The elevator glided down. Tyler was on a hair trigger, ready to throw an elbow or a punch, thoughts scrambling to make the most of the moment.
“You’re with the Weaver Group,” he said. “You need Barron Equity’s money, or the New York deal is toast. Does George Barron know you tried to murder his daughter?”
Rime answered the question with a question, aiming his gaze at Seelie.
“Does your father know that you’re a whore?” he asked, as casually as discussing the weather.
Tyler’s right hand clenched into a fist. Rime’s chuckle was a slithering rasp.
“All you need to know,” Seelie said, “is that if anything happens to me, he’ll find out who did it.”
The elevator jolted to a stop on the fourteenth floor. A small pack of office workers joined them, eyes forward, ignoring the trio pressed to the wall at their backs.
“I don’t answer to George Barron,” Rime said.
After that they said nothing at all, not until the elevator touched down.
The assassin got off first. Tyler reached for Seelie’s hand. She flinched, pulling away and into herself.
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you,” he murmured.
Five steps across the marble floor, and Dieter Rime stood square in their path. Employees milled all around them, oblivious to the wolf in their midst.
“I have,” Rime said to Tyler, “in my bag, a roll of gold Krugerrands. Mint condition, easily worth eleven, perhaps twelve hundred dollars apiece to a collector. From the cut of your cheap clothing and the quality of your department-store shoes, I’d wager the entire roll is worth more than you make from a year’s salary.”
“Good for you,” Tyler said. “Point being?”
Rime nodded at Seelie. “Sell her to me. All you need to do is walk away, with my gold and your life. It will be the easiest thing you’ve ever done.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about me,” Tyler told him.
“No,” Rime said, studying him. “But I will. I’m going to learn all about you. Can I surmise that the two of you managed to unlock Arthur Wendt’s telephone?”
Seelie held her silence, not giving him an inch. Tyler followed her lead. The assassin glanced between them, reading their faces, and made a hmm sound in the back of his throat.
“Perhaps you think the Culpers will save you,” he said. “Allow me to free you from the pain of false hope. They cannot save you, they cannot even save themselves, and they will soon find themselves in the dustbin of history where they belong.”
“Why did you kill Arthur?” Seelie demanded. “What did he and his people do to you?”
“To me, personally?” Rime’s wispy eyebrows lifted in mild surprise. “Nothing. I’m a company man. But they took something that does not belong to them, and I’m afraid the hour is far too late to return it with a contrite apology.”
Seelie put her hands on her hips. “How do you know I don’t have it? Maybe Arthur gave it to me before you shot him.”
Rime’s lips curled into a rictus. He chuckled.
“And that question,” he said, “tells me exactly how little you understand. Mr. Wendt must not have been much for pillow talk. Or perhaps he wasn’t inclined to share the details of his life’s true calling with a common crack.”
A flicker of emotions hit Seelie’s face like a bucket of cold water. Tyler read anger there, but something mixed in with it—surprise, or a jolt of memory.
“What did you just call me?” she said, her voice dangerously soft.
“We’re leaving,” Tyler said.
Rime spread his open hand, doctor bag latched tight in his other, inviting them to step around him.
“Be seeing you,” he called out as they headed for the revolving doors. “Very soon. Very soon indeed.”
24.
The lure of a hot scoop blunted the nursing home’s sting, and by the time she stepped off the subway in Queens, Nell had her game face on. Optimism and drive would have to stand in for anything resembling a plan of attack; she had no idea what she might find behind the Weaver Group’s doors or how much access she’d be able to wrangle. She thought about her patron saint.
What would Nellie Bly do? she asked herself. Easy. She’d get in there, get the story, and she’d tell the world.
A yellow cab dropped her off at the edge of an office park. Groomed bushes lined a clean-swept path, winding along the curve of white stucco walls. A handful of workers were out on break, soaking up the summer sun, and the savory aroma