we got.” He checked his phone again. “Ah, two down, nice.” One of them was still writhing, but it looked like the kind of writhe that quickly turned into a final, shuddering stillness. Even better.
Ricardo raised an eyebrow. “You installed bombs on your own property?”
“Who else’s?” He turned to another wall in his closet and slid aside the shoe rack that covered the armory. He pressed his hand to the scanner and waited for it to detect both print and pulse—no one would be cutting off his hand and using it to access his own guns, thank you very much—then watched as the wall slid down and his weapon collection came into view.
“Will one gun be enough?” He had one in his go-bag already, of course, but Ricardo didn’t need to know that. “I could bring two.” He had a lovely Walther PPK, but he didn’t want to put up with a million sarcastic comparisons to James Bond either. He ended up grabbing the same P320 Compact he’d been carrying earlier, now cleaned and put away properly, as well as a few spare magazines.
“I don’t care what you bring, just do it fast.” Ricardo was trying to sound brusque, but there was a slight edge of interest there that meant August had gotten his attention. Who in their trade wouldn’t be interested in a fancy wall of guns, honestly? If the presentation was a little theatrical, it was only because the theatrics enhanced the beauty of the weapons themselves. “Is that a Krieghoff?”
August nodded. “Three barrels, no waiting. It’s got two twelve-gauge shotguns on top and a .308 Winchester on the bottom. Should I bring it?” He pondered it for a moment, then shook his head. “Too much weight, and we won’t be in here that long anyway.” He unlocked another biometric safe at the bottom of the wall and pulled out the briefcase with his troublesome payment in it.
“Where’s the tracker?” he asked, hefting the case up so Ricardo could point to the spot.
“Mine was in the handle.”
August inspected the briefcase. “Hmm, that’ll take too long to pry out.” He couldn’t take the money, but…he also didn’t just want to leave it here for these assholes to recover, either. Whoever had given him this, they had done so with the express intent of taking their cash back once August was dead.
Well, fuck that person. He wasn’t a goddamn bank, after all, although he would give it all back, with a little something extra attached.
Crash! Someone had just broken through the big, very attractively positioned plate glass window leading into his extensive living room. It was the only window in the whole house that would break that easily, in fact. All the rest of the glass was bulletproof, three-inch thick laminate.
It was the work of a few seconds to add a small explosive charge to the case, one that would only be triggered with a significant impact. Dropping it on the ground? Probably not good enough. Throwing it down the stairs or over the guard rail? Probably—August was willing to be wrong just to test the theory. So long, parquet floor, I barely knew you.
“What the hell are you doing? Quit wasting time,” Ricardo snapped as August walked past him into the open-concept hall, then checked his phone again. Cameras showed three hostiles right below him, cautiously picking their way over the glass-covered floor of his living room.
“Just a sec,” he mouthed, then called out, “Hey! This doesn’t have to get—” He paused and waited out a hailstorm of bullets into the wall a few feet above his head. Of course they didn’t have the angle to actually hit him yet, but that wouldn’t stop a dumbass from trying. He brushed some plaster from his beautiful suit—rude—and continued. “This doesn’t have to get unfriendly,” he said, careful to keep a hint of nervousness in his voice. “I know, I didn’t get the job done. But if your boss wants the money back, that’s fine! I don’t need it anyway. I’ve got it right here, in the original case. If I give it to you, will you guys just leave?”
There was a long moment of silence, the kind of silence where August knew the three people were signing at each other furiously. He knew because he could see it, the morons—did they not notice all the cameras in this place, or did they just not care? “Fine,” one of them called out eventually. He had a flat, middle-American accent—no useful identifiers