Hidden Prey

ANYTHING!"

Lucas leaned back in his chair, looking at the other man's reddened face. Nadya shook her head, looked at Lucas, and said, "He's lying. If we had him in Moscow…"

"Maybe we'll export him," Lucas said.

"I think you two better leave, and we should get a lawyer," the son said. "Dad, stop talking."

Lucas looked at the younger man and said, "I wasn't joking about the killer coming back. But he might figure that if your father didn't talk when he was standing on the beer bottles, that he'll never talk. He might come and get you or your sister, try to get some leverage."

The son was shaking his head: "We will be careful, and I think it's all bullshit anyway. Dad doesn't know anything. This asshole should have figured it out. If Dad knew anything, he would have told him, instead of letting himself get hanged, for Christ's sakes."

"I hope so," Lucas said. "But if I'm right, and you're wrong…" He looked at Nadya. "There're going to be some dead people in the Spivak family."

"Maybe all of them," Nadya said. "This man… perhaps you should ask your police chief to see the pictures of old Mrs. Wheaton. He nearly cut her head off, with this wire. Maybe then you'll believe."

"I don't know anything," Spivak repeated. He took a nervous hit on the beer. "Honest to God…"

"It's not us you're gonna have to convince," Lucas said. "You got guns? You better get some. Maybe the local cops will give you bodyguards."

Nadya shook her head, speaking to Lucas, as one sober police officer to another. "That wouldn't work. This killer, as you say, is a professional." She looked at the Spivaks, from father to son and back. "To you two, I say, and to your sister and wife, good-bye. I believe because you do not tell us what happens, some of you will be dead before I return."

They sat in silence for a moment, and then Lucas said, "Well, fuck ya. We told you."

"Good-bye," Nadya said. "I am so sad…"

Outside, in the street, Lucas said, "That was pretty good."

Nadya said, "Standard procedure. He will ripen in a day or two."

"If he's not dead."

"That is my worry," she said. "That I was not fooling about."