Or was it time to lay down my sword and shield and let Church take it from here?

I smiled up at the ceiling. Yeah. Sure. Let me go sit on the sidelines and have a foot-long and a cold beer while the world blows up.

Let me sit it out while other people—better people—put themselves in the line of fire in my place, because I was too sad and weary.

“No fucking way,” I said.

Ghost looked at me and thumped the bed with his tail. When I looked at him, he bared his titanium teeth at me. Maybe it was a snarl, maybe it was him laughing.

He wasn’t buying that bullshit, either.

I looked at my watch.

“Game time, furball,” I said.

CHAPTER 126

HOTEL TIMIȘOARA

TIMIȘOARA, ROMANIA

They were being very careful.

I stood with my face pressed against my door, peering through the peephole at the four men who stepped off the elevator. Three were big, with the kinds of faces that would pretty much guarantee they’d never work in customer service. Lumpy, craggy, with crooked noses and humorless, unimaginative eyes. They wore sport coats that they unbuttoned the moment they stepped out of the lift. Even from a third of the way down the hall, I could see the bulges beneath their jackets. Two right-handers and a lefty. All of them should have had THUG tattooed on their foreheads.

The fourth man was approximately the size and shape of a mailbox. No neck, but not because he was overmuscled—he was simply very short and very obese. His face was florid and beaded with sweat. He had a sparse beard and mustache and a sharp nose that he could have used to peck a hole in tree bark. He was the one I cared about. He had the briefcase filled with money to buy something I wanted very much.

Something he was going to buy from Die Katze.

The four of them walked past my room, the guards clicking their eyes left and right, looking for threats but clearly not expecting any. It was a nice hotel. Elegant and quiet.

As I watched the men in the hall, I could feel Ghost watching me. Patient and just as hungry as I was. He remembered what we’d had to do to get this far. Questions had to be asked. I always ask nicely the first time. Not so much if they stonewall me.

The men stopped at a door only four down from mine. The upside was that I now knew the room number; but the downside was that it was at a bend in the hall where someone inside that room doing exactly what I was doing might see me coming.

That was a problem to be solved in motion.

For now, I waited and watched.