Chapter 5 The masked men

Cains P.O.V

There were three of them.

I knew before they got to the stairwell door. These men didn't want to be heard and they were doing a good job about it

Sable moved without being told. She stepped back into the shadow of a concrete pillar and I moved right, putting a support beam between myself and the stairwell entrance, and we had about four seconds before the door opened.

It opened suddenly and I saw three men in dark clothing, with mean looks on their faces. The one in front was big with huge muscles and he was already scanning the room like he knew exactly what they were looking for.

He found me first.

"Devereaux," he said. Someone had known I was alive before tonight, which meant either Rook had talked or the tail hadn't been on me. It had been on Sable.

She'd been followed for days, possibly. Long before she knew I was breathing.

The big one took a step forward and I said, "Before you do whatever Marcus is paying you to do ,you should know that I woke up from the last time someone tried to finish me."

He didn't smile. The one on his left did, slightly, which was more interesting and it meant he was either confident or stupid, and the way he was standing suggested the former.

"You should've stayed in the river," the big one said.

"I'm not a great listener."

He moved.

He was fast for his size, I'll give him that. He covered the distance between us in a way that most people wouldn't expect from someone built like that, all his weight behind the first swing, clearly expecting it to end things quickly. I let it miss by the smallest margin I could manage, felt it move the air next to my jaw, and drove my elbow into the side of his neck as he went past me.

He stumbled but he didn't go down.

The wound in my chest pulled like something tearing and I absorbed the pain and kept moving because stopping meant dying and I hadn't come this far to die in a parking structure with two weeks of stitches in me.

The second man came from the left and he had something in his hand that caught the orange light from the ramp below. A blade.

"Sable," I said. "Go."

"I'm not—"

"I'm not asking."

She hesitated for one second and then I heard her moving toward the far stairwell, her footsteps quick and light, and I had enough space in my head to feel something that wasn't quite relief before the man with the blade was close enough that relief became a luxury I couldn't afford.

He was good but i could tell that he was, not street-taught. He moved the knife in small controlled arcs, and he kept his body angled so I couldn't get inside his reach cleanly. I backed up two steps, three, felt the pillar against my shoulders and used it, pushed off it hard and came in low, got under his knife arm and grabbed his wrist with both hands and twisted until something in the joint made a sound that ended the fight.

The knife clattered on the concrete.

He made a noise that showed that he was in pain and I put him down with a knee to the ribs and stepped back and the big one was up again, slower now, one hand at his neck where I'd caught him. He looked at his colleague on the ground and something shifted in his expression.

The third man hadn't moved from the stairwell doorway this whole time.

That was the one I'd been watching from the corner of my eye. The one who hadn't come in swinging, who'd positioned himself between me and the exit and stood there with his hands loose at his sides. That was the problem. That was the actual problem.

"You know how this ends," the third man said. He had a quiet voice, the kind that didn't need volume. "You're hurt. We can see it. You're moving wrong on the left side."

I didn't answer.

"Marcus just wants to confirm," he said. "That's all. Walk out with us, answer a few questions, and maybe this is something we can all move past."

"Marcus tried to kill me three days ago."

"Marcus makes mistakes. He's prepared to acknowledge that."

I almost laughed. It came up and I swallowed it because laughing in this situation meant losing a second of focus, and this third man was the kind of problem that took every second you had.

"Tell Marcus," I said quietly, "that I got his message the first time."

I reached down and picked up the knife from the floor.

The third man watched me do it.

Then he did something I didn't expect. He stepped back from the stairwell door, clearing the exit and he looked at me with something almost like professional respect.

"Three days," he said. "That's what he said to tell you. He gives you three days to come in on your own. After that..." He glanced at the man on the floor. At the big one, still standing but done with no fight left in his eyes. "After that he stops sending professionals."

They left immediately after and I stood on the stairwell and breathed.

Three days. Marcus had given me three days, which meant Marcus was scared enough to negotiate but too proud to say so plainly. Which meant he didn't know the shape of what was coming for him. He thought this was still a personal problem,. a wounded man with a grudge, something that could be managed or absorbed.

He didn't know about the Ledger.

I picked up my jacket from where it had fallen, felt the wound across my chest with careful fingers and walked to the far stairwell where Sable had gone.

She was on the landing one floor down with her back against the wall, phone in her hand. She looked up when she heard me.

"You're bleeding," she said.

"Little bit."

"I told you I wasn't leaving."

"You left."

"I went one floor down." She pushed off the wall and looked at my side. "That's tactically different."

I looked at her for a moment. The low light of the stairwell, the document still folded in her coat, the way she'd positioned herself exactly where she could hear what was happening above her and be back up those stairs in five seconds flat.

She hadn't left me after all.

"They were on you," I said. "The tail was on you, not me. For how long?"I asked

She was quiet for a moment. "Longer than I'd like to say."she answered

"Which means Aldric's office source,the one who went dark—"

"They found him." She said it flatly. "Yes. Which means they know I have the document. Which means...."

"We're both already out of time." I looked at the phone in her hand. "Call someone. You must have a safe house."

"I have two." She was already dialling. "The other one is still in good shape and It's clean."

"Good." I started down the stairs. "Because we need somewhere to sit and rethink every assumption we've been operating on since last night."

"Cain." Her voice stopped me one landing down. I looked up at her.

"The third man," she said. "The one who gave you the message. Did you recognise him?"

I thought about the face. The quiet voice. The way he'd moved with that particular economy of someone who'd been doing dangerous things for a very long time.

I had seen him before. Once, years ago, at a function at Marcus's house. Standing near the door, saying nothing but, watching everything.

I had assumed he was security.

"No," I said. Then i said in an unsure voice "Maybe."

Sable's jaw tightened. "His name is Dray. He's not Devereaux. He's Aldrics Pawn. Which means Marcus didn't send those men tonight." She looked at me steadily. "Aldric already knows you're alive. And he didn't wait for Marcus to handle it."

The stairwell felt colder than it had a moment ago.

I turned and kept walking.