“Plus the fifty?” Reece frowned deeply. It was insulting. Fiddling with the camera, he wedged it onto a shelf, making small adjustments.

From the table, the bound man said, “Nothing personal, right? You know X. You understand how he is. It’s just business.”

“I do know X, that’s true.” Reece spoke distractedly. Video cameras like this were new to the market. He had little experience with them.

“So we’re good, yeah? Just business.”

“Well, I don’t know that we’re good…” Still distracted. Reece checked the lighting, tweaked the angle of the camera. Satisfied, he rolled out a fresh tray of surgical gear.

“Whoa! Hey, man! Come on, now! We had a deal! You said you’d let me go!”

“Actually”—Reece pointed with a skin hook retractor—“I said I wouldn’t kill you like them.”

34

It took hours for Reece to dismember and bag the bodies, then bleach-clean the tables, floor, and instruments. It was grim work, but he needed that time to think about X. A voice inside argued that time alone would solve the problem, that X would, in fact, be executed very soon. As resolutions went, it was simplistic. X was the most vindictive man Reece had ever known, the proof of which now filled two chest freezers in the corner, each bit of body neatly bagged and taped and stacked. Of course, those three men were only the beginning. Reece had seven places he considered safe, and X could not have known he’d choose this one for the girl. He had to assume, then, that X had dispatched as many as seven teams. The specifics didn’t matter. The implications did. X wanted Reece found, tortured, and killed; and cost was not an issue. That risk wouldn’t simply disappear once X was executed. He had money, lawyers, access to dangerous men. He’d put a contract on Reece’s life just to make a point.

A laugh escaped Reece’s lips, but sounded more like a high-pitched, disbelieving titter. In X’s world, there were unspoken rules and unforgivable sins. Reece was a dead man walking, and starting to feel that way. How much money did X have? Hundreds of millions? A billion? No one could escape that kind of reach. He’d spend his life afraid and running.

Sweet Jesus, he thought. Is this how it feels?

He couldn’t simply run. X’s people would find him, no question. Besides, Reece had too much pride for that. Too much faintheartedness, too—that was becoming sadly evident: the liquid insides, a certain weakness in his limbs. He had to get ahead of this, of X. Reece tried to think it through.

Why did X want him dead?

Because he’d taken the girl after X gave specific orders not to do it.

Why did X care if Reece took the girl?