way it is for me.”
He went over to the bathroom doorway. Without her noticing, he’d set his leather coat down just outside of the door, and given the bulges under it, she had a feeling he had hidden things of a holster variety under there. Without further comment, he picked the load up and went into the loo, closing the door behind himself. A moment later, he reemerged, jacket on.
“You don’t have to go,” she said.
“It’s best that I do—”
“May I take you back to wherever you live?”
“No, I can do it—”
“The nearest bus stop is a quarter of a mile away. I’ll take you there.”
“That’s okay. I’ll walk.”
Jo found herself speaking quickly because he was clearly in a hurry to leave, and she didn’t want him to go for a whole lot of reasons: “Let me walk you out, then—”
“It’s just cosmetic stuff, by the way.”
“What is?”
Syn pointed to his mouth. “The teeth. They’re caps. Don’t worry about it.”
Jo blinked. “Okay.”
When he nodded, she expected him to come over and hug her. Give her a kiss. Hold her for a minute. Instead, he walked right out her apartment door.
Jo stayed where she was as she imagined him exiting the building. Going down the sidewalk. Heading toward—
She hadn’t told him which way the bus stop was. Did he know? Or—
Rushing out of her apartment, she jumped through the vestibule, and punched her way out into the chilly spring night. Under the bright moonlight, she looked left. Looked right.
There was no one walking down the sidewalk, no huge-shouldered man with a long stride heading away, no solid boots making heavy sounds on the cement.
Syn had up and disappeared.
Again.
Syn rematerialized downtown, taking shape across the street from the Hudson Hunt & Fish Club. The place was dark, no slivers of illumination showing around the seams of the front door or the painted panels of the windows. There was someone in there, however. A blacked-out Chevy Suburban was parked face out in a narrow alley alongside the building, steam rising from its tailpipes. Behind the wheel, the figure of a man with broad shoulders was a dense, solid shadow, and from time to time, when the chauffeur took a draw on his cigarette, his face was illuminated on a flare.
A car passed between Syn and the SUV. Then another.
Reaching behind to his belt, Syn took one of his two suppressors from its holstered position at the small of his back. Then he drew one of his forties. As he screwed the cylinder onto the end of the barrel, the metal on metal made a soft, pliant sound.
Dematerializing, he re-formed behind the Suburban.
In silence, he proceeded down the length of the SUV, keeping his back flat to the steel panels and the panes of glass. When he got to the driver’s side door, he knocked on the window.
The man put the thing down. “What the fuck do—”
The gun made a huffing sound as Syn pulled the trigger. The bullet went directly into the frontal lobe and came out the far side, thunking into the back seat.
As the driver started to slump, Syn caught him before his forehead hit the horn. Forcing the deadweight onto the center console, Syn reached in, popped open the door, and unlocked everything else. With hard hands, he dragged the dead body out, and carried it around to the rear where he stored it into the cargo space in the back.
Returning to the driver’s seat, he got behind the wheel, put up the window most of the way, and sat with his gun on his thigh.
His phone went off in his leather jacket, the subtle vibration transmitting through the pocket and onto his chest wall. Getting the thing out, he cut the power to the unit and put it back. When another rattling sounded, he looked down. A cell phone was slotted into a drink cup holder, and he picked it up. The text notification on the screen read: ETA 2 mins. Home next.
Precisely 120 seconds later, the side door of the squat, concrete building opened, and a piece of meat with a set of jowls like a St. Bernard’s came out. Syn recognized the guy from when he’d entered the place the night before last. He’d been sitting at the bar with the younger version of the old man.
And what do you know, behind the bodyguard, Gigante lumbered out of his establishment, his cigar shoved into the corner of his trout mouth, his jacket open, his big belly exhausting