The Man of Bronze Read Online Free Page A

thugs would stand guard while the rest fanned out in search of Reuben. I was glad they’d decided to secure the ground floor before dealing with the rest of the building; the longer they spent down there, the more time I had to prepare.
    At last I heard feet coming up the stairs: two men making no attempt at silence or caution. They’d probably interrogated their prisoners enough to know that no one in the building had weapons except the doorman. The invaders also knew that their target, Reuben, was no great threat—he was wounded and not much of a fighter in the first place. If I was lucky, however, the hooligans weren’t aware of my own presence. I’d only been seen by the doorman and the receptionist, both of whom had likely been killed in the initial firefight. No one else knew I was here, so no one could give me away, even if threatened at gunpoint.
    When the intruders first laid eyes on me, I wanted them to see me as just another patient. To encourage that impression I fixed a wad of gauze across the lower half of my face. Not only did that make me look wounded, it reduced the chance I might be recognized if these thugs had seen my picture in the papers. For clothing, I wrapped myself in a sheet from one of the unused beds. I still wore my normal clothes underneath, but Reuben assured me the sheet hid my ready-for-action outfit. It also hid the scissors, which I’d secured to my thigh with adhesive tape.
    Reuben was concealed in sheets, too. Once he’d wrapped his head with medical dressing—only his eyes exposed—I’d ordered him into the empty bed in the second last room from the stairs. The attaché case locked to his wrist made a visible lump under the covers if he lay flat, but if he bent his knees, he could slide the case under his legs where it was reasonably unnoticeable beneath the bed linen. “Good enough,” I told him. “Now stay put until I call you.”
    Twenty seconds later, two ski-masked men emerged from the stairwell. I’d positioned myself nearby, swaying rhythmically with what I hoped was a dazed expression and muttering plaintively in Polish, “I just took a little, I just took a little, I just took a little . . .”
    “You!” one of the gunmen said in English. “Stand still.”
    I pretended I hadn’t heard. “I just took a little, I just took a
little
.” Out of the corner of my eye, though, I sized up the men: bulky street beef carrying—what a surprise!—Uzi mini-pistols. Honestly, I have nothing against Uzis, but there
are
other SMGs in the world. When I see someone carrying an Uzi, I think,
Do you truly know anything about guns, or did you just shop by brand name?
Even homicidal thugs can be fashion victims.
    “Don’t move!” the other gunman shouted at me. This one spoke Polish . . . not that it mattered, because I kept up my chant of, “I just took a little, I just took a little . . .”
    “What’s she saying?” the first gunman asked in English.
    The second gunman didn’t bother translating. “She’s high on something,” he said. “This place handles lots of junkies.” He looked at me with disdain. “Trash.”
    “Maybe we should shoot her,” the first man suggested. “Give her a quick death instead of a slow one.”
    Uh-oh,
I thought,
best to discourage such thinking.
I lifted my head and looked at the first man, the one who didn’t speak Polish. In stilted English, I said, “Hey, mister, you tourist? You like party, yes?”
    My voice was still distant and dreamy, as if I spoke from reflex: a drugged-up gutter girl reciting her spiel, barely understanding what she said. The men, however, understood clearly . . . and the second one laughed to the first, “Hey, she likes you.”
    “She can’t even focus on me,” the first said. But he could certainly focus on
me
. He eyed the sheet I’d clutched around my body . . . probably wondering if I was naked beneath.
    “You like party,” I said, staggering up to him. “You like party, I like party, very