The Man of Bronze Read Online Free Page B

nice.”
    Just before I stumbled into him, I opened the sheet. Then I was tight against him, wrapping the sheet around both of us. With no hesitation—as if he were such a popular chap, women threw themselves at him every day—the man sent his hands a-roaming. When he felt my clothes under his fingers, he must have realized I wasn’t as naked as expected . . . but that didn’t slow him down. His breath was hot against my neck. Too bad his ski mask left his mouth uncovered.
    “Some guys have all the luck,” the other man said, turning away. “I’ll check these rooms while you’re ‘busy.’”
    “Hey,” said the man next to me. That’s all he ever got out. I’d grabbed the scissors taped to my thigh and had rammed their tips upward at just the right angle, past the man’s ribs and into his heart. Kevlar is fine for stopping bullets, but does nothing to protect against blade weapons. I’d been ready to jam my mouth against the man’s lips to silence him if he cried out . . . but he just loosed a sigh and became deadweight, held up by the scissors in his chest as if he were on a clothes hook.
    Good. I didn’t mind killing the man—he was a killer himself, having helped shoot the doorman—but I preferred not to be kissing him as I perforated his aorta.
    I killed a man once while kissing him. It’s an experience I’d rather not repeat.
    If the other man noticed what I’d done, all he saw were movements hidden under the sheet. He’d assume I was up to something far different from what had actually happened. Besides, he was already heading down the hall to search for Reuben.
    Which left me in a quandary. I could grab the Uzi from the man I’d just killed and shoot his partner in the back . . . but that would make too much noise. Gunfire would be heard by the assault teams downstairs, letting them know this mission wasn’t the cakewalk they expected. I hoped to avoid that: life is easier when the enemy is overconfident.
    The worst-case scenario was if the invaders stopped being sloppy and attacked me en masse. I couldn’t stand up to them in a head-to-head shoot-out. For one thing, when Dr. Jacek converted this place from church to clinic, the old skinflint had put up walls of the cheapest plasterboard—the sort that bullets passed through easily. Anywhere Reuben and I took cover, the bad guys could simply shoot us through the walls.
    My ideal strategy meant picking off ruffians silently, one by one, like a horror-movie monster stalking teenagers. Gunplay was only a last resort. On the other hand, I had to do something soon. The thug in front of me was closing in on the room where Reuben lay. My arm was also getting tired holding up the man impaled on the end of my scissors . . . and my grip was growing slippery with his blood.
    “Hey, you!”
    It was the other gunman, speaking in Polish. Luckily, he wasn’t speaking to me. He stood in the fourth doorway down the hall, staring into the room that held Mr. Russian Mafia. “I know you’re not asleep,” the gunman said. “Stop faking.”
    From where I stood, I couldn’t see into the room. Apparently, though, the Russian was following my advice, pretending to be unconscious. The act must have been unconvincing because the Polish gunman strode into the Russian’s room. “Do you think I’m stupid? What are you hiding? Open your eyes.”
    I don’t know how the Russian responded . . . but with the Polish hooligan no longer in the corridor, I could deal with my own problems. Quietly, I lowered the dead man in my arms to the floor. I wished I had time to commandeer his Uzi, but it was secured on a shoulder strap; wrestling it free from the man’s corpse might take too long, especially since I couldn’t afford to make suspicious noises. I contented myself with cleaning my blood-smeared hand on his shirt. Then I left him lying under the sheet. I preferred not to look at my handiwork after the deed was done, no matter how necessary the kill had been.
    Glad