man in an expensive black suit rounded the corner and stalked toward us. He moved with grace, not like a dancer but like a swordsman, swift and supple, and carried himself with complete assurance as if he owned the whole building and his mere presence was an honor to behold. His longish brown hair had fallen over one side of his face.
Conway lunged to the left, trying to avoid him.
The man’s hand snapped out. He caught the AME’s shoulder, steadying him, pulled a long, narrow dagger out of his jacket, and stabbed Silas Conway in the heart.
It was a breathtaking strike. Smooth, fast, flawless. My magic sparked, as if acknowledging the beauty of it. He didn’t even aim. He did it all in a single offhanded motion, as if he had taken his car keys out of his pocket and tossed them to a friend. This wasn’t expertise, this was mastery, born of pure muscle memory and superior reflexes.
The man raised his head. Alessandro Sagredo looked at me over Conway’s shoulder, smiled, and smoothly withdrew his knife from the AME’s chest.
My brain short-circuited. I tried to stop, but I was sprinting on a polished concrete floor, and the laws of physics conspired against me. I slid. The floor squeaked under my boots, and I skidded past the two men at full speed. Alessandro tilted his head and watched me slowly come to a stop.
How was this possible? Alessandro Sagredo was a playboy. He took pictures in the Caribbean with his shirt off. He surfed in Fiji and shopped in London. He didn’t stab random government workers in the heart with surgical precision.
Alessandro was looking at me. Right at me. Like I was the only thing in the world. A hot, predatory fire played in his amber eyes. He looked at me like I was a delicious steak and he was a hungry wolf.
Say something smart, say something smart . . . “Hey!” Oh my God.
Without saying a word, Alessandro stepped over Conway’s body and walked toward me. I should have turned around and run the other way, or at least raised my knife. Instead, I just stood there, like a complete idiot.
Alessandro reached over and offered me his bent arm. I rested my fingers on his forearm. The muscle under the suit’s fabric felt like steel. Alessandro moved, and we strolled around the corner.
I was hallucinating. I had to be.
“I . . .”
“Shh,” he said in a slightly accented voice. “Just keep walking. Building security will be here soon, and we need to not be here.”
He had killed Conway. It didn’t bother him. It didn’t disturb him any more than swatting a fly. Alessandro had stabbed a human being in the heart before. Many, many, many times before.
I’d made a serious error in judgment.
“I like your knife,” he said. “You might want to put it away though, before someone gets excited.”
I slid the blade back into its sheath in my coat. Wait. He’d shushed me. Like I was five. He told me to put my knife away and I did. And now I was letting him walk me away.
What the hell am I doing?
“Why are we walking?”
He glanced at me, his tawny eyes amused. “Because I’ve just knifed someone. Security will want to ask me a lot of boring questions. I hate boring questions. And there will be paperwork. I hate that too.”
Oh yeah, well, in that case. “You killed Conway.”
“Yes, I did.”
I stopped. He stopped too and looked at me.
“Alessandro, what are you doing here?”
“Trying to get you to walk faster?”
My brain finally regained the ability to form complete sentences. “Why did you kill Conway? He was a lead in my investigation and now he’s dead.”
“He was a very bad man. You were chasing him with a knife.”
“I needed to ask him some questions.”
He smiled like a wolf baring its fangs in a dark forest. “Were you going to stab him if he didn’t answer?”
“I don’t need to stab people to get answers.”
He sighed. “Collect your friend and go home, Catalina. There are no answers for you here.”
What?
Runa rounded the corner at full speed, saw us, and froze.
“I’m so sorry,” Alessandro said. “I have to leave now. Go home, stay safe, and forget all about this.”
Ahead the elevator chimed.
“I’ll see you around.” Alessandro raised his hand. Somehow there was a gun in it. I didn’t see him draw one. The gun barked, spitting bullets, the window to our right shattered, and Alessandro jumped out of it.