Hitman vs Hitman - L.A. Witt Page 0,78

would a man like you hide a tracker, I wonder? Not in the lining of a beautiful suit like this.” He ran his hand down August’s chest, tapping along his sternum. “In the shoes? The tie, perhaps? No matter. I’ll have plenty of time to take you apart and find it on the way. After all—” he grinned again, that awful wide grin, “—to the victor goes the spoils.”

August’s vision blurred, and his mind felt like it was being wrapped in gauze. All he had time to think was Oh fuck, this is Vic, not Nick, and he’s motherfucking kidnapping me, followed by Where’s Ricardo? What happened to him?

Then he couldn’t think anything at all.

Chapter 17

Oh shit.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh, shit.

This was really, really, really fucking bad.

In the space of heartbeats, Ricardo had recognized “Nick” and he’d lost audio with August. Before he’d even said the words, “That’s Victor—get out of there!” the dead air in his earpiece had told him it was pointless.

Victor. Fucking Victor. Goddammit, they’d both known it was a possibility that Victor was behind the double hit, but since when the fuck was Victor working for the Cavalcantes?

For God’s sake, Ricardo should have known. Only Victor would be lazy enough and slimy enough to pawn off a high stakes job on a colleague so he could score the cash without putting his neck on the line, and then go scorched earth to clean house when that plan didn’t work. It made perfect sense now, even if he’d had no way of knowing for sure before this. There were dozens of other asshole hitmen who’d have done the same thing, but Victor was the only one who was, as August had put it, so extra he had to hire a damn army of minions to help him do it.

And now he knew it was Victor, the most ruthless sociopath Ricardo had ever encountered, which said something, given his line of work. Shit.

Victor wanted him and August dead. Victor had gotten close to August. Close to him while Ricardo had been too far away to do a damn thing, with the signal jammed so he couldn’t even warn August.

And now they were gone.

Ricardo had taken his eyes off them just long enough to toss a towel over the long gun he had sitting on a tripod and pointed through the windshield of the stolen windowless van he’d been using as a hiding place. Literally seconds, if that so he could get out and get to August without anyone noticing the gun. Then he’d looked again, and they were…

They were just fucking gone.

Heart thumping, Ricardo hurried through the park, looking around frantically like a father who’d lost sight of his child. They couldn’t have gone far. There was no way. Ricardo was more than twenty seconds away—damn it, August was right—but they couldn’t have just vanished into thin air!

Except…

Something caught his eye, and his heart sank. On the edge of the bench, rippling in the gentle wind, was August’s pocket square. The one he’d put down before he’d sat on the bench.

A little girl ran by, paused, and snatched up the shiny piece of fabric. In a flash, she was gone, along with the pocket square, leaving Ricardo standing there, breathless, all too aware that August was gone. Taken. Kidnapped.

And August must have been losing his shit. As many times as he’d been kidnapped in his youth? As deeply traumatized as he was?

Where are you, August? How do I find you?

They weren’t here, though. They were out of sight, and his best bet was the tracker on August’s person. Or, well, one of them—as far as August knew, there’d only been the one in his cufflink. What he didn’t know was that after Ricardo had fucked him into the mattress for the second time, leaving him sleeping soundly in a satisfied heap, Ricardo had quickly sewn another small tracker into the waistband of August’s trousers. Just in case.

He took out the burner phone he’d set up to track the device. It was working now; whatever had interfered with the open line to August must have been gone. A signal jammer that Victor was no doubt carrying on him. Which… Great, that meant the signal jammer wasn’t here anymore. It also meant it was wherever August was.

“Son of a bitch!” Ricardo snarled, very nearly slamming the phone onto the pavement.

Around him, several people jumped and stared. He suddenly felt very conspicuous, and very out in the open in the