“That was before the Razor’s Edge burned down and everyone inside it was shot. That was before the club was exposed for the things going on inside. This might not be so easy to sweep under the carpet.” Dai was reluctant to leave what he thought was the safety of the warehouse.
“Get more weapons,” Zhu ordered and then ignored his head of security.
He stalked over to the side of a large black SUV with tinted windows and special armor plating. The windows were bulletproof. He leaned against the door while Dai, Feng and Longwei hurried over to the large crates sitting to the back of the warehouse.
“Need a crowbar,” Dai muttered and pointed toward the far corner of the room.
Longwei immediately rushed to get it. None of them wanted to stay, but they didn’t want to leave either. They didn’t know where safety was. Gino dropped in behind Longwei, a silent shadow, following him right into the corner where a long table held a variety of tools. Longwei took out his cell phone and shone a light along the table. Gino handed him the crowbar with one hand. Longwei took it, murmuring a polite “thank you.” He stiffened, his head swiveling around, eyes going wide with shock.
Gino was on him, one hand over his mouth, muffling any sound as he shoved the knife into the guard’s throat. He stared down at the man. Eyes to eyes. Nose to nose. Gino breathing, Longwei unable to breathe. Gino took him to the floor, removing the crowbar from his spasming fingers and pulling the blade from him. Very carefully he wiped it on the guard’s shirt.
Twenty-three.
“Hurry up, Longwei,” Dai snapped. “We have to get these open.”
Silence met his demand. The crowbar hit the floor with a loud metallic sound. The tip was in the light. Dai, Zhu and Feng turned toward the sound. Zhu tried the door, frowned when it was locked and then walked around the armored car to the other side, putting it between the clattering sound and his body.
The crowbar was lifted from the floor, but Longwei didn’t step out of the shadows to hurry back to Dai. He just stood there. Unseen. In the dark. The three remaining men couldn’t see his body, they could barely make out that it was a man standing there.
“Stop playing around,” Dai demanded. “You always make jokes and play pranks at inappropriate times.”
Gino had gone up the wall, moving sideways until he was so close to Feng he was afraid the man would lean back into him. Feng had taken refuge between the row of large crates and the wall, hoping by keeping his back to the wall, no one could sneak up on him. He was sweating, and Gino could smell fear.
Draden stood where Longwei had been, the crowbar held loosely in his hand, keeping the attention of Zhu and Dai. Gino moved down the wall like a spider, until he was directly behind Feng. He reached out with both hands, one clamping tightly over the man’s mouth while the other slit his throat. He held up him upright, waited until the guard began to slump and then slowly lowered him to the floor behind the crate.
Twenty-four.
Dai glanced over his shoulder toward Feng but the area was empty. When he looked back at Longwei no one was there. Instantly he moved toward the armored car, his eyes bouncing around the warehouse. “Bolan, we have to get the hell out of here. Get into the car.”
“The locks are jammed. I tried all of them,” Zhu said. “We can’t use the car.”
“We have three others,” Dai pointed out, making his way warily toward his boss.
“It stands to reason the locks are all jammed on them as well.”
“Send for more men. Make it clear to your brother that we need them now.”
“I’ve done so and told him I uncovered a conspiracy to kill him. In doing so, I set myself up as a target and am now in danger. If he believes the threat is to him, he will want us to live to help protect him,” Zhu said.
“At the word ‘conspiracy,’ he’ll kill an entire floor worth of employees,” Dai pointed out.
Zhu nodded with a slow, cold smile. “I believe he will. He’s descending into madness, just as our father did.”
“Is Cheng sending help?”
“He answered immediately that they’re on the way. Relax, Dai. We are fine right here if we stay together and under this light. Even if this man is in this warehouse with us, he will make a mistake.”
“He hasn’t so far.”
Zhu looked around the cavernous room with a cold smile. “But he is close to his goal and eager to get to me. He stole something of mine and he doesn’t want me taking it back.”
“The woman.”
Zhu nodded. “I searched years for her. The perfect one. She would grace every public event I went to, especially after my brother meets an untimely death. She dislikes pain to the point that it terrifies her. She’s intelligent, and her brain will be very useful. More than anything, she’s American, like my mother, and I will have her complete obedience.”
He looked around the warehouse and tried taunting the man who had come for him. “I have so many plans for her. She’ll crawl under tables and blow my guests if I demand it right in front of everyone.” He smiled as looked around the warehouse again. “Think about that, GhostWalker. Think what I’ll do to her. Those women suffering at my hands were mere substitutes for her. That was mild torture, mild compared to what I plan to do to that woman. She’ll suffer for going with you. She’ll be in agony for days, weeks, months. She’ll beg my forgiveness.”
Gino shut out that snide voice. Zhu wanted to shake him up, have him make a mistake. The mistake was Zhu’s. He paced while he mocked and jeered at Gino. In pacing, hands behind his back, looking nonchalant, he had separated himself from his private bodyguard, the head of his security.
Dai made the mistake of watching Zhu, of keeping his eyes glued to his boss while occasionally looking around the warehouse, but not behind him. The armored car was behind him and he thought himself safe. Gino went right over the top of it, lay for a moment on the roof and then slithered down the other side. Dai didn’t want to take his eyes off Zhu, afraid of someone coming out of the night and killing him.
Gino hooked him around the throat, cut off his airway by clamping a hand over his mouth and nose while he rolled with him under the car and out the other side. It took all of one and a half seconds to get into the dark and break Dai’s neck. Twenty-five. Draden. You need to leave.
I’m on you.
Not for this. It isn’t going to be clean or pretty. Get the hell out of here.
Gino wasn’t going to shoot the bastard. He wasn’t even going to cut his throat, at least not right away. He’d been good to the others, killing them fast, almost before they were aware. They didn’t have time to suffer as they deserved.
Not going to happen.
Zhu became aware of the silence. He turned and realized Dai was no longer behind him. He crouched low and took a long look around the warehouse. “You’re good. I’ll give you that. Every one of these men were specially trained. The senator assured us the GhostWalker program was worth whatever she asked for, and clearly she was right.”
He stood slowly and walked to where Dai had last been, inspecting the area, looking for Dai’s weapon. All the guns were gone. Zhu had been too arrogant to carry one himself. He had surrounded himself with men with weapons and didn’t believe he needed one, not in the club he frequented. He could go in looking every inch the gentleman. He liked dressing in his suits, the ones custom-made, the shoes the same. He liked buying men and women and knowing he had the power of life and death over them. That didn’t mean he was without weapons and clearly the GhostWalker preferred silence to guns.
You aren’t going to have the stomach for this,Gino tried again. It doesn’t bother me to have you see what I do to him, but you’re never going to look at me the same.
Just get on with it.
Gino walked out of the shadows into the open to face Bolan Zhu.