by the corset she was wearing.

"What did I just say? I said it was mediocre, and you damn well know you weren't even capable of doing mediocre." Seth said, putting sincerity in his voice but not meaning a word of it.

"That's what I like to hear." She patted him on the head. Like a fucking puppy. "This case, what's so great about it?"

"It's the payoff to the job we're doing, that's really all you need to know."

"No, it's not, if you want me to figure out where this thing might be. What's in it?"

"Art."

"Art." Erin pondered, rubbing her hand on her chin and sucking down a lungful of smoke "What era?"

"You honestly think I know a single thing about artistic periods?"

"Oh, I forgot you were a Philistine. Pardon me." Erin laughed, a low smoky laugh aided by years of smoking and yelling at clients. "Did you get any artist names when Parker briefed you?"

"Picasso, Cézanne...not much more, I was really focused on how much money I was going to get at the end of everything, to be honest with you."

"Seth, Seth, always looking for the payoff. The adventure's never enough for you."

"The adventure's what gets a person killed, where the risk lies. I don't like risk. And this bullshit with this case getting stolen is upping that risk into the fucking stratosphere."

"If you didn't like risk, you wouldn't be running in these circles, honey. Don't fool yourself. If risk wasn't your cup of tea, you'd be jobbing it down at the Home Depot for $9.00 an hour. On the plus side, you'd have probably worked up to Assistant Manager by this point...might have earned a couple days paid time off."

"Erin, you can insult me all you want another day."

"But you're here now, and I'd really prefer to do it today."

Seth swept his hand across the table, knocking the donuts and her ashtray onto the floor. "I'm working on a timeline here, Parker's guys are going to be coming for Nina and me really soon if this briefcase doesn't turn up."

"Alright, let me think then." Erin got up from her chair and flicked her cigarette into the sink. He watched her as she thought, and he remembered how sexy she always looked when she was lost deep in her schemes. The way she swayed her ass from side to side, the methodical pacing she did around the room. Now he remembered why he'd put up with all that terrible shit so often. It was standing right in front of him, and damnit if he didn't want to shove her against the countertop of the kitchen and rekindle what they'd lost, even if Nina was in the room next door. But he knew that stuff like that would have to wait for another day, for a day when he wasn't hearing a clock ticking in his head every waking moment. Sorting out everything between Nina and Erin couldn't be his primary concern. If he was dead in a couple of days, none of these idle fantasies would be worth anything in the first place.

"I remember Joe Frazier, no relation to the boxing guy, just a skinny Jewish kid from Staten Island, saying he'd gotten a message from Hasan Al-Qassim, a Moroccan businessman who deals in only the finest underage prostitutes and hardcore drugs, about wanting to sell off some priceless works of art. Frazier said he thought it was bullshit when Al-Qassim told him some of the artists he wanted to sell, but they seem to line up with what you guys said you had pretty well."

"That explains the Middle Eastern accent..."

"The what?"

"Well, the cab driver that stole the case from us, before he...dealt with himself, said something about the guy who hired him had a Middle Eastern accent."

"Morocco's not the Middle East."

"I really don't think this cabbie had the best ear for regional dialects."

"True. Well, if that's the case, then this matches up exactly, I think Al-Qassim's your guy."

"So where is he?"

"Al-Qassim? He works up in The Bronx, does most of his business out of a place called The Pen, pretty much a Garden of Earthly Delights for any kind of weird shit you may ever want or need, and probably some you had no idea ever existed."

"The Pen, is it easy to get into?"

Erin rolled her eyes, stared at Seth and said "I just said it was New York's capital for weird shit, don't you think security might be a little bit tight?"

Seth wringed his hands. "Then how do I get in?"

"Personally? I'd go there posing as potential clients, act like a weirdo married couple who's looking to spice up the marriage by adding a thirteen year old Peruvian girl conked out on Xanax into the mix."

"That's disgusting..."

"That's Al-Qassim."

"Can you get me the address for The Pit?"

Erin pulled a page out of one of the random fetish magazines she just had laying around the kitchen and scrawled the address down. "There you go."

"Why'd you know it by heart?"

"Because I know when something or someone goes missing, and they're pretty unlikely to ever come back, that's usually where the whole bloody affair ends up. Not usually all that pretty of an ending either."

"That sounds like a vote of confidence."

"At least I didn't tell you it'd be a cakewalk."

Seth stood up and drained the last bits of his coffee. He leaned in to hug Erin, which with her being in a corset made the embrace a lot more charged than he wanted to deal with. "Thanks, I owe you one."

She leaned in and kissed him deeply, stirring up things that would have to be left for another day. "You owe me ten."

Seth walked out of the kitchen with Erin in tow. When he got into the room, Nina was idly messing with a set of bondage straps, snapping the leather together and creating a loud crack.

"Any ideas on the case? Or did you two just reminisce about days gone by?"

"A few ideas, none of which you're going to like hearing..." Seth said. Nina got up from the couch and they both began to walk toward the door.

"Seth, go ahead and call the elevator. I need to talk to your friend for a minute."

Nina grumbled, not looking forward to the conversation, but Seth swayed to Erin's command, just as Nina had predicted he would have done.

The black metal door clanged shut and it reminded Nina of a prison gate sliding into place to begin a life sentence.

"Listen, I don't know if you're for real or not or if you're just fucking with him on this job, but let me tell you, if you fuck Seth over in any way, I have people that can find you." Erin said, driving her finger into Nina's chest.

"Fuck you. You really think just because you act all hard like you're some big crime boss that you can just push me around like that? I'll treat Seth how I want to treat him, which I'm sure will be a hell of a lot better than you ever did for him."

"He's a puppy dog. You have to shove his face in his shit before he realizes what he's done. Trust me, I'm speaking from experience on this one. Whatever you have with him, go on, be happy, but if you're planning on turning on him, it won't be worth it. And if you want to stay with him, just be sure you keep him on a short leash. You'll lose him any other way."

The two women's gazes lingered on each other for more than a few uncomfortable seconds. Nina wasn't quite sure if Erin had given her honestly helpful advice, or if she was just trying to once again claim the Queen Bitch crown. Without saying anything, Nina turned away from Erin and made her way to the door of the apartment.

17

The Pen was, in better days, a massive factory in the very heart of The Bronx, an industrious pillar of the community that employed hundreds upon hundreds of immigrants doing backbreaking work but earning an honest paycheck. Now that The Pen had set up shop in the comfortable brick confines, the backbreaking was still there, plus more, but an honest paycheck was hard to come by if you weren't the guy pulling the strings.

Seth and Nina approached the massive brick building, Nina clutching Seth's arm to keep up the appearance that they were a married couple. This was the closest either of them had come to actually acting like they were in some sort of committed relationship with each other, but the awkwardness of the embrace only made their disguise that much more convincing. A newlywed couple looking to break out of the box of sexual norms, peering into the darker side of the spectrum now that the honeymoon had all but dried up and they realized that they couldn't survive for the next fifty years on the missionary position alone.

They went into the foyer that used to be the main office of the factory but was now a makeshift security checkpoint designed to vet anyone who came in, to weed out the authorities and the troublemakers. Two muscle bound thugs stood in the room, dressed in black from head to toe and sporting thigh-holstered hand cannons that Seth was pretty sure they'd be willing to draw at the slightest hint of a problem. Seth and Nina knew that these guys would be searching them for weapons, so they had to go this one without their normal degree of protection.

"Go away, there's nothing here for you two 'round this place" the security guard barked.

"Well, umm, actually, we've heard that Mr. Al-Qassim might have something that could help us in the relationship troubles we've been having lately." Nina said, trying to look cute about it...as cute as someone could look when implying she wanted to buy a sex slave.

The security guard looked a bit disgusted at them, and that was saying a lot coming from a guy who guarded the doors at this kind of place.

"Kev, search 'em." The guard said, motioning over to the other one who was on the other side of the room. The guard came over and gave Seth a quick but thorough pat-down, making sure he wasn't going to try something stupid while he was in The Pit.

"He's clean." Kevin said.

"And the wife?" The guard nodded toward Nina

Kevin seemed to perform his patdown of Nina a little more closely, a little more perversely. This wasn't the TSA-style back of the hands sort of frisk, Kevin seemed to really need to check to make sure Nina wasn't carrying any explosives in her bra...in fact he needed to check so much that he checked it twice, pretty forcefully. If Nina didn't already feel dirty enough going through all this, she was getting there pretty easily with Kevin's thorough search.

"She's good too. Real good, actually."

The guard smiled at Kevin through a set of teeth that had been busted up a half dozen times at least. "Alright, you two, have a blast." He opened the door to The Pit and ushered them in, like he was leading the two over the River Styx and into the abyss.

18

The interior of The Pit was like a shopping mall gone to hell. The front part of the building was filled with stalls of men selling anything illegal you could ever want. Guns, drugs, bootleg DVDs, chemicals, and Seth was pretty sure he saw a couple of guys selling human body parts...not that it would have surprised him that much.

"So what's our plan to get out of this once we get the case?" Nina said.

"I...haven't really thought that far out, to be honest."

"You're getting sloppy, Seth. You know we'll probably have to kill Al-Qassim, don't you?"

"It's crossed my mind."

"Without weapons?"

"We'll have to improvise, then."

Nina watched as a man picked up a couple of handguns and put them into his jacket.

"Could we...?"

"Not a chance, the best we could do with the guns here will be to hit Al-Qassim. They don't sell bullets here, you have to buy them out back, once you're out of the building.

The walked through the rest of The Pit and hit another security checkpoint once they got past the stalls. This search was just as thorough and just as demeaning to Nina as the last one was, but in the end they were allowed into the back half of the building.

The other half of the building was a sharp contrast to the frenzied, bazaar-like atmosphere. The stalls were replaced by a set of heavy wooden doors on either side of the hallway, each door labeled with a small bronze plaque that had a name on it. They avoided the gazes of the men that came in and out of each of the doorways, but most of them stopped and noticed that a woman was in their midst...a woman that wasn't tied up or drugged up, that is.

It took them a while to find Al-Qassim's door, it was at the very back of the warehouse, possibly tucked away due to the fact that Al-Qassim was the most depraved, most disgusting man operating in the entirety of The Pit.

A servant/bodyguard greeted them at the door and looked at them just as quizzically as everyone else had. Seth began to think that taking Nina along on this excursion would raise too many eyebrows, and he was right, but Nina had insisted on going along with Seth to make sure everything went smoothly. He hoped he didn't have to pay for swaying to her will.

"What is your business with Al-Qassim?"

"I think we've explained this to more than enough people. If we found Al-Qassim, don't you think we already know what we're here for? Now I've got a load of cash that could go somewhere else..."

The bodyguard gave Seth a frustrated look, but said "Very well, Al-Qassim will see you." He opened the door to Al-Qassim's office and led them in.

Al-Qassim's corner of The Pit was massive, probably taking up a fifth of the entire establishment. The area was split up into four rooms: a waiting room, an office, a bedroom with a gigantic circular bed and another room with a heavy locked door. Seth assumed this is where Al-Qassim kept his girls.

Al-Qassim wasn't the kind of guy one would expect to be at the upper echelon of a grimy underground empire, he looked more like that kind of guy's henchman. He was tall and skinny, all bony arms and legs. His face was long and ratlike with a tightly trimmed full beard. His right eye was dark and soulful, but his left eye was milky and dead, and the flesh around it was mottled and scarred by something horrible...but Seth really wanted to ask how the other guy fared. Al-Qassim was sitting behind his desk, dragging off a joint pinched between his fingers. The acrid smoke filled the room and caused both Seth and Nina to choke as they came in.

The most important thing about Al-Qassim, though, was what he had sitting behind him. If he had the briefcase, it would be in the safe behind his desk. Both Nina and Seth hoped what they had come for was in that safe, but there was no sure way of knowing without cracking it open and taking a look. Seth and Nina still had to figure out a way to get there, and that was wasn't presenting itself to them

"Sit down, sit down..." Al-Qassim said, indicating the two red leather chairs in front of his desk. Nina and Seth went ahead and did it, even though they really wanted to spend as little time in Al-Qassim's office as possible. "Now, what do you want from me?"

"We've heard of your reputation, Mr. Al-Qassim, we know you can obtain...certain things for the right people..." Nina said.

"At the right price. I hope you know my services don't come cheap." He sucked in another lungful of smoke, held it in and blew it into Seth's face, the grey smoke enveloping him and causing his vision to blur for a second.

"We can pay."

"You can pay a lot? That's what I like to hear..." Al-Qassim smiled, a couple of gold teeth showing up in his smile. "Let me show you what I can get you." He hit a button under his desk and Seth heard the magnetic lock click open on the door on the other side of the office. He yelled something in Russian, and soon three girls walked out, all three dressed in clothes that were designed for much older hookers. They all had the same look in their eyes: vacant, but placid, like they'd been resigned to this fate a long time ago. Their skin was pale, which accented their various scars, track marks and blemishes. Even though none of them were older than thirteen, they looked like they had lived ten lives between the three of them. It was painful to see these girls in this state, to think about what they went through day in day out, their young lives packed full of the whims of men who had no restraint, no decency, no care for anyone but themselves. These girls were the playthings of those guys, disposable fucks that took the abuse but didn't deal it out, couldn't deal it out. They just had to take everything that came to them. And when they had run the course of their career...so, by the time they were fifteen or so, men like Al-Qassim didn't just give them a severance package and a pat on the back. No, these girls knew too much, were too close to people that mattered. When these girls were done, they were dead, thrown in an incinerator somewhere in The Pit without anyone taking notice. Nobody would miss these girls when they were dead, because nobody in the United States knew that they even existed.

But the worst part of all of this was that Seth and Nina had to play along, had to act like they were really into the skin trade. Had to smile when they saw the girls come in. Nina had to resist the urge to shove her thumb into Al-Qassim's good eye and end this all.

...but they had to play it cool. They were both trying to figure out how they'd get the briefcase out of the office and out of The Pit, but with nothing to use as a weapon their options were more than a little bit limited. Thus, they played Al-Qassim's game while they were waiting for their opportunity to escape to materialize out of nowhere.

"Do you have a preference? The two of you like brunettes, maybe a nice redhead? I could get you a redhead, for a premium of course. Blonde would take a week, it'd be at least double the price of the redhead, too."

Nina turned to Seth and gently placed her hand on his arm. "Well honey I'll leave it up to you. This was your idea after all." She turned to Al-Qassim, "I tell him we're going to get one of these girls and now he's so excited he can't even choose."

"Why not all three? A one year contract for all three of them I can give you for a hundred thousand even." Al-Qassim said, smiling at the fact that he just proposed to them a deal that he was at least proud of. It irritated Nina to no end that Al-Qassim was treating this like a fucking used car dealership, but when she really thought about it, that's exactly what it was. The girls came in, they went out, Al-Qassim pocketed his money and the cycle began again, day in and day out with no stopping. It was really a cash cow to this guy, and he loved every last minute of it.

"I don't know if we really have enough for that kind of fun. I mean, I don't think we'd need three girls. What do you think, honey?"

"No, no, I think that'd be too much."

"Well my girls will give you a handful enough on their own, if you know what I mean. But I thought a man like you, with discerning tastes would appreciate my offer."

"I'm actually sort of insulted by it. You've really got some fucking nerve talking to us like that. You think I don't love my wife enough that I would need to have three other girls in the bedroom at all times to keep me happy?" Seth lifted up from his chair a couple of inches, just enough to cause Al-Qassim to rear back in his. This man may have been a ruthless criminal, but in any business the customer is king, and you have to keep the customers happy, even when they're buying a sex slave. As he rose up, Seth saw the silver butt of a pistol peeking out from the edge of the desk's keyboard tray. Al-Qassim wasn't exactly the guy who needed a computer, but at least he'd put the drawer to good use.

"Sir, sir, I wasn't saying that at all." Al-Qassim waved his hands in front of his face, looking apologetic, still wanting to keep business. Nina wasn't exactly sure what Seth was trying to do, what his angle was on the situation, but to be honest he had more than she did so she went with it.

"Honey, I don't really know if I even want to go forward with this, I mean, I can tell that Mr. Al-Qassim isn't the kind of person we want to do business with anyway." Seth stood up from the chair and leaned over to Al-Qassim. The bewildered girls looked on, chattered between the three of them. They should have been happy that they were spared being sent away to whatever fate they thought they had in front of them, but the reality was that they would just move on to the next bidder, the next man with a pocket full of cash or a favor he needed to turn in. Seth extended his hand in a gesture of friendship, even though there was nothing between the two of them. "Thank you for the offer, but I think we'll pass."

Al-Qassim looked pissed, incredibly so. For all the effort they spent coming into his office and jumping through the hoops to get to him, they were just going to leave him like this. Still, always the gentleman, he put the down the joint he was still holding and extended his free hand toward Seth. The two men shared a handshake, but Seth gripped just a little too hard, held on just a little too long. As Al-Qassim tried to release from the handshake, Seth felt his hand relax, and that's where he got his moment to strike.

He gripped hard on Al-Qassim's hand and twisted at the same time. Al-Qassim's expression changed almost instantly, but before he was able to react to actually do something about it, Seth had slipped his hand up the man's wrist and twisted it almost completely around, sending Al-Qassim's face into the desk. With Al-Qassim on the desk, Seth used his other hand to grab for the gun. He released Al-Qassim and pointed the gun at his face. Al-Qassim's hands shot up immediately, the natural human reaction to having a loaded gun pointed at you. Upon further inspection of the gun, Seth noticed it was a Desert Eagle .50, a fucking massive gun that was way too huge for practical use, but it was intimidating, which is why Al-Qassim had the thing. If he actually chose to use it on Al-Qassim, it would make him disappear from the shoulders up and alert every single last person in The Pit. But Al-Qassim didn't know he wouldn't use it, so Seth still had the upper hand on him.

"Dmitri Petrov says hi. He said hi, at least...before he dropped off the side of a building. He told me you might have found my briefcase...seems it went missing a couple of days ago." Seth thumbed the safety on the pistol and clenched his grip.

"You know nothing." Al-Qassim said. He eased his hands down, likely assuming Seth was too stupid to watch for those kinds of things. But he noticed. He whipped the butt of the gun against Al-Qassim's face, lightly for the first time. The second one wouldn't be as forgiving.

"Now, now Hasan, you need to just keep those hands right there unless I tell you otherwise, alright?"

Al-Qassim was enraged, but Seth was relieved that he wasn't doing anything about it. Even with a generous stream of blood now flowing down his face and onto his expensive silk shirt, he wasn't going to tussle with a Desert Eagle. Not even he was that stupid.

"I see that safe behind your desk, any chance you stashed our briefcase in there? You see I don't think you understand how important that thing is to me. I die if I don't take that thing to its rightful owner...well, rightful thief"

"You'll die before you leave here. My guards won't let you pass."

"We'll just see about that. Now, the case?"
After being stuck to her chair in anxiety as Seth pulled off the move to get Al-Qassim's gun, Nina was finally bringing herself into the situation. Nina jumped up from her chair and assessed what was in front of her. Seth had Al-Qassim taken care of, but the girls were still wildcards. They were getting nervous, Nina could tell, and nerves meant that there was a good chance they were about to shriek and alert the bodyguard in front of the office. She racked her brain trying to dredge up the small vocabulary of Russian words she'd learned while working at an off the books casino in Newark a couple of years ago. She approached the one who looked the oldest, the one she assumed could handle the most responsibility. She was a little more well-fed than the other two, but that wasn't saying much at all. She was skin and bones from head to toe, skinny to the point where most men would find her unappealing and anemic, but then again Al-Qassim didn't exactly cater to the sexual fantasies of most men. His clients wanted girls who were submissive, almost afraid of them so that they could feel like they really had something to hold onto...when everything else in their life gave them shit, made them frustrated, made them feel like they didn't have control, these girls were just that, control personified. None of that mattered at the moment as Seth tried to take Al-Qassim out of the picture, but it couldn't stop creeping into Nina's mind. She went up to the girl, held her hands gently and looked into her vacant eyes which were rimmed by reddish blue flesh.

"We're not here to hurt you, we're only here to hurt him." She said to the girl. "What's your name?"

The girl didn't say anything, she just looked at Nina with an expression that was half worry, half weariness. She wasn't supposed to speak out of turn, and even in these unusual circumstances she was sticking to it.

Nina rubbed the girl's arms, warming her up a little bit and trying to give her an inviting, big sister vibe. "Come on, sweetheart, what's your name?"

"Anastasia." The girl said, her voice nothing more than a hint of a whisper.

"Anastasia. That's a pretty name. I'm Nina."

For a split second, Nina was pretty sure she saw a smile flicker on Anastasia's otherwise expressionless face. "Hello, Nina." She said, in English.

"You speak English?"

"Some."

"Good, because I speak terrible Russian."

"I know." Anastasia laughed a little bit, and Nina joined her.

"Anastasia, I need you to take these girls and go back into your room while we deal with Mr. Al-Qassim. When we're done, we'll come and get you so you can leave."

Anastasia nodded, then spoke some Russian phrases to the other girls that Nina couldn't understand, and the three of them walked back toward the room, closing the door behind them.

When she turned back, Seth was busy browbeating Al-Qassim into opening his safe.

"Listen, you can either put the code in or I can search your desk and put it in myself. But, you know, one of those choices means you leave here with your head intact. The other's pretty messy Hasan. I'd go for number one."

Al-Qassim crouched at the safe with his face in front of the digital combination lock. Seth placed the barrel of the Desert Eagle against the back of his head, just to make sure Al-Qassim was aware of his presence. Al-Qassim sighed, resigned to the fact that he'd been bested, and punched in his combination. The lock's LED readout lit up with all green and Seth heard the lock snap open.

"Open up, let's see what lies behind door number one."

Al-Qassim turned the lever. The bolts inside the inch-thick steel door slid away with a satisfying metallic whoosh. He clicked the lever all the way up and opened the door on the safe. The safe itself was made up of two compartments. The top compartment was for documents, and Seth saw that Al-Qassim was putting it to just that use. It seems like he was quite the photographer with the girls he kept in his harem. The things they were doing in the pictures Seth didn't even want to imagine, and he had to look away from them before he "accidentally" let his trigger finger slip to teach Al-Qassim a lesson...there's certain lessons that you just really have to drive into a person's head before they comprehend them. At the tip of the .50 caliber bullet, he was pretty sure Al-Qassim would learn that lesson. But the task at hand wasn't to kill Al-Qassim, not yet at least. In the bottom of the safe, behind a couple of bricks of heroin and a cigar box full of joints just like the one still smoldering on Al-Qassim's desk, was the briefcase. On top of the briefcase, Seth noticed a couple of M67 grenades. Those would come in handy later.

"That looks like mine. I'll take the grenades, too..." He shoved the gun hard against the back of Al-Qassim's head and cocked the hammer back "...that is, you know, if you don't mind."

Al-Qassim, now shaking with either rage or fear, took the grenades and the briefcase out of the safe and held them out in front of Seth "Nina, get the case and my gun, but keep it on Hasan here." Seth said, Nina moved over to take both items a second later, training the pistol on the center of Al-Qassim's chest, trying her best not to blow a hole in the guy without worrying about the repercussions. Seth took the grenades into each hand.

"You won't get more than ten feet out of here before my men gun you down. The second that door closes, I hit my silent alarm, you're dead."

"Nice to see you're not willing to do your dirty work on your own. Ever thought I might have already had your guards in on this little transaction? A little cash can change anyone's allegiance pretty quickly, Hasan."

Al-Qassim raised an eyebrow at Seth, not sure if he believed him or not.

"Pretty much, I'm going to walk out of here with this case, I'm going to take those girls down to the local FBI office, and you're going to...umm, you know, you're going to just fucking deal with it."

"You're a dead man walking."

"It wouldn't be the first time I was. And, man, you're doing a hell of a lot of big talking for a man that doesn't have a foot to stand on."

Seth and Nina began to walk away from Al-Qassim, but after he got a step away from him, Seth turned back around and looked at the grenades in his hands. "You know what, I don't think I really need these grenades." He shoved a grenade into Al-Qassim's hands, gripping the man's fingers around the trigger. "But, I am sort of in the market of collecting these pins." He pulled each of the pins out of the grenades and hoped that Al-Qassim would have enough sense not to loosen his grip before Seth and Nina left. Seth turned to Nina, who was opening the door to let the three girls out. The gun was tucked into the waistband of her pants, creating a weird bulge but not enough of a bulge to raise too much suspicion on the way out. Having everything they came for, plus more, the five of them walked out of Al-Qassim's office. They passed his bodyguard, who was already holding the door open for them. He gave Seth a knowing wink, saying "I hope you two have a very, very good night."

"Oh, we will. Trust me. You have a good night too, ok? I hope yours is a blast." Seth smiled, and Nina almost gave up the whole thing as she stifled a groan at how awful Seth's jokes were from time to time.

They walked out of the office and out of The Pit without as much as another look from one of the patrons. They saw a couple going home with three underage prostitutes, but that was part of the day in, day out operations of a place like this. Nothing to see here, folks.

They got in the car with the girls and drove them first to a fast food restaurant and then to the police station. Neither Seth nor Nina could really tell what would happen to them past then, but they just couldn't keep the girls in tow, and as many bad experiences the two of them had had with the NYPD in the past, they were in safer hands at the precinct than in the back seat of Seth's car.

19

"Where to now?" Seth said, pulling away from the NYPD precinct hoping that the cops wouldn't notice his stolen plates, his busted headlight or the fact that he'd just anonymously dropped off three underage hookers. He pointed the car to the north, toward Parker's office, toward freedom.

"Wherever we have to take this damn case. I want to have my hands on this thing for the least time possible...really seems to breed trouble."

"Stolen Nazi art'll do that to you..."

Seth and Nina shared a laugh, a laugh of relief. They had to crack a fair number of skulls to get the case, but now that they had the case in their possession, all to themselves, it was as simple as getting back to Parker. Soon, they'd have their money and more than enough time to sort out whatever had happened between the two of them (not to mention Erin) over the past few days. Seth wasn't looking forward to unraveling it and neither was Nina, but they knew they'd have to come to it once they had their payouts and had to part their ways.

Maybe it was because they were both lost in thought about just those issues that they didn't notice the black van barreling down the cross street as they made their way down Broadway. Well, truth be told Seth did notice it, but by the time he saw it coming, all he could do was look at Nina for a second, close his eyes, and brace for impact.

20

Seth had no idea how the van had built up as much speed as it did. For a car to get above thirty miles an hour in the middle of Manhattan is a fucking miracle, but he imagined the massive black van was clocking at least fifty when it blazed through the stoplight. He saw the front bumper of the van, one of those hellacious tube steel attachments that he imagined would be incredible at, say, sideswiping a sedan at fifty miles an hour. Seth held onto the steering wheel as the van impacted, and for once he was really happy he always buckled up. The van drove on for about a half a block with Seth's car pinned to the front of it. Seth didn't hear the van even attempt to hit its brakes.

Shards of tempered glass flew everywhere inside the cabin of the car, a spray of glittering chunks that tore into both Seth and Nina with ease. The car was finally able to spin away from the van when it hit a nearby light pole, sending the car onto its side. The belt choked Seth, and Nina was knocked against the pavement and whatever was left of the passenger side window.

With the car completely at rest, Seth immediately went into self-assessment mode. He knew he was still alive, and judging by the screams pounding his eardrums, so was Nina. So they were alive, at least they had that going for them. He didn't feel that bad in terms injuries, other than a neck that would take about a thousand soaks in a hot tub to get better and a sternum that was going to be bruised for at least a month. He saw the cuts on his arms and legs and imagined his face fared the same way. His arms and legs were stunned with the shock of the impact, and he wasn't able to move them as he looked around him to see how he would get out of the car. He ached all over and had lost all bearing on the world around him. All he could perceive at the moment was the waves of pain surging through his body and the whimpers of agony coming from Nina. He mustered up the strength to look over at her, letting his neck hang lax and simply fall that way. Although she was making a hell of a lot of a bigger deal about it than Seth was, it didn't look like she was injured much more than he was. No big shards of glass lodged in her chest, no bones poking out, he imagined she'd live too.

When most of the initial shock of the impact had trailed off, Seth began to realize how much the belt was cutting in to his neck and chest, strangling him as he hung three feet above the pavement. The car crash hadn't killed him, but ironically the thing that kept him safe through that was now in danger of finishing the job. He couldn't just unbuckle and tumble to the ground, as he was pretty sure Nina wouldn't appreciate all two hundred pounds of him crashing down onto her after she was just put through the ringer with the crash. He reached for the handle to slide the seat back, and after a little bit of effort and a lot of pain, he found it and slid it back a few inches. He then pulled the recliner lever on the seat so that he was laying completely flat, the belt suspending him just so, right above Nina. He tucked his legs back and gently rolled from his seat, falling out of it and using his hands to soften the blow as he hit the pavement. It didn't soften much of anything, but it was better than death by seatbelt.

His head laid about eight inches from Nina. He looked over at her. She had some scrapes on her face, but nothing that would be permanent. She didn't look as much hurt as she looked shocked, which was a good sign.

"You alright?" He said

"All in all, I think I've been better." She let out an exhausted sigh and wiped some blood from her face.

Seth looked around the interior of the car for the case, thinking that with his luck over the past few days it had flown out of the car when the van blew through the stoplight. He saw it wedged between the center console and Nina's seat, and he breathed a sigh of relief. He grabbed the case and, the strength just barely returning in his legs, he stood up as much as he could in the cramped confines of the sideways car. He reached up and pulled the handle of the mostly undamaged rear driver's side door. He shoved the door upward to open it, like a submarine captain returning from a long journey at sea. The car was resting in the middle of the sidewalk, and with this scene being the middle of Manhattan, a crowd of gawking tourists stood and watched Seth emerge. He was going to exchange some quips with the tourists, tell them about how crazy New York drivers were, but when he saw the van ambling back toward the car, front end nearly undamaged except for a couple splashes of blue paint from Seth's car, his mood changed from mirth to action. He searched his pockets for the gun but then remembered he'd given it to Nina before they left Al-Qassim. He was defenseless, and when he saw the three men in ski masks jump out of the sliding door of the van carrying MP5s, he realized he wasn't going to stand much of a chance against anyone if he didn't get a gun in his hand in the next five seconds.

He ducked down back into the car and let the door come back down with a thud. Amongst the shards of glass and torn interior fabric, Seth saw the silver Desert Eagle lying up near Nina's head. He reached for it and grabbed onto the stock, checked to make sure none of the parts had slipped out of place during the car crash, cocked it and clicked back the hammer. With the gun in his hand, Seth grabbed the briefcase as well. When he opened the door once again, he wasn't even able to get his arm up far enough to threaten the masked men with the gun before he was staring down the barrels of the three MP5s.

Without saying anything, one of the men grabbed the gun from Seth's hand while the other grabbed the briefcase. The last man left without something to do let his gun hang down around his hips on the attached belt and used both his arms to pull Seth out of the car. The man carried him toward the van over his shoulder, and as he was running back toward the black van Seth saw the other two men jump down into the car to pull Nina out, who gave them about as much resistance as he had.

"Bet you weren't expecting this, eh, motherfucker?" The man carrying Seth said.

"At this point, nothing's surprising me." Seth said, his head bouncing up and down with each step his captor took. The man threw Seth violently against the metal side of the van, and the two other men returned a couple moments later with Nina, kicking and screaming. Another man in the van went up to Seth with a pair of handcuffs and secured one bracelet around Seth's right wrist and the other end of them to his left ankle, leaving Seth in an awkward and completely useless position for trying to put up a fight. They did the same to Nina.

"You fellas with Al-Qassim?" Seth said as the van sped away down the street. The distant sirens of ambulance, police and fire vehicles were getting closer.

"Who the fuck's Al-Qassim?"

"Braun, then? Parker? Which one of the fifty or so people gunning for the two of us were you sent by?"

"I don't think you need to fucking know!" One of the masked men, wobbly as he tried to walk across the floor of the speeding van, slammed Seth across the face with his MP5. With the combination of the residual shock and pain from the car crash, the sudden kidnapping and now the weight of a sub-machine gun coming down on his forehead, Seth lost touch with everything and gave in to the darkness that had been gathering at the corners of his vision. While he was blacking out, he heard the sirens getting closer and closer, but he had a good feeling that they wouldn't do him a lot of good at this point.

21

Seth spun the chambers of his revolver around a couple of times and watched the silver pins on the bullets twist in a tight circle. It was mesmerizing, in a grim sort of way. He looked up to see where he was, and he realized he was sitting on a bench in the middle of Grand Central Station, hundreds of people surrounding him while he sat there checking out his weapon loadout. What the fuck was he doing? He was brandishing a live firearm in the middle of one of the busiest places in New York City, it would only be a few seconds until the NYPD, the FBI, and the NSA clamped down on him, either slapping terrorism charges on him or shooting him on the spot. He tried to stash the gun away, but he realized his pockets were sewn shut and there was nowhere to put the gun, so instead he had to sit there with it. He held it in his hands, trying to palm it the best he could, hoping the officers wouldn't notice.

Then he saw them. All of them.

The people milling around Grand Central weren't just the faceless, random masses that usually occupied the station. He knew every last one of them. More importantly, he'd killed every one of them. He had this nasty habit of remembering the faces of the people he'd taken out over the years, and right here, right now, it was all coming back to him. Random thugs from safehouses he'd shot up ten years ago, along with all the big guys he'd taken out along the way. He sort of now regretted his five years as a hitman right now because, hey, if he hadn't done that at least the crowd would be thinner. The hit targets evened out the demographics of the room: men and women of all races, classes and stations in life were scattered amongst the muscled thugs and mafiosos that Seth had dealt with recently.

There were also people in the crowd that he hadn't directly killed, but whose deaths he was responsible for in some way or another. All the guys from the jobs that had gone bad, the ones he had to leave behind to save his own skin. They were all there too.

All of the sudden, Seth saw the need for the gun. He drove the chambers back into the body of the gun and stood up. He wanted to get out of the station, this situation, this city as soon as possible, on a train or on foot, whatever got him as far away from these people as he could in the shortest time possible, because he was sure they wouldn't be too happy if they realized who he was.

When they realized who he was? They're dead, what would they care? But, in Seth's fucked-up dream logic, all of this made sense. These dead people, the body count that Seth had racked up over the years, were back to get him, in full force. Their being dead didn't matter in the least, because at this moment, Seth thought that they were more than capable of hurting him, destroying him. He had to go. Now.

He went toward the front doors of the building, where light was pouring in from the outside, from freedom. He kept his head down, tried to hide the gun against his body as to not raise suspicion. Then he felt a hand drive straight into the middle of his chest.

"Seth Harkin? Seth fuckin' Harkin? Long time no see!"

Seth looked up and saw the face of Thom O'Brien staring back at him. Tom went down about ten years ago in Portland. They brought him in on the job because he was an expert IRA sniper, a guy who could put a bullet between a guy's eyes from a thousand feet away through a pane of glass, all while he was buzzing on three shots of Jameson's. He was a damn good guy to have on the job, but his sniper rifle didn't do a lot of good when he, Seth and the other guys on the job got jumped by their targets on their way to the stakeout position. Hell of a coincidence, the guys didn't even know that Seth and the guys were out to take them down, but when they saw Thom's rifle they had a pretty good idea of what was going on, and the guns came out. Seth got out of it without a scratch, squeezing off three pistol rounds into one of his attacker's chest, but Tommy didn't have a chance of hitting the guy with his long-bore rifle when he was only two feet away from him, so he just got cut down in the middle of the street. Real shame. But, right now, Thom was just fine, standing right in front of Seth like nothing had ever happened.

"Hey there, Thom..." Seth said, trying to play along with whatever fucked-up situation was in front of him at the moment.

"How ya doin' man? Haven't seen ye since..."

"...Portland." Seth let the word hang in the air between them, knowing it was laden with blood.

"Yeah, yeah, Portland. Bit of a terrible thing went down there."

"Uh huh." Seth was completely lost as to what he should say next. Then again, he wasn't exactly operating in the bounds of reality at the moment, so he imagined it didn't matter.

"Now, I seem to remember you tellin' me there in Portland that I shouldn't bring a pistol along with me when we went out. Is that right, man? My memory's a bit..." He mimicked shooting himself in the head "...it's a bit shot if ye know what I mean."

"Thom I had no idea, I mean how could I have accounted for--"

"No worries boyo," Thom's arms started to move and in an instant Seth found himself reflected in the scope of his rifle, the barrel pointed directly at Seth's face. "I came to return the favor."

Seth dodged out of the way just as the sniper rifle went off, cracking and echoing off the walls of the massive interior of the station. He watched it go through two guys, low-level enforcers for the Triads. The Triads slumped to the ground dead, so at least Seth had two fewer opponents to deal with, but the gunshot had attracted everyone's attention in the whole station, and every last one of them had a gun pointed at Seth.

He ran across the station, dodging bullets wit superhuman luck and agility. Seth had dodged his fair share of bullets in his time, but never anything this good. This, what he was doing right now, was impossible. He ran through the increasingly violent crowd and came to rest behind a newsstand, ducking behind its wooden frame for cover. He heard the bullets peppering the wall behind him and saw chunks of plaster and wood flying up with every hit, creating a grey mist over the whole station. Seth checked his revolver, cocked his hammer back, and decided it was time to fight back. He fired off two shots and they hit two guys square in the chest. His third shot took down a SMG-wielding soccer mom he'd rubbed out after she racked up $50,000 in gambling debts to his employer.

As Seth fired more and more, the bodies started to pile up. He just kept pulling the trigger, and every time he did it, another one of his victims would crumple to the ground, dead once again at his hands. He didn't have to reload the gun, he just kept marching forward, mowing down each and every person, stepping over a sea of shell casings and bodies. The barrel of the revolver was glowing orange, spitting fire and laying down lead against the people Seth had either been ordered to kill or the ones who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

After five minutes of continuous fire, Seth put the killing shot into the last ghost of his life. It wasn't one of his more memorable kills, just an aspiring rap star he was ordered to take out after he let a record deal go south and into of the mafia's hands.

Amongst the death, amongst the destruction, Seth stood and looked over Grand Central Station. There were at least five hundred bodies, maybe more...even though he remembered all of their faces he wasn't the type to strike a notch in his gun barrel with every victim, so he just had to estimate. This was his life...this death, this destruction. Each killing sending a spiderweb of grief in every direction, affecting hundreds of lives. At this point, he was sure he'd affected hundreds of thousands.

The front doors of the station stood in front of him. Since the gunfire had died down and there was no longer the incessant chatter of people in the station, Seth could hear people and cars outside of the station. Busses drove by, pumping their brakes. Families and tourists made their way past the doors of the station. The smell of gunpowder and blood filled the air, and it was getting unbearable. He had to get out. He walked toward the doors, or at least he tried to, but he was interrupted by a cold, bony hand clamping down on his ankle. Then another, and another, the hands crushing him, moving up his legs and pulling down. He looked around and saw that all the people that he'd shot down once again weren't dead at all, but just as alive as they were ten minutes ago. They were all getting back on their feet, brandishing their guns once again. Their wounds were still bleeding, but they didn't seem to mind it. They had more important things to attend to. With the hands gripping his legs, he wasn't able to move an inch, and when the formerly dead started shooting at him, he just had to take every last bit of it. The bullets tore his body apart, every single shot putting a new hole in him, going in one side and out the other. He was afraid he'd eventually run out of places for bullets to go in, but they never stopped piercing new flesh. The pain was immense, his bones cracked and his body began to fall apart in the hail of bullets coming down on him. Once the bullets got too much, Seth fell to the ground, inch by inch, until he was nothing.

22

Seth's eyes shot open. He felt cold sweat covering his body and his chest was heaving, even with the strangely compressed position he was still in. The handcuffs cutting into his ankle and wrist. He was in someone's apartment, in a bedroom to be more exact. The windows were too high up for him to see from his position on the floor, so he could have been in Bucharest for all he knew, but he assumed it was still New York City judging by the familiar sound of traffic buzzing around him. Nina was in the same position as he was on the other side of the room, rolling around and possibly just coming to on her own as well.

"Nina?"

"Yeah..." She groaned.

"Any idea where we are or what just happened?"

"Your guess is as good as mine."

"And the case...?"

"All I know it's not with us. If you twisted my arm...well, more than it already is twisted, I'd have to say it's with the guys who just knocked us out."

"Good thinking..."

Seth decided he was going to get a better feel for where he was, and that wasn't going to be easy. He had to stand up, but at this point standing up would be a feat of coordination he didn't have complete confidence he'd be able to pull off. He was lying against a bed, and he used the solid frame of the bed to support his weight as he pushed himself upward. After a couple of minutes, he was able to toss himself onto the bed, rolling on the mattress and over to the window. He overjudged the distance and smacked his head against the windowsill. His vision went starry for a minute. After they cleared, he looked out onto the city in front of him. New York City it was, and judging by the buildings surrounding him it had to be in the heart of The Bronx. Every time he tried to make his way down to Parker, down to Manhattan, he seemed to always end up in The Bronx. Fuck The Bronx, Seth thought, and for once it wasn't just because of The Yankees. He now had more rage built up for the borough than he possibly could for any part of the city. He vowed to never go back to it once all of this was cleared up.

"We're in The Bronx..."

"Again?"

"...yeah, always seem to be coming back home, eh?"

"So how do we get out?" Nina said.

Seth looked at the handcuffs clasped around his wrist and ankle. They were solidly made, police surplus, not something he could break apart by slamming them against something solid. "You know, of all the days I forgot to bring my picks..."

"Seems like bad luck has sort of become a trend for you, Seth."

"And you're along for the ride..."

The door to the room burst open. A man walked into the room brandishing one of the MP5s they had become so acquainted with in the past few hours.

"How the fuck do you get that thing open?" He leveled the gun at Seth.

"Why do you think I know that? I'm just a courier. A murderous, down on his luck courier but a courier nonetheless."

"That mouth probably gets you in a hell of a lot of fights doesn't it?"

"My fair share."

The man walked over to Seth and unclicked the safety on the compact gun. "Well it's about to get you into your last fight if you don't come up with a way to get that fucking thing open and pretty goddamned fucking soon!"

Seth didn't have anything to lose by now and he was going to die either at this guy's hands or Parker's goons so he decided to give the man up.

"David Parker would know if anyone did."

"Well where's he?"

"Downtown."

"Can you call him?"

"Do you fucking think if I had his number I'd still be in this shitstorm?"

"You're a grade a asshole, you know."

"I try."

"Well, here's the deal, we're gonna find this Parker guy. How much is he paying you for the case?"

Again with nothing to lose, Seth let it spill. "A half million for the each of us."

"Half mil...and how much do you think Parker thinks you're worth?"

"That I have no clue."

"Well, you better hope he's willing to put up an extra two hundred fifty grand for you to stay alive once we get in contact with him. If he wants the case and you it's seven fifty...but you know I'm willing to drop you out of the equation if he wants."

Seth doubted Parker would think for even a second about paying the premium for Seth's life. Parker was the kind of guy who wanted you to pick up the tab whenever you went out to dinner, for the food itself as well as the barload of drinks he'd inevitably buy.

"Well what about Nina? Gonna make Parker pay for her too?"

The man paused and looked over at Nina. "Holy shit, he doesn't know?" He laughed, a cackle from his throat, and Seth got a palpable queasy feeling in the bottom of his stomach. She wouldn't do that to him, would she?

"I hadn't gotten around to telling him. If you guys hadn't played up the theatrics maybe I'd have had a chance. Uncuff, me Chris."

Chris walked over to Nina and took the handcuff keys out of his pocket. He unlatched the handcuffs from Nina and she rolled over on the floor and stood up. She rubbed her wrist where the cuff had left raw red skin. "You didn't have to cuff me so tightly, you brutal fuck."

"Sorry."

"Yeah you better be." She kissed Chris deeply, which was even more painful than the initial betrayal.

Seth watched Nina walked out of the room. She didn't even look back at him as she left, not that he really expected it anyway. The people who are so willing to stab you in the back aren't all that concerned with watching theirs. Seth was almost strong enough at the moment to tear the fucking handcuffs off, body parts be damned. After all they had done after everything after he put his neck out for her by calling up Erin, this was her endgame, this is what all this shit was leading up to. He wanted to tear her limb from limb, but he knew he had to wait. This is why he didn't work with strangers. Someday he'd learn to stand his ground on that. If he survived this.

23

Chris and Nina came in and interrupted his seething. Even in the ensuing three hours that had passed since Nina walked out that door Seth hadn't calmed down a bit.

"Well we talked to Parker" Chris said. "It looks like you might actually have a friend in the world after all. Imagine that."

"He's paying up?"

"Oh I wouldn't go that far but he did say you were valuable enough to consider sparing your life."

"Bet that disappoints you, doesn't it, Nina? I bet you'd take a lot of pleasure in putting a few rounds into me, wouldn't you?"

"Absolutely. But now you're worth money to us, so, I guess you lucked out."

"You didn't luck out all the way, you stupid fuck..." Chris walked over to Seth and wound his leg back and delivered a shattering kick to Seth's face that sent Seth's head bouncing off the wood frame of the desk. Seth's head finally came to a rest against the floor. He felt the blood coursing down his face, but he was interrupted in worrying about that when he felt Nina's foot blasting his ribs once, twice, five times maybe. He had lost count in the cloud of pain.

They let Seth lay there after the beating "I've been waiting to do that since Germany..." Nina said, lighting a cigarette. She took a few long drags off of the cig and flicked it over at Seth, the orange tip flying in a tight circle before coming to rest on Seth's chest. The tip singed through his shirt immediately and began to burrow into his skin.

Without saying anything else, Chris and Nina walked out of the room and once again left Seth in darkness. Not that things weren't already dark enough on their own.

24

At hour ten, Seth was resigned to his fate. Despite what Parker said, he wasn't getting out of here alive. Parker was just making a promise to Chris and Nina to string them along long enough to cut them down to. On the bright side, Seth knew he was going to die, while Chris and Nina weren't aware yet of what Parker was going to do to them once he had his case.

For as many terrible, inescapable situations he'd gotten himself into, he knew this would be his last. He was just done with it, done with fighting against everything in his life. If on an outside chance Parker paid up, great, maybe he'd live a little longer, but in the end, he knew he'd meet a bloody, violent death. Might as well do it now than later...at least this time he'd have an epic tale to cap off his life, not just some accidental stray bullet in one of hundreds of gunfights. He just wished they'd come in and do it. He wished Parker would call them and cancel the deal. He was done with this shit.

And almost on command, the door opened once again. Just Nina this time. She was holding a plate of food...well, calling it food was being very generous. It was a disgusting, grey-looking baloney sandwich and a few saltines.

"Come to kick me while I'm down again?"

"Just shut up..."

"I'll let you know this much. Over the course of my life, four people have double-crossed me...four people have fucked me over. Three of them are dead, and I intend on fixing that nasty little remainder dragging her feet at the bottom. You're dead, Nina. I hope you know that."

Nina put the plate of food down in front of Seth. "Just eat."

Seth jerked his hand up "How do you expect me to eat?"

"You've got a free hand."

Seth rolled over and picked up the sandwich, taking a bite before putting it down and realizing hunger was the last thing on his mind. "Was this your plan from the start? Were you always looking for an angle to fucking me over?

"I'm not talking about this."

"Goddamnit, now that you're not hiding behind your boyfriend you're not so fucking tough now, are you? At least if you're going to cross me, do it with some fucking relish, enjoy it you bitch...it's the last thing you'll get to enjoy."

"I did what I had to do. I had to look out for myself. I'm sorry--"

"--No you're not fucking sorry! You had this up your sleeve since when, since Berlin? Since Parker's office?"

"I don't have to explain everything to you, Seth. Just sit tight, once Parker pays up, we'll let you go."

"Parker's not paying."

"You don't know that...just, just shut up. Wait for Parker."

Nina closed the door again on Seth. He ate what he could stomach, thinking that if he did have a chance to break out, he'd need some strength in reserve to deal out whatever damage he needed to deal.

25

The night was darker than usual, but maybe it was just Seth's perception of it. The sound of Chris, Nina and the other goons had calmed down and Seth thought he'd get some sleep while Parker made up his mind. He heard something on the other side of the room, a creaking. The door, again. Maybe Parker had told Chris that he couldn't find it in his budget to pay for Seth, so the jig was up, and Seth had come to an end. He heard light steps approaching him, and a second later he felt a thin, feminine hand clasp around his mouth.

"Don't say a word, I've got about five minutes before Chris comes back from the liquor store so I need you to listen up. I didn't mean to fuck you over but I had this in my back pocket since I started this job. Thing is, I started falling for you...you know, damnit, I actually started to like you as a person. And because of that, I realized that you weren't somebody who I just wanted to cast to the side just to net a bigger paycheck. But Chris, I don't know if you can tell, he has a bit of a temper. If I told him the cross was off, he would have been added to the list of the people coming to get us. Now, I know you want to say you could take him, but this was my choice, my call, and I went with it. So now you have to go with it. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about this earlier, but I was pretty damn sure you would have messed this up and added a few bodies to the pile that we didn't need. The fact is, here we are and now it's my one opportunity to break you out. So stay cool about this, we'll get out alive, and we'll get our payday. If you want to go along with me, just nod."

Seth nodded. Couldn't do much more.

"Alright, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to bring Chris in here and tell him you have some lockpicks. We'll move on from there, but I need you to play along. Stay just as pissed off as you have been, I'm sure that won't be hard." Nina sat up from the bed and looked at Seth "So, you ready to do this?"

"Why should I believe that this isn't just another facet to your double-cross?"

"You shouldn't. Fact is, I did something horrible to you, but the other fact is that you kinda don't have many other options."

"If I'm wrong about this, not only am I going to kill you, I'll kill your whole family. I have my ways of finding them."

"Fair enough." Nina nodded, and at this point Seth knew that she was probably being truthful, and like she said he didn't have many other options.

Nina walked out of the room and closed the door once again. Seth prepared himself for the scene that was about to unfold. He hoped everything would work out according to plan, but based on what he'd experienced so far, something was bound to fuck up.

26

"I saw them in one of those books, he was probably planning on picking out of his handcuffs and killing us in our sleep." Nina and Chris walked in, Chris was holding a pint bottle of vodka and carrying an incredibly pissed-off expression. He took a swig from the bottle and cocked his eyebrow at Seth.

"What she says true? You plan on picking your way out of here?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Check the Tom Clancy book, you'll find them. I'll cover him with the gun in case he tries to make a move." Nina motioned toward a pile of books near the bed. She trained the MP5 on Seth. Chris went over to the pile of books and began flipping them open.

"I'm not fucking seeing them!" Chris tossed a couple books to the side. Nina walked over to behind Chris and stretched over his back, pointing down to the large tome at the bottom of the pile.

"Down there! I said the Tom Clancy book!"

Chris reached down for the bottom of the pile, and when he went to do it, Nina put one hand against Chris' chin and the other at the base of his skull. With one quick, sharp motion she twisted his neck completely around, dull snapping sounds cracked and popped up and down his spine. Chris began to fall, but Nina cushioned the descent and eased him to the ground without as much as a creak from the floorboards.

"Alright, part one complete. You believe I'm committed to getting you out alive?"

'You're earning the trust back, little by little."

Nina reached into Chris' pocket and withdrew the handcuff keys. She unsnapped Seth's bonds. She also reached over and grabbed the vodka and handed it to Seth. Seth took off the handcuffs and twisted the bottle cap open, much like Nina had just twisted Chris' neck. He took a couple of pulls off of the vodka. It cleared out some of the pain from the past few hours, but it would take a lot more than vodka to help out the throbbing ribs or the broken nose he was sporting at this point.

"Thanks."

"You're welcome. Thanks for putting up...up with all this shit. I'm really sorry."

"Just make it better. Fix it now, give me that SMG."

Nina handed the MP5 to Seth "Let's try not to use it until we're out of the apartment, OK? We're gonna go the stealth route out of here."

"Deal." Seth said. He stood up, checked the MP5, but put it back on the bed. "It's a little showy anyway."

"Hands behind your back. Gotta still go along with the charade."

Seth complied and Nina pushed him forward out of the room. Chris' thugs were sitting on the couch watching, ironically enough, a cop show. They didn't even notice Seth and Nina at first, but when she went over to the table in the middle of the room to pick up the briefcase, they perked up.

"Chris is in the room talking with Parker. He's paying up, but he wants Seth and the briefcase delivered to him now."

One of the thugs sat up in his chair. "Alright, cool, I'll go along. No knowing what this asshole will try."

"Uh, no, no, I'm good, he wants me to deliver him."

"I'll at least go with you, for safety's sake."

"I'm good...he said if anyone else comes along..."

"Hold on." The thug pointed at Seth's hands. "Where are his handcuffs?"

Nina lingered on the thug for a second trying to think up something to say, but there was nothing. She'd been outed.

"Seth. Run."

27

Seth and Nina screamed through the door, the thugs flying behind them. Seth's ankle still throbbed from the twelve hours in handcuffs, and his ribs weren't faring much better, but he kept running. They rounded their way down three flights of stairs, the thugs' feet throbbing behind them as they chased them down.

"Nice job playing along."

"Great improv skills." Seth replied

They got to the lobby of the building and had to go north or south. They were in The Bronx, Parker was south, so they chose south. As they opened the door to the back of the building, a bullet pinged off of the metal frame of the door. But it didn't land in Seth or Nina, so they were running far enough ahead of the thugs to stay safe. They emerged into the mist of the Bronx night, the bar rush crowd filling the streets with carousing twentysomethings. They were going to be more obstacles than cover. They kept running, the thugs five steps behind.

"We've gotta get inside somewhere, we're too exposed on the street."

"I don't think these bars are going to exactly welcome us with open arms."

Seth pointed at the underground subway station about a block away from them. "There."

"The subway?"

"You have a quicker way to get us to Manhattan?"

"We could try a cab."

"You saw how that turned out the first time."

"Alright, subway it is."

They knocked a few overeager drunks to the side, the thugs knocked over a dozen more, but they were able to fly down the metal stairs of the subway station. There were a ton of people in the station, packing into trains going north and south. The station itself was full of the familiar smell of diesel smoke, body odor and god knows what else. There were enough people here to stop the thugs from doing something insanely stupid, at least that's what Seth and Nina hoped.

They aimed for the southbound train. Toward Manhattan, toward dropping the briefcase off at Parker's office. Fuck paychecks at this point, they just wanted to get rid of the thing. They ran down to the car farthest away from the entrance of the station, hoping the train would take off before Chris' guys could board. The car was just as packed as the rest of the station, but they were able to find a couple of seats in the car, a rarity on one of these trains, but maybe their luck was turning around.

When the doors began to close, they thought they were out of the woods, but any luck they had gained was dashed then they saw a massive forearm shove between the guards on the door, causing them to shudder back open, causing Seth and Nina to shudder as well. Both of the thugs tossed their shoulders around to make their way into the car, and in the light of the subway Seth got a good look at both the guys for the first time. The more bulky one, the one who shoved his hand into the closing doors, had a head that was a perfect square, all kinds of angles and sharp corners everywhere. He had that brain dead look that crime bosses appreciated, since they were the kind of guys that wouldn't remember much that went on around them, but were eager to pound the hell out of anyone you pointed to and said "hit him." The one that entered behind the musclehead was more thin, more agile, but only five five and not imposing at all. But he was carrying an incredibly pissed-off look on his face that meant he was up for anything.

"Mark, got 'em, over there." The thin guy jutted his hand out toward Seth and Nina, but before Mark was even able to whip his head around to them, Seth and Nina had already gotten up from the bench seats and were heading through the door between the cars. There was a message on the door about using this only in case of emergency, Seth thought they'd probably be covered under that umbrella.

"We've just gotta wait until the next stop, maybe we can fake the guys out and they'll be up the river." Seth said.

The speaker at the top of the car crackled and shrieked with feedback, but through the noise a voice emerged. "This train is running express to Grand Central Terminal. No stops."

"It's like they're actively trying to kill us." Nina said.

"Who?"

"The world."

"Looks like it. Let's see if we can delay them by a couple of hours at least."

They kept moving up through the cars, the passengers grumbling as they weaved through the crowd, but outright shouting when Mark and the other guy disturbed them again a few seconds later. Nina and Seth made their way through six cars without much of a problem other than a few nasty looks from the riders...but to be honest they'd get those on a normal day.

In the seventh car, Seth should have seen the problem coming right when he entered. Two businessmen, both clutching the pole to support themselves while they occupied their other hand with a BlackBerry. They were muttering back and forth to each other.

"'Scuse me" Seth said, trying to nudge one of the businessmen out of the way. He didn't move an inch, he actually he spread out his stance a little bit just to make himself that much more impassable. Seth tried the other one; same routine, same widening of the stance. These guys were pros at being assholes, sticking in their spots right next to the door so that they can get out first to go to their all so important jobs in midtown.

"I really need you to--"

The guys just stared at Seth again saying with their eyes "you asshole, do you have any idea who I am?" Seth thought to himself that if they were really as important as they thought they were, they wouldn't be here among the commoners riding the train.

"Just let me--" Seth tried one more time. He heard the emergency door slide open as he tried to shove his way past. Pretty soon the businessmen had no choice but to move when Mark made a lunge at Seth and the case sending the businessmen tumbling down onto the floor of the subway car, a floor that harbored an unknown number of horrible viruses. Seth's face was now in those viruses, but they were the least of his worries when Mark reached and grabbed his ankle, scraping him along the floor. Nina tried to get away from Mark's partner, but he quickly grabbed her, sending the case clattering to the ground. The subway slowed a bit and the momentum of the case sent it sliding down along the side of the car, coming to rest against a pole.

One of his ankles occupied, Seth used the free one to twist around and deliver a kick to Mark's face, sending him backwards and giving Seth a chance to right himself and stand up. The car passengers formed an undulating barrier on either side of the car, meshing together shoulder to shoulder. When Mark backed into them, still reeling from the blow, they sprung him back into the middle of the car, right in front of Seth. Seth took advantage of Mark's momentum and shot a haymaker into the side of Mark's neck, causing him to grip it tightly. He was shaken by Seth's sudden violence, but it would take a lot more than that to fell him.

"You want a fight, motherfucker, or do you want to just give me the goddamned case?"

"Oh no, I'm really done with that case slipping into other people's hands."

Mark lumbered forward, throwing his shoulders with each step trying to look bigger and badder than he was. He sized Seth up and clenched his jaw. He grabbed Seth's shoulders and drove his forehead down against the top of Seth's skull, which hurt like hell, but Seth came back by chopping him in the throat. The two exchanged blows back and forth, neither of them getting much of anywhere. Seth wasn't strong enough to take Mark down, while Mark was too slow to catch up with Seth's bobbing and weaving in the middle of the car. Meanwhile, the crowd watched...at least they'd have something interesting to tell their families at the dinner table that night.

Nina and Mark's lackey, a guy who Nina didn't even bother learning his name throughout she and Chris' collusion, were having their own fight as well, but it was a little more one-sided. He was restraining Nina, gripping one arm tightly around her hips while the other one silenced her, clapping over her mouth.

"Think you can fuck us over like that, Nina? When Chris hears about this..."

So they must not have checked the bedroom on their haste to leave the apartment. Nina writhed and tried to snake her way out of his grip, but he was too strong for her. And even though she was worried exactly what kind of weird shit this guy might have been carrying around in his bodily fluids, Nina decided she only had one choice of what to do. She worked her mouth open ever so slightly under the guy's controlling grasp and then bit down as hard as she could, causing things to crack and squish in ways she didn't want to think about at the moment.

The thug screamed at the top of his lungs and pulled his hand away from Nina, who took the opportunity to pull him down by his shoulders and drive her knee into the middle of his chest. He crumpled to the ground, gripping his hand as he tried to stop the bleeding.

With the thug taken care of, Nina checked up on Seth, who was still battling it out with Mark. When Seth delivered another staggering blow to Mark's face, knocking him back once again into the crowd, Seth looked over at Nina.

"Hold onto something solid."

"What?"

"Just do it, I don't have time to explain!"

Nina was a bit confused but she was pretty sure Seth knew what he was doing, so she grabbed onto the support pole in the middle of the car. Seth did the same, but he swung across the car to grab the emergency brake at the end of the car.

The lights in the subway car flickered for a couple of seconds, causing everyone to look up. In the claustrophobic environment of the subway tunnel, when the train engaged its security brakes, it wailed, the sound ricocheting off the walls and creating an unbearable high-pitched scream that would have caused the riders to cover their ears if they weren't already busy getting an impromptu physics lesson at Seth's hand. The few riders smart enough to still be holding onto something were only shifted forward a few feet, but the passengers who hadn't chosen to restrain themselves, including Mark and his thug, weren't so lucky. They all flew forward, crushing into a cluster at the front of the car. Mark was in the middle of the bunch, while the other thug, who was previously still writhing on the floor, took on most of the other passengers' weight as he slid across the floor and was the first to land against the door when the train stopped. During the whole stop, Seth and Nina watched the carnage unfold. Some of the passengers had to have been seriously hurt in the sudden stoppage, but at this point Seth and Nina had to busy themselves looking out for their own backs, not other people's...especially not the businessmen that caused this whole thing to happen in the first place. Seth saw one of the businessmen's BlackBerries on the ground, grabbed it and put it in his pocket. His phone had been destroyed when Braun's intruder had come into the room, so he needed some supplemental mobile communication. The phone was probably covered by the guy's expense account anyway, no big loss.

"Nina, the case." Seth pointed to the case, which was still lying against the pole it had come to rest against when it first flew out of Nina's hand. Nina grabbed it and went over to Seth.

"Now what?"

The car became bathed in red light, then in the pale yellow light of the backup illumination in the train. The doors on each side of the train shot open, causing a rush of hot, stale air to flood the otherwise temperate and comfortable subway car. The people who were fortunate enough to still be on their feet began to make their way towards the doors without much fanfare. They'd be pissed, but this wasn't their first time at this rodeo...people pulled these brakes all the time, and a lot of the time it required the riders to walk to the next station.

In the ensuing hubbub of passengers recovering from their shock and the people getting off the train, Seth and Nina took the opportunity to slip out of the train unnoticed by Mark and the other guy, who were a bit preoccupied at the moment. They dropped down from the subway car and began to walk north, past the operator who was sticking his head out of the engine screaming for everyone to stay calm.

"That was...graceful." Nina said.

"What did you expect me to do?"

"I'd taken care of Mark's guy, and you seemed to be doing a number on Mark himself. A minute more and we would have been home free."

"Home free? Grand Central's still forty blocks away. Don't tell me you expected Mark and his thug to just sit around quietly after they beat us down."

"It's a possibility."

"No, not at all...keep walking."

And they both did just that, through the grimy tunnel for about a half a mile before they saw the welcoming light of the station. They climbed up to the platform, aided by helpful people waiting at the station. They walked up the stairs into the daylight, only twenty blocks away from Parker, twenty blocks away from their freedom. But twenty blocks was still a lot of a distance to walk, especially with what they'd been through. So Seth, once again, called in a favor.

"Hello, Erin?" He said into the stolen BlackBerry.

28

"So you were double-crossing him the whole time? I should have fuckin' known..." Erin said, driving her car down the street, weaving in and out of traffic and eliciting more than enough horn honks and middle fingers. For as skilled of a criminal dealer as she was, one thing Erin couldn't do worth shit was drive anything larger than a bicycle.

"No, I was double-crossing him, but I un-crossed him. We're cool now."

"I wouldn't go that far" Seth interjected, jutting his head between Nina and Erin in the front seat. "Cool can wait. We're OK for now, but I wouldn't say cool yet. You still almost got me killed."

"And bringing me into Al-Qassim's little harem didn't almost take me out? I'd say if we're counting near-death experiences, I still owe you a few."

"Now kids, come on, calm down, we're among friends and, hey, you're on your way to a payday!"

That silenced their bickering. The car wound through the streets of Manhattan, towards Parker's office. Seth could almost taste the money at this point, knowing that it was right there in front of him, just a few miles away, he could hardly contain his excitement.

"So what are you two gonna do with the money once you get it?"

"...Haven't really thought about it, to be honest." Seth said "It'll just be nice to have the money. I can worry about what I'll do with it once I actually have it in my hands."

'I know I'm going to take the biggest fucking vacation ever. Cruise ships, Tahiti, Costa Rica, whatever comes my way. After what I've been through I think I deserve to blow twenty grand of it on completely useless crap."

"Well played, well played." Erin smiled at Nina. It looked like she actually might have been warming up to her, but maybe it was just because she could tell that Seth and Nina hadn't had the chance to have sex again, therefore cooling the passion between them and giving Erin a way in if she chose to go back.

"So where is Parker's office again?"

"Twelfth and Broadway, I already told you that."

"Yeah and I already forgot."

Erin drove a few more blocks. At Broadway, she just kept driving. After a couple of streets, Seth spoke up.

"Uhm, Erin? I think you missed our turn."

Erin didn't say anything, just kept her eyes on the road and the car pointed away from Parker.

"Erin, what the fuck? Do you not know your way around the city? I mean, I know you're a bad driver and all, but..."

It wasn't entirely motivated by the barb by Seth, but it was at least part of the motivation for Erin to reach under her seat and withdraw a loaded .357 revolver and point it in Seth's face.

"Out."

"What?"

"Get the fuck out of the car. Leave the case."

"Not you...come on, Erin." Seth searched his pockets for his gun, but somewhere along the line he'd been rendered completely defenseless, unless he wanted to throw the BlackBerry at Erin, which he was considering, but he didn't think it'd get him that far. "Why are you doing this, is it because of Nina?"

Erin laughed and shook the gun in Seth's face. "Her? God, no. Trust me, if I wanted to take her out of the picture I would have done that forever ago. The reason I'm taking the case from you is because you were stupid enough to put it in front of me. I do have to thank you, though, for making it so easy to rip you off. I thought I might have to actually put some effort into getting it, but you sort of...well, you did just walk into my car. I have to be honest, it's been a tough time in the world of a fence."

"And you're taking that out on us?" Nina said.

Erin whipped the gun around and pointed it at Nina. "That's exactly what I'm doing. I was low on cash, I saw an opportunity, and, sorry, you guys were on the losing end of it. Now. Out, before I have to clean blood off my seats."

Seth and Nina climbed out of the car, their tails between their legs and the case once again not in their possession. Erin sped off.

"Now what!?!" Nina screamed

"This."

Against logic and his own safety, Seth darted out into traffic and into the path of an oncoming red coupe. The driver stopped inches away from Seth's shins, the driver inside opened his window.

"What the fuck, man?"

"Get out!"

"Oh my god, you a cop or something?" He said this as if it was his one hope in life, to have his car commandeered by a cop for the purpose of a pursuit.

"Sure, yeah, undercover."

"Fuck off."

"Alright then, we'll do it this way." Seth rounded the front of the car and ripped open the door. The driver wasn't wearing his seatbelt, so it was easy for Seth to wrench him out of the car and onto the pavement. Seeing what was going on, Nina went around the other side of the car and jumped in. With the original driver of the coupe chasing after them spewing a mouthload of obscenities, Nina and Seth chased Erin down the street, but they were too far behind at this point to give an honest chase.

"When I get that bitch..." Nina gripped the armrest of the coupe, digging her fingernails into the leather.

"Save it, we have to find her first." Seth took a turn at forty miles an hour, hopping a curb before bringing the car back to rest on the pavement. "...And I think I know exactly where she's going."

"Where?"

"Whenever things would get too hot for Erin, when she wronged someone or just had to get away, she always went to a cabin in Nova Scotia to let things die down. Now, when she went she was usually carrying something that would raise more than a few red flags in customs, so Erin had to take herself to the Great White North, on her own boat."

"She doesn't seem like the sailing type."

"It was more driven by necessity than anything."

"So where is this mythical boat?"

"Southern tip of Manhattan, if she's kept it moored in the same place since I was last on it."

"You rode on the boat?"

"Hey, the sex on the thing was amazing. The waves are very..."

"Just stop right now."

"Alright..."

Seth rounded another corner and Erin's taillights came into view a couple of blocks ahead of them. A variety of cars were stopped and shoved into weird angles as Erin plowed her way through the streets. They kept getting close, but not close enough, then Seth had an idea, and he turned the car hard to the right and dashed down the road, away from Erin.

"What are you doing?"

"Just trust me here."

With the docks only three or so blocks away, Nina saw this as a really stupid move, but she wasn't the one holding the steering wheel. Seth rounded the blocks, running assumingly parallel to Erin's path to get to the dock. When the docks were less than a block away, Seth pulled the car to the left, running down the street and heading toward the harbor. As he crossed through the intersection, Nina saw exactly what Seth was going to do, and she really, really wished he wouldn't.

"Hold on, and hope this thing has airbags. You know, if your friend Chris hadn't done this to me, I wouldn't have thought it could actually be done."

Erin's car was lined up in front of Seth, and as she crossed the street, Seth pulled the emergency brake, sending the car into a sidespin, taking both cars side by side towards the harbor. The problem was, the cars kept going, even when they hit the ridge that separated the higher up streets from the much lower dock. Erin's car flew over the edge first, but Seth and Nina's followed right behind it, leading Seth to believe that he should never put himself in a car again in his life, they were way too much damned trouble.

Both the cars laid in crushed heaps on the docks, and Seth and Nina laid in crushed heaps as well. The smell of gasoline dominated the air, causing Seth and Nina to choke and try to find their way out of the car as quickly as possible, as a fire couldn't have been that far behind leaking gas.

Seth stood on the docks and ducked down to see if Erin was still in her car, but he found that the answer was a resounding no when he saw her hobbling down the docks, streaks of blood running down the backs of her fishnets. Maybe Erin hadn't planned on coming down to the docks tonight, since her wardrobe wasn't fit for seafaring in the least. Hell, she wasn't even fit for walking down the docks to get to her boat. Every other step, one of her stilettos got caught in between the planks, but she still had enough of a lead on Seth to get to the boat before he could.

"Erin, you don't have to do this! Just give me the case back and we'll be even. I'll even owe you, just give me the fucking case back!"

Either Erin didn't hear him, or more likely she just ignored him when she got to the boat. She jumped onto the deck of the small 2-person craft and untied the rope from the cleat on the dock. She pushed off and went over to the trolling motor.

"No, Seth, there's no going back this time. Eventually, you'll have to realize that I always have to win. With this case in your possession and that stupid half-breed on your arm, I was losing. Don't you get that?" She fired up the motor and began to slip away from the dock.

Seth had other plans for Erin's departure, though. He built up as much momentum as possible, running as fast as he could down the dock toward the boat. He eyed the distance between the dock and the railing that ran around the bow of the boat. It was about five feet, but growing. Risky, but not impossible. Seth mustered every last bit of strength he had in his body and flung himself toward the boat. In the second or so he was in the air, Seth reflected on how terrible everything had been up until this point, and how there was no chance he'd actually land this. Nothing had gone his way since he left Germany, and this was going to be the way it would end, with him floating in the East River, sitting in Erin's wake as she went off to Canada, into oblivion.

But then he felt his hand hit the cold metal railing of the ship, and all those thoughts dissolved as his mind occupied itself with actually staying alive and dry. He nailed the railing with one hand and the other followed, giving him a good grip on the side of the boat. The small craft rocked at the sudden inclusion of Seth's weight, and Erin, not the best in terms of sea legs, was tossed onto the deck as the boat shook. Seth's already beaten and bruised chest slammed against the fiberglass hull of the boat, but at least he knew he'd made it exactly where he wanted to. He pulled himself up from the railing, the ship now a good twenty feet away from the dock and heading south. He reached one hand up to the cleat where the rope was attached, and he felt a spiky stiletto descend on his forearm. The pain shot up his arm and nearly caused him to lose his grip in both hands. And to think some guys paid to feel that kind of pain from her, Seth thought as he tried to hang on.

"Give up, Seth! Just give up, it's not worth it!" Erin screamed, stomping on him a couple more times. Seth pulled his arm back from Erin's attacks and hung by one hand from the hull's railing.

This was a moment of truth for him. If he could just pull himself up, all the horribleness of the past few days, all of the stupid shit he'd gotten himself into, it'd all be alright if he could just get that case and get it to Parker. How he came out physically at the end of all this wasn't his concern at the moment, he just wanted this to be over. He swung his body like a pendulum and gained some momentum, finally enabling himself to swing up to the prow of the ship, distancing himself from Erin enough to give him room to wrap his leg around one side of the bow while he pulled himself up onto the deck.

"I do admire your tenacity, I always liked that about you."

"Yeah well I liked your honesty and trustworthiness, but I guess I was wrong about that."

"Seth, this isn't about you."

"How the fuck can you even begin to say it's not about me?"

"It's a job. Parker already knows you've lost the case, I'm sure. He's probably going to write you off anyway."

"If he thinks I don't have the case, I'm dead. So is Nina."

"Big loss if she died, right? I still can't believe you'd fall for such a fucking Plain Jane."

This set Seth off. Nina was far from a Plain Jane, sure, but with the last expression from Erin, he realized all of this was motivated by jealousy, a stupid girl who couldn't get over a boy. A lot of love stories ended up ugly after that kind of stuff, but he didn't think many of them ended in murder.

"So this is because of me? You just wanted me back?"

"I wanted the case, Seth. And now I have it. Your part in the equation is negligible."

"Well I'm not leaving this boat without the case."

Erin pulled out the .357 "I think you are. Intact or not, whatever's left of you is going to be leaving the boat here in about ten seconds." Erin fired off a shot that echoed against the water, but was way off the mark and didn't even threaten Seth.

Seth charged Erin and tackled her around the waist, bashing her against the fiberglass of the hull, cracking it on impact. They writhed around on the deck of the boat, and Seth couldn't help but think that in happier times, they'd done the same thing with one another, albeit with less clothing and far fewer guns. They clawed at each other, Erin chomped down on Seth's forearm a couple of times, leaving distinct crescent-shaped bite marks in the skin along with a considerable amount of blood. Seth finally got the upper hand on Erin and straddled her, delivering punches to her face as she grinned at the pain.

"I've never had someone dish it out to me like this, you know." She said through a mouth of blood and busted teeth.

Seth paused for a second thinking about Erin's comment. It was true. For a person who spent her whole day dealing out pain to people, both as a dominatrix and as the pulse of the underworld, pain was her business, but nobody ever gave her a taste of her own medicine until now.

When Seth felt Erin's hand drive into the middle of his chest, he realized that he shouldn't spend even a second pondering something when he was in the middle of a fight. Erin shoved him backward, and he flew across the ship toward the back, smacking his head against the ship's steering wheel as he went down. He cracked his head against the case, which was back by the trolling motor. Dazed, he looked up to see Erin standing on the bow of the boat holding the .357 and pointing it directly at his head.

"This is it, Seth. My endgame and yours. We've both gone through a lot to get here, haven't we?"

Erin pulled back on the hammer of the gun and prepared to shoot, but it was right at that moment that Erin probably wished she'd invested in a hull sturdier than fiberglass. Weakened by Seth throwing her down on it, the hull was ready to go, and it did, sending Erin halfway down through the boat before she came to rest on the bottom, half of her body sticking out from the gaping hole in the bow. The fiberglass shards were teeth as she went down, cutting clean, straight lines down her midsection. Seth watched Erin fall and watched the .357 slide across the ship and into the river.

"Oh, fuck, fuck! Oh my God!" Erin screamed in agony.

What she really should have been screaming at, though, she couldn't even see. When Seth had flown across the ship and hit his head on the wheel, it had turned the ship back toward the harbor, back toward the dock.

Erin looked back and saw the fast-approaching dock, which was about chest height to her at the current moment. She looked back at Seth, realizing what would happen if Seth didn't do anything.

"Seth, help me out. Please. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry!" She cried, tears streaking her blue eyeshadow down her face.

Seth thought about saving her for less than a moment, and then simply uttered "No."

Seeing that the ship was on a crash course for the dock and he wouldn't have fared all that well if he stayed aboard, Seth jumped out of the back of the boat just as the prow came in contact with a solid weathered dock pole. When his head bobbed up out of the water, he saw Erin's final moments, being crushed between the razor sharp splinters of fiberglass and the unrelenting two hundred year old dock planks. There was a lot of cracking, a lot of blood, and at a certain point Seth just had to look away from it all.

His adrenaline subsiding, Seth realized how incredibly cold the river was, and that it would be the most brutal irony in the world that despite all he'd gone through, hypothermia would be the thing to do him in. He wasn't the best swimmer, so he half floated half doggy paddled to the next nearest dock pole, the one that didn't have a boat and a dead ex-girlfriend wedged under it. He reached out for the pole and hugged it like a long-lost friend. He didn't have the strength to climb up, but looking out into the moonlight over the Atlantic, he thought he could deal with sitting there for just a few minutes, maybe a few hours. A familiar darkness began to creep in on him once again.

"Need a hand?"

Nina's voice shocked him back into reality and kicked in his self-preservation once again. He looked up at her smiling face, illuminated in the reflection off the water. She was more beautiful than he'd ever seen, but that may have just been the blood loss and low body temperature talking. He smiled and reached up for Nina's hand. She pulled him up onto the dock.

"Quite the hero, aren't we?"

"I t---t---try." Seth said through chattering teeth. He stood up and looked back toward the wreckage of Erin's boat. There was no way she would have survived it. He considered what he had just done, thought it was really murder when he looked at it. He had the chance to save her, the chance to give her a shot at redeeming herself and letting it all go, but he didn't do anything about it, he just let her get smashed to bits. He wanted to feel bad about it, he really did, but he was so fatigued at this point that all his emotions were just a dull buzz in the back of his skull.

"I hate to shock you back to reality so quick, but..."

"The case..."

"Yeah. Where is it?"

"On the boat the last time I checked." Seth said, making his way to his feet. "You should make sure it's still there."

Nina walked over to the smashed hull of the boat and picked through the shards of fiberglass and wood. Erin's body was completely underneath the deck, and Nina was thankful for that, because it meant she wouldn't have to bear to see the corpse of that bitch. Still, her blood had spread over the remenants of the boat, pouring off the hull and into the water. After pulling back some larger pieces of the hull, Nina saw the case, that lucky case, buried between a twisted railing. It was in perfect condition. Trying to avoid the blood as best she could, she picked the case up. She walked over to Seth, who was trying his best to dry himself off.

"We should probably get the hell out of here. Car crash, boat crash, gunshots...I give them five minutes, tops."

"How do you plan on us getting to Parker?"

"Well, considering our history with modes of transportation over the past few days...maybe we should walk."

Nina checked the latches on the case. "How far from Parker's office are we?"

"Ten blocks. Twenty minute walk."

"Let's go. What's the worst thing that could happen on a ten-block walk?"

"I can think of a few..." Seth walked down the crooked planks, the cuffs of his pants still dripping."

29

Seth plunked the aluminum case down onto Parker's desk. His shirt was still soaked through with the dirty water of the river. It made him itch all over. But it would all be worth it though when Parker opened his checkbook.

"Took you two long enough." He said, only half paying attention to them.

"If you only knew what we went through to get this back to you you'd be paying us double." Nina said

"Well that's sure as hell not going to happen."

"Nina, I think you mistook Parker as someone who is capable of sympathy and appreciation for hard work."

"Yeah guess I did."

"So are the goods all in working order?" Parker said finally closing his laptop and giving undivided attention to the both of them as well as the case.

"They're as good as they're going to be." Seth said, sliding the case over toward Parker.

Parker examined the case, noted a few bumps and scratches on the surface and scoffed. "Can't wait to see how you two fucked this up."

"You're so welcome..." Nina said, venom in her voice.

"Chill, Nina, just let him do his thing and we can be out of here." Seth said, making sure both Nina and Parker heard it.

Parker flicked the dials on the case and snapped the latches open. He pulled the briefcase open and took out a few of the pieces of art. They were still in perfect condition, unharmed by the hell they had just been through. Parker checked the edges, the corners, and the undersides of the pages, trying to do his best to look like a legitimate art dealer. He grunted a few times and itched his brow as he went through the inspection. Seth rocked back on his heels in anticipation, Nina chewed on her thumbnail. The tension in the room was a heavy fog, enveloping everything.

Parker looked up from the pieces of art and smiled at Nina and Seth. "Everything looks great. Thanks guys."

"Now there's just the matter of that payment..." Seth said, leaning forward.

"Right..." Parker said. He opened the desk drawer to his left and pulled something out. "That's really not going to happen."

Parker brandished a massive .357 revolver and pointed it at Seth's chest.

"You motherfucker." Seth seethed but didn't do anything at the moment. He was waiting on his moment to pounce. He patted the waistband of his pants, but then painfully realized that Parker's guards had confiscated all of their weapons before they got into the office. "You sent us through all of that shit just so you could pull the rug out from under us at the last second?"

"Did you ever think that the journey may have been just as important as the end result?" Parker clicked the hammer back.

"This is really not a good time to get all philosophical, Parker. You're gonna shoot us? Do it."

"No, no, you see, I have a story to tell. Last time you two ingrates didn't want to give me the time of day, but you know what, now that I have the two of you in a little bit of a copromised position, you're going to both sit the fuck down and listen to what I have to say!" Parker slammed his gun down on the wooden desk. Without much of a choice, Seth and Nina sat down in the chairs they had sat in just a few days ago. The world had changed since then, for the both of them.

"This art? I couldn't give a shit less about the stuff. Or the money that I'll get from selling these things. What I was really after, and what I knew neither of you numbskulls would pick up on, was eliminating some competition."

"Then why didn't you hire us to just kill Braun? We would have done it."

"You're jumping the gun, Seth..." Parker looked down at his hand and realized the pun. He smiled, baring teeth that were as sharp as razors. "...so to speak."

"Then go on." Nina said, thinking that Parker's penchant for monologues would give either her or Seth enough time to come up with an out.

"Knocking off Braun and all his Eurotrash pals was only phase one. Killing them off created a power vaccuum over the entire European continent. A vaccum I'm already in position to exploit. People won't ever stop needing thir drugs and their hookers, and I'm just the man to provide those things to them. But I had a problem. No way of reliable trans-Atlantic distribution...the kind of distribution only a...oh, I don't know, Middle Eastern black market legend would have access to."

"Al-Qassim" Seth said.

"Ding ding ding! Score one for the loser in the soaked shirt! I mean, did you two really think it was that much of a coincidence that someone showed up just at the right moment to steal that thing out from under you? Come on, I bought the fucking tickets, it was an easy call to make. I tipped off Al-Qassim through an anonymous source, and I'm grateful he took the bait. I didn't know if you guys would end up killing him, but you went far beyond my expectations in that category. The grenade thing was a beautiful touch, Seth. Admirable, realy."

Parker looked at Seth for some kind of comment, but Seth was way beyond talking at this point.

"What about the Middleman, was that your plan, too?"

"How does The Middleman figure into this?"

"She figures into it in the fact that she's now dead under a dock along the East River because she tried to take it from us."

"She? Dead?" Parker looked honestly confused in the matter. Nina was convinced enough that Parker had no idea about Erin. "This is all news to me. But, hey, if The Middleman's dead, whoever she was, that's even better for me. Thanks, guys. I appreciate the extra effort."

Seth gripped the arm of his chair, letting his knuckles go white. In the silent room, his grinding teeth sounded like tectonic plates shifting. "So what is it now, Parker? What's the score?"

"Well, I'd say I"m at least a few up on the two of you, am I right?"

"Just do it if you were planning on it. Put us down and be done with it. I'm done with all this story bullshit, all these justifications, all your goddamned reasons why you played the both of us like a fucking violin. I don't care." Seth stood up from his chair, grabbed Parker's gun by the barrel and shoved it against his own chest. "Get it the fuck over with, Parker." He stood there with the gun at his chest for a few long moments.

Parker yanked the gun out of Seth's hand and pulled the gun away, leaning back in his chair. "Go. Get out of here."

"What?"

"I'm giving the two of you the chance to get out of this with your lives. Killing the two of you doesn't help me in any way, but if you two want to push me, I just might have to pull the trigger." Parker said. The doors in his office clicked open, and Nina saw four guards with AK47s enter the room, their fingers hovering above the triggers. The guards surrounded Seth and Nina, seperating them from Parker.

"Parker's right. It's just business...shit like this happens all the time. He got the best of us, and we just didn't think to cover our asses enough." Seth said. Nina tried to figure out what angle Seth was playing, but she wanted to let it run its course.

"That's what I like to hear. You two understand, right? It's just business."

"I guess."

"We'll be going now." Seth said, turning around. The cloud of guards follwed he and Nina out of the office and into the lobby. They didn't lower their guns, even when Seth and Nina were in the elevator on their way down.

30

"So what now?" Nina said as she and Seth stepped out of the front doors of Parker's building.

"I thought that was obvious...I'm going to kill Parker."

"Don't you mean we're going to kill Parker?"

"You don't need to get involved with this."

"Hey, I'm out a half a million myself, I'm not going to just let this slide."

Seth began to walk away from Nina, but she caught up and stood in front of him. "Seth, this is really not the time to get all stoic again. Tell me what you want to do with Parker, and I'll help."

"It's suicide, you knwo that, right?"

"I had a pretty good idea it would be."

"If you had any sense, you'd let me ride off into the sunset on this one..."

"Well it's good that I don't have any for your sake."

"I don't need your help."

"You do."

Seth considered the proposition for a little bit. "I'm only letting you come in on this because you fucking owe me for that little stunt you tried to pull earlier."

"The whole double-cross thing?"

"Yeah."

"Seems to be happening to you a lot tonight."

"You help me out on this one, and I'll forget what you tried to do."

"Deal."

They shook on it and began walking down the street, Seth leading the way.

"Where are we going?"

"My apartment. We need supplies if we want any kind of chance with this."

"You have an apartment in Manhattan?"

"Is that such a surprise? I get paid a hell of a lot to do what I do. I reap the benefits."

"You just seem more like a Bronx guy..."

"I was one, until I had too much money for The Bronx...then I moved out. Place was a shithole."

They walked down the street a little more until they arrived at a steel and glass gate. Seth approached the gate, punched some keys on a number pad, and opened the door. A doorman greeted Seth and gave a sidelong glance toward Nina. Seth was probably not the kind of person who had a lot of guests.

**

"This is really something..." Nina said, turning around inside Seth's massive apartment. It was obvious that he'd paid somebody to decorate the place, since Nina didn't think Seth was the decorating type. It was all very modern, with exposed concrete walls, glass fixtures and a few severe-looking red and black paintings of geometric shapes. A huge TV hung from the wall and a computer desk sat against one wall.

"I'm sure you'd love to sit here and talk about how wonderfully designed and chic my apartment is, but I think we might have more important things to do."

Seth approached a tall cabinet and opened it. Nina marveled at the arsenal that opened in front of her. Seth seemed to have at least one of everything. Pistols, compact sub-machine guns, rifles, grenades, body armor, and tons of other gadgets. Seth didn't waste any time taking a couple of his favorites from their hooks before strapping them to his leg and across his back. He checked the slides and clips of all the guns he was pulling from the cabinet.

"Find something you like, and then find something you know you can handle. I've got all the ammo in a closet over there." He pointed over to the other side of the apartment with his pistol.

Nina took an AR-15 and a compact 9mm from the cabinet. She also grabbed a few grenades, though she wasn't really too sure how well they would work in the cramped confines of Parker's building. They'd produce a hell of an explosion, that's for sure.

Seth picked up two Kevlar vests from the rack of six he had at the bottom of the wadrobe. He tapped the ceramic panels on the chest portion of one vest just to make sure they were still in working order. He draped the vest over his head and tightened the velcro straps. He held the other vest out for Nina.

"Take it."

"Not really too form fitting...is it?" Seth just glared at her. The mirth and lightheartedness of the previous couple of days had been spent way beond its limit at this point. "Relax, I was joking."

"I know, it just wasn't funny."

Nina wound up her face at Seth and snatched the vest from him. It was bulky on her small frame, but she was still able to move her arms freely. She caught a glimpse of herself in a full-body length mirror against a wall of the apartment. Seven days ago she'd been a respected and revered con artist, but at this point, she more resembled a mercenary more at home in the depths of a Bolivian jungle. All the scrapes, scuffs, cuts and bruises were piling up on her olive skin, but for some reason she didn't really mind it that much. This trial, this gauntlet had given her some purpose, as potentially lethal as it was. She knew she couldn't run around pulling con games for the rest of her life, and maybe a gun for hire wasn't the worst choice for an encore career. Sure there were plenty of on-the-job hazards, but the thrill of the chase, the smell of cordite floating in a fine mist in the air...nothing beat that.

While Nina was busy admiring herself, Seth went to his closetful of ammo. He loaded his MP5 up with soft point bullets, ones that would expand when they hit something...he didn't want to risk ricochets in whatever he was facing. He loaded his pistol up with armor piercing rounds, just in case. He took a few clips of soft points for Nina, but didn't get her any armor piercers. He didn't have enough of them, and if they ran into enough people to warrant two guns firing off AP rounds, they would already be dead.

Seth slid the clips across his dinner table so that they were beside Nina.

"I'm giving you one more chance..."

"To what?"

"You know what."

"I'm not backing out of this, if that's what you're wanting."

Seth hung his head. Nina's bulldog determination was going to get the best of her some day...Seth just hoped that some day wouldn't be today. "You know there's very littel chance we're coming out of this, right?"

"I'm aware of the risk, Seth...would I have trotted my way up to your apartment if I wasn't committed to this?"

"Fair enough, fair enough." Seth raised his hands, letting his pistol dangle on his finger. "I jsut though I'd give you another out before things got past the point of no return.

"They passed that a hell of a long time ago."

Seth laughed for the first time in what seemed like twelve hours. "Guess you're right."

31

Nina kept watch on the relatively empty street while Seth fished around under the steering column of a black Ford Explorer. The AR-15 was a bad choice, and she was finding that out first hand. Keeping it concealed underneath her jacket was a bitch. Every once in a while, she would lean her head into the cabin of the explorer to see how Seth was doing. To outsiders, it looked like Seth was searching for something he lost under the driver's seat, but if somebody got close enough to see the mess of gutted wires hanging down from the guts of the Explorer, there would be no doubt in anyone's mind what was going on.

Nina was just beginning to get antsy about the situation, worried that someone would offer to lend a helping hand and invariably mess up the entire hotwiring, when she heard a low electrical buzz followed by the sound of the Explorer's engine firing to life. Seth shimmied out of his awkward position underneath the dashboard and stood up.

"Cars these days...they're more like computers than actual vehicles. I feel like a need a fucking programming certification just to hotwire one. Used to be, you unlock the steering column, splice a couple wires and you'd be in business."

"At least you can hotwire...I could never figure it out myself."

"Remind me after this to give you a lesson...on something a little less complicated." Seth said. He was happy that he was actually talking about the future, despite the grim and nearly inescapable task that stood in front of them. But he had to have something to look forward to, something to strive towards, or all of this with Parker wouldn't be worth anything.

Seth walked over to the other side of the SUV and opened the door "Get in" he said to Nina. Nina, still trying to keep the rifle concealed, sat down in the passenger seat while Seth made himself comfortable in the driver's seat. Seth put the car in gear and tore off down the road.

Seth drove aggresively, blowing through a few red lights on the way. It was late enough in the evening that it wasn't much of a problem, but Nina was worried that it would attract cop attention, then they'd have a huge mess to dig out from under before they even got to Parker. Seth continued, though, his fingers gripping the steering wheel so hard they threatened to tear the thing apart.

As they turned onto 78th street, Parker's four-story building came into view. The building itself was a reflection of Parker: stooped, rough-looking and from an era far passed by modern society. Seth eyed the front of the building and saw a steel gate followed by a ramp that lead to an aluminum garage door. The Explorer wouldn't come out of the collisions in good shape, but it would survive, and more importantly, they would. At least for now.

With Parker's building about a hundred feet away and no obstructions between them, Seth jammed the accellerator and watched the spedometer hit 85 the moment before they hit the gate. The gate blew open easily, and the garage door wasn't all that difficult either. Seth pulled the e-brake as the car flew into the massive underground garage that Parker kept. The SUV stopped within feet of slamming into a concrete wall.

"Holy shit!" Nina screamed, half exhilirated and half terrified

Seth saw Parker's guards come through the door that lead into the rest of the building. The guys were quick, but anyone would respond pretty quickly to the sounds of a two ton SUV crashing through a garage door

"Stay down and start shooting." Seth said opening the door and ducking behind it for cover.

Nina took similar cover and whipped the body of her AR-15 around the frame of the door to fire off a few rounds. The report of the rifle echoed through the concrete box of the garage. The gun fired in three round bursts to reduce recoil and Nina was grateful for it. Despite the size of the gun she was able to keep her shots in a tight cluster. Lucky for her, one of those clusters was right in the middle of one of the guards' chests. The bullets took him down and he slumped against a Mercedes parked on the far side of the garage

Seth was having similar success, though with fewer bullets than Nina. He focused on the guards' heads, and he was deadly efficent. Three, four, five guards laid in a heap in front of his barrel.

Only a few seconds after the shooting started the garage was once again silent other than the sounds of seth and Nina slapping in fresh clips. Seth stood up and surveyed the carnage. "We have to keep moving and I'll tell you right now this was probably the lightest resistance we'll meet tonight."

"We're already neck deep in this shit, Seth. Saying stuff just to scare me out of doing this is just wasting your breath at this point." Nina said

"Just wanted to give you a heads up, that's all"

"Well thanks but I can handle myself...you do your own thing, I'll do mine and we'll both get out of this."

"Fair enough." Seth tightened the straps on his Kevlar. "Let's go then."

32

Parker's headquarters was a repurposed four story office building that had been turned into the home and workplace of one of New York's worst. When Seth and Nina came into the building through the garage, the room they entered looked like just about any lobby in any one of the thousands of offices that peppered the city. The place was wide open other than a few couches, and this scared Seth shitless. He could deal with close quarters stuff, but with this situation in an open area, it would be so easy for someone to come out of nowhere and put a premature end to their little quest. He held his mp5 out just waiting for that someone to pop up.

Their footsteps echoed in the wide expanse of the lobby. An alarm was buzzing ceaselessly to alert Parker and his men of their unexpected visitors. Standing nearly back to back they walked across the lobby toward the elevators to get to Parker's floor

"Shit!" Seth said. Nina looked back at him.

"What?"

"They locked the elevators down." Seth stared at a flashing 'no' symbol against a white background.

Nina shoved Seth toward a door labeled stairs on the other side of the room. "Little exercise never killed anyone right?" She said

"It's not the exercise I'm worried about."

They walked to the stairs and opened the door. The stairs were fashioned in the same raw concrete as the garage. Seth lead the way, his finger tapping the trigger every couple of steps. With the equipment and the body armor, combined with the hell they had been through, these flights of stairs were laborious and painful for the both of them. When three of Parker's men came out of the door at the landing of the third floor, it certainly didn't help anything.

Seth saw them before they noticed him, so he was able to send a few rounds their way. The bullets pitted the concrete above their heads, but none of them hit. The guards retaliated by firing at Seth and Nina, but they didn't hit either.Seth and Nina ducked down behind the concrete guardrail that lined the stairs. The guards had the height advfantage, but it woudl give them a few seconds at least.

"Just give up! Parker said he'd take you two alive!" One of the guards screamed.

"You really expect me to believe that?" Seth said.

"Listen, the three of us have clean shots on your heads. You either come with us, or you die, those are your choices."

Seth slid down so his head wasn't as exposed. He pulled Nina down with him.

"What do you want to do?" Nina whispered.

"I didn't come here to get escorted up to Parker's office...if that's what they were even going to do."

"You did hear the thing about the guns being pointed at our heads, right?"

"What the fuck are you guys doing down there?" The guard screamed.

"Convincing her to go along with you guys! Just gimme a goddamned second!"

"What?" Nina said

"Shut up. Here's what we're going to do. We're gonna stand up, you first, then me. Thing is, when I get up, I'm going to throw a grenade and we'll need to run like hell after the thing explodes."

"That's a terrible idea."

"Absolutely. But that's all we have right now. You game?"

"Yeah, yeah."

Seth shifted against the railing and pulled one of the grenades off of his belt. He yelled up at the guards. "Alright, she's going to come first, then me. Deal?"

The guards sat silent for a few seconds, but then one of them spoke up "Yeah, come on, Parker wants to see you guys now"

"Dont' fuck this up." Nina whispered as she stood up from behind the partition.. Seth waited to hear the guards start firing, but it didn't happen. Nina got a few steps up the stairs, and Seth began to follow her.

"Come on, come on, you too Seth, let's get moving." Seth stood up all the way and tossed the grenade toward the guards. They didn't even have a second to react before it sent off in the middle of the three of them. A plume of blood and concrete filled the stairwell. All three guards went down in an instant.

"Run, now!" Seth said. They both scrambled up the stairs, over the dead or wounded guards, and flew up to the fourth floor. Seth kicked the door open

The lobby of the fourth floor was completely empty. Seth and Nina were gradeful that it seemed like they had done away with all of Parker's guards. Still, they kept their guns drawn as they walked toward Parker's office.

"Stay on your toes...who knows what Parker has waiting for us when we open that door." Seth said. Nina looked down at her gun and switched the firing mode from burst to full auto.

Seth put his hand on the doorknob and turned it slowly. He pulled the door open and shoved his gun inside. When he wasn't hit with bullets immediatly, he was surprised. He opened the door all the way and looked at the office. It was empty as well.

"Fuck." Nina said.

"He's gone..."

"Thanks for pointing it out."

Seth and Nina entered the office, their guns now down as they had no threat of being shot at...at least they were pretty sure there was no threat. Parker's desk had been cleaned out, all the drawers were sitting open, empty.

"I don't think he's just gone for the night." Seth said

"You think he's heading out of the country?"

"He had to have known I'd be coming back for his scalp, so, yeah, he's probably putting as much distance between me and him as he possibly can. The only question is where he went..."

"I'm pretty sure I have a good idea." Seth looked up at Nina, who was standing by a wooden wall panel that was slightly ajar. She pulled the panel towards herself and it continued to open. A set of stairs was revealed.

"A helipad." Seth said. "Let's just hope he's still up there."

33

Parker was still on the helipad when Seth and Nina came up the stairs. He was waiting for them, though, with a huge revolver pointing at the door as they opened it.

"I had a good feeling you two would come back." He said

"Then why'd you let us go?"

"Let's just say I have a flair for..." he flung his arm around toward the city. "big finishes."

"What if that finish ends up with you dead?"

Nina saw a helicopter coming toward the building on a low approach, its searchlight fixing on the helipad. The wind on the helipad whipped around, causing Nina to tumble and lose her rifle. Parker scrambled to grab the gun. He holstered his revolver and took the AR15 in both hands, flicking it back and forth between Seth and Nina

"Guess your little advantage just slipped away, Seth. It's over."

"I can still shoot you, Parker."

"And I can shoot your little geisha girl, too."

"You think I care?"

"I know you do...if you didn't you would have shot me by now."

Seth began to talk, but his voice was overpowered by the whir of the helicopter's rotor. Parker kept his gun traind on Nina and Seth didn't take a shot because of it. The copter touched its skids down on the helipad behind Parker

"I think this is my exit, then. Nice try, you two, but this is how it ends." Parker laughed and opened the door of the helicopter. "By the way, I left about two hundred pounds of C4 on the third floor, ready to blow...it'll land me a hell of a lot of insurance cash, and it'll take care of you two. Win win, right?" Parker stepped into the helicopter and slammed the door shut. The helicopter started to power bck up for its flight.

"Well?"

"Well, we're gonna jump for it, aren't we?" Nina said.

"I already jumped at one departing vehicle today, I don't know how much mor eluck I have left."

"It's this or the C4."

"Good point."

The helicoper was about four feet of the ground when Seth and Nina made their break for it. They screamed across the tarmac, the wind from the helicopter doing their best to blow them back, but it wasn't enough to deter them. Wtih the helicopter about seven feet off the ground, Seth and Nina made their jump toward the skids of the helicopter. Their hands clanged on the aluminum as the helicopter continued to rise. Seth and Nina slid around with every movement of the chopper. Seth swung around and got one leg up on the skid.

"Seth, do something!" Nina screamed as the helicopter cleared the building, leaving only a lot of air between the two of them and the pavement below.

"I thought we'd just chill out here, see how things went!"

Seth pulled himself up onto the skid some more and reached for the door latch. He missed on the first attempt, his fingers brushing the metal but unable to grasp. He reached again, still nothing. On the third try, Seth felt his hand wrap around the latch. He jerked the handle down ahd felt the helicopter tilt, but the door slid open. Seth lifted himself into the cabin of the helicopter and Nina followed.

Parker was surprised to see them come in so quickly, so he didn't have time to draw his gun, which gave Seth and Nina the upper hand. They jumped into the cabin and drew their guns.

"Hey Parker, long time no see." Seth said, breathless.

"You two motherfuckers just don't give up, do you?" Nina looked down to see that Parker still had his gun ready in his left hand. She nudged Seth so he noticed, too..

"Give up the case, Parker. We got it for you, and now that you're not paying us, we're taking it back."

"Why didn't you make a move for it earlier?"

"You're the last man standing, Parker, you don't have any thugs to back you up now. You'rea lone, and you're outgunned."

Nina glanced out the open door. The city screamed by at a nauseating clip. Lights flickered and flashed, thousands of lives below continued without disturbance. Just like in Berlin, Nina sort of wished she could be one of those people.

"This is it, Parker." Seth clicked the safety on his MP5 off. "Give it up."

"No." Nina heard Parker click his hammer back.

What happened next took place over an instant, but time stopped as it took place. Shots rang out inside the cabin of the helicopter, blood and cordite filled the air. Bodies shifted, groans were emitted, metal hit metal, and three people fell to the floor of the helicopter.

34

Nina woke up.

She looked around and saw the chaos of the shootout. Parker was dead for sure, a pattern of three bullets to the face guaranteed that. She looked over at Seth. He was moving, still breathing, if just barely. The helicopter was still in the air, and the constant thud of the rotors pounded Nina's head. She couldn't have been out for more than a few seconds, but what had changed over those seconds was profound. She felt a warm trickle running down her arm, and when she looked at her left shoulder, she saw it blow to pieces. The pain began to rush and she did her best not to throw up in the cramped confines of the helicopter. She used her good arm to lift herself onto a bench seat near Seth.

"You...OK?"

"Not really..." he trailed off. She could tell it was sapping all his energy just to speak.

"Parker's..."

"Yeah."

"I'll get us to help."

"OK..." Seth was fading fast, and Nina wasn't doing too well herself. Nina popped open the door between the cabin and the cockpit. She put her gun to the pilot's head.

"Where are we going?"

"Who the fuck are you?"

"New passengers, we're the ones that brought the gunshots."

"Gunshots?" So the rotors weren't just deafeningly loud for Nina

"Whatever, fuck it, Parker's dead, and you're gonna take us to a hospital."

"I'm not taking you--"

Nina pulled back the slide on her pistol. "Think long and hard before you say anything else."

"Alright, fine, fine, Parker paid me up front for the flight, so I don't fucking care where this bird ends up."

"That's what I like to hear." Nina pulled her gun away from the pilot's head. The pain in her shoulder was blinding her, she gritted her teeth just to stay upright, and soon she couldn't even do that. Everything went dark and she felt her head smack against the cockpit door.

35

The incessant throb of the rotors were replaced by the rythmic beep of a heart monitor, but both were still grating to Nina's shocked ears. She tried to move her arm but nothing happened. She was fighting back the darkness that threatened to claim her conciousness once again. Everything hurt, everything pounded, everything throbbed. Her head was swimming, and she felt like her limbs were ten feet long. Her senses were slowly awakening, and for the most part it was a bad thing. Her nostrils filled with the sharp, acidic stench of disinfectant and her skin was covered in a thin film of dirty sweat.

"You're awake."

A deep voice probed at her from the depths of the room. The voice was male, comforting, familiar. It caused Nina's senses to brighten up a bit, enough for her to open her eyes and see the cracked plaster cieling of her hospital room. She moved her neck and fought stiffness, but was able to turn it to observe the room. When she didn't see Seth in the room, her heart sank. When she saw the man in the long tan coat, her heart sank more. She didn't know what operation he was with, but only people on the right side of the law dressed like that.

"Where..." Nina said, her mouth getting reacquainted with talking

"Mount Sinai, and be thankful you are. If that chopper pilot had landed you anywhere else, you'd probably be dead. Turns out one of the best surgeons for gun shot wounds in the country just happened to be around when you coasted in. Your shoulder's torn all to hell but it'll heal, they said you'd be up and at it in about six weeks."

"Who the fuck are you?" Nina said to him. Her vision was sharpening, she began to pick out his features. Sandy brown hair, a rough jawline, former offensive lineman frame. He was too cocksure to be an NYPD detective, so he had to be a spook of some sort.

"Matt Sheppard, FBI. And nice to see you too, Miss Kokuri."

"So you're here to arrest me?"

"We'll get to all that later, first things first, how are you feeling?"

"Like I got shot."

"Yeah, it'll take the wind out of you."

Nina let herself smile at Sheppard's understatement. She knew it would be the last time he would make her smile. "How's Seth?" She said.

Sheppard paused, and that was all Nina needed to know. She felt tears starting to well up in her eyes, but the cocktail of drugs in her system had her so chemically mellowed that she couldn't muster the strength to cry. "I hate to be the one to tell you this, but he didn't make it. Parker's bullets hit his liver and his spinal cord...even if he'd survived, he would have been a parapalegic for the rest of his life."

"Oh..." Nina said, not letting everything sit completely on her concious just yet. She knew it would be a few months before she would be able to completely wrap her brain around what had happened.

"But you're alive, and considering how much blood you lost, that's something to be proud of, a badge of honor."

"I'm alive to give you the opportunity to take me into federal custody, right?"

Sheppard pushed himself out of the hospital chair that was obviously way too small for him. "About that...well, that's sort of what I'm here to talk to you about."

"Don't worry, I'm not in any kind of shape to put up a fight. Go ahead, cuff me now."

"I didn't necessarily come here to arrest you, Nina, I came here to give you a choice."

"Shit..."

"You don't wanna hear it? Fine by me, I can have a couple of US Marshalls take you to the nearest prison medical facility ASAP if you want to release yourself to due process."

"No, no, go on. I just don't know if I want to hear what you're going to offer me."

"Well, give me a minute to make my case. In a sort of fucked-up way, Nina, you did a major service to this country. Not only did you kill a score of European crime bosses, a brazen underworld terrorist and a mid-level NYC mob kingpin, but you also aided in the recovery of millions of dollars in art that was thought to be missing forever. You might not have known it as you were doing it, but you really scored one for the feds, made our work a lot easier. Made us look good, too."

"Glad I could have been of service."

"If you're so glad, then why let the service stop?"

"No...you're not--"

"--now let me finish, please. The way the US government sees it, this can break two ways. One, you go to prison for the rest of your natural life, plus a couple hundred years, for all the nasty and diabolical shit you just pulled over the past few days. Or, you can come work for us and maybe cause some more havoc in the underworld. You'll be our own little undercover agent provocateur."

"I"m not that little."

"Pardon the expression, then. Listen, Nina, if you come work with us, you'll still get to con, you'll still get to kill, you'll still get to do all those things that made you come to our attention. Thing is, from now on when you do it, you'll be fully state sponsored, completely immune to any further run-ins with the law."

"As long as I do exactly what I'm told, right?"

"You'll have perameters to work in, that's for sure, but you'll be allowed to have some freedom here and there to cause some trouble...maybe get some revenge." Sheppard raised an eyebrow at Nina.

"And if I say no?"

"If you say no, then I can't be responsible for what happens next. But if you come with me, Nina, I think you could be a valuable asset to this country's intelligence community."

Everything still seemed to distant, so foreign to Nina. This whole scene unfolding in front of her could have very well just been a morphine hallucination. She shifted in her bed and tried to get comfortable to no avail. "I'll think about it..." she said. Sheppard smiled at her.

"How 'bout I let you get some sleep, and I'll be back tomorrow for your answer?"

"It's a deal."

Sheppard nodded at Nina and winked. "'Til next time, Miss Kokuri." He turned and walked out of the room.

Nina laid her head back down on the flat pillow. She looked at the cracks on the ceiling, and she fell asleep.
