The dame had changed since Bragi saw her last. Being on the run for so long with only a gun for company did that to a person. He'd been tailing her since the kitchen, and the trail hadn't run cold, but she had. As cold as the rain on the pavement in the big city, and just as slippery. Bragi supposed he was partly to blame. She'd walked into his study with doe eyes and dreams and left with a three-barreled shotgun.
But that was the nature of the business. They both knew they could drown when they went swimming. Wear dry clean only long enough, and pretty soon the weather will turn every dry clean shop into an underground gambling rink. There was a code. When a man handed you a set of prototypes, you had to use them. And when they fell into the wrong hands, you had to get them back quickly. Even if yours were the hands that passed the guns along in the first place. Now they were back where they started.
Bragi leaned against the door jamb. His gun, partially concealed by his jacket, was trained right on her heart. He was about to shoot to kill when she grabbed an innocent bystander. Just a kid really. The kind you expect to find in playgrounds or supermarkets not in the middle of a web of dead ends, lies and deceit. The kid had no part in this, until she made him a part of this. She'd tricked him with apple juice and promises, and now she was willing to betray that trust for her own duplicitous ends. Bragi kept the gun on her, but moved it up further towards her head. You couldn't be sure a dame like that had a heart anymore.
The sides of his shoulders started to quake a little as Bragi tried not to laugh, but other than that he was completely composed. As cool as cement and just as unphased. “So it's come to this then,” Bragi said. The accent he'd adopted was more than slight. It was downright hardbroiled. As upper west side American as the cheese on the sandwich you never got to eat because you were busy watching your partner bleed out. She drove him crazy. It was only fair that he tipped the balance.
“You don't have to do this,” he said as she squeezed the kid like a burmese python. She was extremely dangerous. Her eyes were as steely as the trigger she caressed like a lover's cheek. She jutted at angles. And her hair looked soft. The hair gave her the sort of vulnerability that tangled men in knots. They'd reach to stroke it, and she'd stroke their backs with a knife.
He supposed he loved her. He'd been doomed since the moment she walked in with those big green eyes. But she was on one side, and he was on the other, and there were things bigger than them at stake here. There was no room for feelings in this business. A man had a set of laws to live by. Some might call it nobility. The ones who lived by it didn't call it anything. Bragi bit the inside of his lip. His shoulders quaked a little again. “The kid isn't a part of this. Please let him go.”