Bilal tapped the license with a blunt finger.
“Donovan Shaw,” he said. He met my gaze. “Perhaps you shorten that? To Van?”
An answer wasn’t required. Bilal knew me, or at least recognized my name. Which was unsettling, since I’d never seen the man before.
Bilal nodded to the unconscious Jaak. “Who is the man on the table?”
“Only a merchant sailor,” Hollis said, doing enough nervous fidgeting for both of us.
“And if he dies? What is that to you?” Bilal sat up, swinging his feet to touch each woven leather shoe gingerly to the tile floor. Aura stood prepared to catch him if he tottered.
Hollis grunted. “He’s a friend.”
Bilal stood up with almost exaggerated slowness and buttoned his suit jacket. “You go to considerable risk for your friend. Sailing through storms. Friendship is important to you. Correct?”
“Yes,” said Hollis. He glanced at me, maybe feeling the same apprehension I had about the direction of Bilal’s questioning.
“Good. Friends are very useful. I would like to be your friend. Yours and Mr. Shaw’s.”
“Let the doctor look after our guy,” I said, “and I’ll buy the first fucking round.”
Saleem spat a threat. No translation required.
“Everyone may leave the doctor’s home healthy tonight,” said Bilal, as if neither of us had spoken.
“In exchange for what?” I said.
“Two necessities. One is that you will not mention our meeting here. To anyone, in any capacity. You have never heard of my name.”
“I’d be happy to forget the whole damned night,” Hollis said, “you especially.”
Bilal looked at me. I nodded agreement. He murmured something to Aura, who walked out of the room. Her steps retreated swiftly up a flight of stairs.
“My second condition is a transaction,” Bilal continued. “The doctor is in my employ tonight. Exclusively. I’ve paid well for this. If she saves your sailor friend, then it stands to reason I should be recompensed for her time and effort.”
“How much do you want?” Hollis said.
“Not money,” I answered for Bilal, who was looking at me with the same focused expression as when he’d clicked on my name.
“Not money,” he agreed. “I have a task for you, Mr. Van Shaw. For this service, all three of you will have your lives. A good exchange, I think. Until then—”
Aura’s quick steps tapped back down the stairs and into the room. She carried a computer sleeve under one arm. Saleem crossed to hand her my cell phone. Aura removed a tablet from the sleeve and plugged my phone into it with connecting cables. Her face showed absolute concentration, as if we’d all gone for a walk in the storm and left her alone to work. It was a face I might have found cute in different circumstances, heart-shaped and with a snub of a nose between blue eyes that matched Bilal’s for size. But the circumstances did a lot to ugly her up.
After a minute she handed the tablet to Bilal and pointed to the screen. “They’re the primaries.”
Bilal nodded as he read. “Addy Proctor. Cyndra O’Hasson. And”—he looked up at Hollis—“Mr. Brant.”
My scalp felt like worms were crawling over it. Saleem noticed and smirked.
“These are the people with whom you are most in contact,” Bilal continued. “People you care about. I could list more.”
“You’ve made your point. Here’s mine: If you touch them, you’re dead.” I glanced at Saleem. “I’ll go through this one and anyone else like fucking butter to get to you.”
“You misunderstand. I do not need to touch them. This”—he tapped the tablet—“is a toy. Useful, but not the extent of my capabilities.”
Aura had glowered slightly when Bilal dismissed the tablet. Had it been her work?
He continued to scroll down the screen. “You have biometric sign-in for your bank account. Foolish. Though perhaps not so big a fool. You have a surprising amount of money for someone employed at a tavern, Mr. Shaw.”
Bilal said it like a shared joke, like we both already knew the punchline. Damn.
“I can harm your friends without resorting to violence,” Bilal continued. “Without even being in the country. Without even being alive, Mr. Shaw. My team could carry on ably, should anything happen to me. Debit accounts. Retirement savings. Legal status. Even medical records. Imagine Mrs. Proctor going to her doctor and being prescribed the wrong medicine. Or incriminating texts from Miss Cyndra appearing on the phone of someone arrested for selling drugs. These are simple things. It can get much worse.”
I stayed silent. I didn’t trust myself not to snarl like one of Claybeck’s attack dogs.
“Good,” said Bilal. “You understand.”
He extended a hand and Saleem passed him a cell phone. Bilal held it out to me.
“You will keep this close. It must be answered when I call.”
“What’s the job?” I said.
“I will tell you the particulars when time allows. Soon.”
I still didn’t move to take the phone. To the left of us, Saleem stiffened. Aura shifted into view on Bilal’s other side, the pistol back in her hand.
“Van,” Hollis urged.
“If I don’t like the job, I won’t do it,” I said to Bilal.
“Then we will renegotiate,” he said, as if he’d expected that very answer. He looked pointedly at Hollis. “I’m certain we can agree on terms.”
“Mr. Nath,” Dr. Claybeck said, one hand on the wheeled cart of instruments. “The patient.”
“Of course. See to him.”
The doctor checked Jaak’s breathing and pulse, then took scissors from her cart to begin cutting his bandage away. Bilal and the others moved to the door. He motioned for Aura to go ahead of him and then paused in the doorway. Saleem tossed the items he’d taken from us on the spare patient bed.
“You cannot clap with one hand. Do you know this expression?” Bilal said. “It means out of assistance comes great things. We are associates now. We cooperate.”
Or else, I thought.
The gunman, Saleem, took the rear, his eyes on us until his boss reached the top of the stairs. Then he, too, was gone.
Seven
Hollis and I gathered our possessions and joined Claybeck at the steel table.
“Who the hell was that bastard?” Hollis said to her.
“Priorities.” Claybeck had donned gloves and a surgical apron. She peeled away the tape and gauze that had held Jaak’s wound closed over the massed wad of sponge pieces. “What happened?”
“His name’s Jaak,” said Hollis. “He passed out shortly after I found him, stabbed. Almost four hours now.”
“My work,” I said, indicating the bandage. “I’d guess Jaak had lost at least a pint of blood by then. Maybe more inside him.”
She frowned as she began to pick out the crimson-soaked bits of sponge with tweezers, dropping each one to the floor. “Military, I suppose.”
“How’s his blood pressure?”
“Still there. Now leave, please. Wait upstairs.” The doctor’s voice cracked slightly, but her hands moved without pause.