The opulent apartment was tomb quiet and obsessively immaculate, like no one lived there, as though it had been hermetically sealed away from the likely urban landscape outside.
When they’d come to get her from the white room, they’d finally let Jack use the bathroom and had given her water and a couple of ibuprofen. They’d also returned her clothes and watch, but not her Glock and cell phone. Then they’d blindfolded her and placed her in an elevator that immediately started to ascend when the door shut. After she’d been transferred into a vehicle, they’d injected her with something to knock her out, and she’d awakened here, in the chair, without restraints.
She leaned her head back and shut her eyes, grateful for the dim lighting. Her headache hadn’t completely disappeared, but the painkillers they’d given her were the biggest gift she’d ever received.
Though Jack heard the door open and shut again, she kept her eyes closed. “Evening.” No one answered, but she still didn’t move. “What, no greeting?”
“Proper manners command you look at someone when you greet them.” The now-familiar icy voice rebuked her.
“They also dictate you don’t kill.”
“I have never personally killed anyone.”
“‘Personally’ being the key word.” Jack rubbed her eyes. “Anyway, I was talking about me. Funny how you didn’t seem to have a problem with my savoir-vivre when you asked me to off that guy.”
“And how instinctively and easily you did it.”
Jack lifted her head and opened her eyes. Her captor, dressed in an elegant cerulean-blue business suit, faced her from ten feet away. “I’m flattered you think so.”
TQ was and was not what Jack had anticipated. She hadn’t expected the cold bitch to be a very attractive middle-aged woman. What she had expected were the cold, almost dead eyes and demonic smile. Jack smiled back. “So, who did I kill?” she asked as though she didn’t know.
“Someone who owed me.”
“Money?”
“Don’t be silly. Why guarantee any kind of financial loss, or otherwise, by killing someone who owes me? It’s wiser to keep them alive and suffering one way or another, until they pay or deliver.”
“He disappointed you.”
“And that, Jack, is inexcusable.”
“How?”
“He molested a donor.”
“Involuntary donor.”
“I don’t believe in discrimination.”
“Why would you care if the donor was molested? I mean, an organ is an organ.”
“An organ is a profitable organ when the donor isn’t dead longer than two hours.”
“What took him so long?”
“The donor died during the molestation.”
“You mean because of it.” Jack regretted not having shot that piece of shit a third time. She’d recognized the tattoo on his thigh—BJC: a club of pedophiles that kidnapped or bought young kids for sex and then disposed of them. She’d first seen the insignia years earlier, when some Czech hired her to go after the guy who’d killed his brother in a private nightclub. The killer bore a BJC tattoo, and her search for him put her into the filthiest, most disgusting possible company of men. If she thought she’d have had even one chance in a million to survive, she would have killed them all.
TQ waved her comment away. “Either way, my employee didn’t have the dignity to stop and prioritize, so he continued with whatever he was doing until it was too late.” In other words, he continued to rape the victim after they were dead.
“I see,” Jack said.
“Do you know who I am, Jack?”
“A megalomaniac gone awry.” Jack looked around the room. “And this museum you call home proves it.”
TQ’s content expression evaporated. “That’s a crude way to phrase your perception of me.”
“Call ’em like I see ’em.”
“I rarely if ever let anyone in my home, so show respect.”
“To what do I owe the honor of being the chosen one?”
“You intrigue me.”
“I overwhelm you.” Jack smiled. “And you hope this vulgar display of wealth will exhibit your power and put me in my place. Show me how inferior I am.” She laughed. “Yup. Me-ga-lo-ma-ni-ac.”
“We’re going to have to work on your manners.”
“Speaking of which,” Jack replied, “are you going to offer me a beverage?”
“You’re absolutely right. What would you like?”
“Do you have whiskey in house?”
TQ clapped, and Jack heard a sound from behind her. She jumped up, in an efficiency of movement, and grabbed the person behind her by the throat before they could react.
“Nice.” TQ clapped.
As soon as Jack realized she was holding a young Asian woman with an eye patch, she let go. “I’m sorry,” she told the terrified girl.
The woman rubbed her throat and nodded.
“Tell her what you want,” TQ said.
“Johnnie Black,” Jack replied, and the girl disappeared into another room. “I hadn’t seen her.”
“I keep her next to the bookcase in the corner,” TQ explained, like she was talking about one of the antiquities on display.
“You must trust her a lot if she can be present during your conversations.”
TQ shrugged. “It’s not like she can run to anyone with information.”
“You keep her imprisoned.”
“For you, a prison. For her, a home. It was either this or a lifetime in a Chinese penitentiary.”
“And we all know what that means.” Many Chinese prisoners were executed for their organs.
“Indeed. So I kept two alive for myself and saved their lives in the process.”
“A true philanthropist.”
“I know,” TQ replied with a serious expression.
This woman was more disturbed than Jack even dared imagine.
The Asian girl came back with Jack’s drink in a heavy crystal glass and placed it on a coaster on the table in front of her.
“Thank you.”
The girl nodded.
“You don’t have to thank her,” TQ said, annoyed. “She’s doing her job.”
“Thank you,” Jack said again, and the young woman smiled.
“Remember what I did to your eye?” TQ glared at the girl. “You have only one left.”
The young woman quickly bowed her head, clearly horrified, and took her place next to the bookcase.
TQ kept staring at her with pure hate.
Jack cleared her throat. “So, why am I here?” she asked, to pull TQ’s attention away from the girl.
TQ turned her head slowly in Jack’s direction. “I’ve told you. I want you to work for me.”
“Do what?”
“Like I said, whatever I ask you to.”
“Steal organs?”
“You need medical expertise for that, and as talented as you are, I doubt you have the knowledge. For now, I want you to prove you can be an asset.”
“Explain.” Jack took a sip of whiskey.
“I need someone eradicated and I want you to do it.”
“If I refuse, then…?”
“Then I also refuse to let your beautiful girlfriend live.”
“Fair enough.” Jack tried to sound cool and businesslike.
TQ smiled a reptilian smile. “I’m always fair.”
“Who do you want me to off?”
“Two people. Ryden Wagner and Harper Kennedy. They have to be dealt with simultaneously.”
“Who are they?” In the past when Jack took jobs like this, she specifically refrained from asking anything about her targets because it made her job and objectifying easier. But that was then. She wasn’t about to go back to being a ruthless killer. If there was such a thing as a hell, Jack was certain she’d already bought a one-way ticket to it, but she wasn’t about to disappoint Cass and herself by returning to that life. She’d had to justify killing someone less than an hour ago by telling herself the guy deserved it.