The partners… Milos would have to think of a way to settle with all three. And since he no longer could trust anyone, he would have to do it alone.

He walked on, planning…

12

“So, you’re a hit man now?” Abe said, sliding the package across the counter.

Jack began peeling the masking tape from the tan butcher paper.

Once he’d pulled himself together on the ride back from Monroe, Jack had told Abe what had happened and what he needed. Abe had dropped him off at his apartment where he’d cleaned up as best he could. He’d put the muddied borrowed clothes aside; he’d return them to Peter Harris with a hundred-dollar bill when they came back from the cleaners.

Then he’d called Gia to explain things. He should have gone over in person but he didn’t want Vicky frightened by seeing him scarred, battered, bruised, and burned.

Gia was not a happy camper. Once again Jack’s line of work had put her and Vicky in harm’s way.

No argument there.

When was it going to stop?

Good question. One he couldn’t answer, one he could put off answering a little longer.

He hadn’t brought it up, but they both knew that Vicky was alive now only as a direct result of Jack’s line of work. Had he been a workaday member of straight society, she would not have survived last summer. He could still draw on that account, but he knew it was not bottomless.

The conversation had ended on a tense note.

Jack put those troubles aside for now. To take Gia and Vicky out of harm’s way, a harm named Dragovic, he had to focus on the matter at hand. He unfolded the butcher paper, exposing the pistol.

“Looks a little like a Walther P-38.”

Abe snorted. “If you should have very bad eyes and left your glasses at home, maybe a little. It’s an AA P-98, .22 long rifle.”

Jack hefted it, gauging its weight at about a pound and a half. Checked out the barrel: the front sight had been ground off and the last three-eighths of an inch were threaded. Then he picked up the three-inch-long black metal cylinder that Abe had wrapped with the pistol.

“Awfully small for a silencer. Will this work?”

“First off, a silencer it’s not. It’s a suppressor. You can’t silence a pistol; you can only make it maybe less noisy. And will it work? Yes, it will work. It’s a Gem-tech Aurora. It uses the latest wet technology that will knock twenty-four decibels off your shots for up to two clips. After that it won’t be so good.”

“I figure I’m only going to need a couple, three rounds.”

“Pretty much takes care of the muzzle flash as well.”

Jack shrugged. “This’ll be daylight.”

“And here’s what you should load.” Abe plunked a box of .22 LRs on the counter. “Subsonic, of course.”

“Of course.”

No sense in using a silencer—OK, suppressor—if the bullet was going to cause a racket along its trajectory, a teeny tiny Concorde doing Mach Two and cracking the sound barrier all the way.