Page 50 of Nothing More

Melissa smacked his arm. “Pongo. Toly, hey, okay, this makes things easier. If you were the one to…you know…then that means…”

Her phone seemed to weigh fifty pounds in his hand. It wasburninghim. He shoved it across the table and she barely managed to take hold of it before it skittered off the edge.

“What?” she asked, sharply, frowning now. “Don’t break my shit.”

“I didn’t cut off his ear,” he muttered. “I slit his throat, quick and clean, and I handed him off to Misha, so he could arrange for the body to be dumped. He should be nothing but bones at the bottom of the Volga.”

But he’d seen the Interpol report, the DNA match staring up at him, plain as day.

“Okay, well, DNA doesn’t lie,” she said, “so clearly, he didn’t end up there – or, at least his ear didn’t. Did this Misha guy ever take trophies? Did anyone in your bratva?”

“I don’t know. Probably. I wasn’tfriendswith any of them.” But as far as it was possible to do so, he’d trusted Misha. Misha, who’d been a child of the street once, same as him, who’d proved his loyalty time and time again, until he was Andrei’s most trusted, most useful asset. Misha who was never cruel for cruelty’s sake, who took no enjoyment in violence, but who never shrank away from what needed to be done to protect his Pakhan, and his bratva.

Melissa sighed. “This complicates things even further. Shit.” She shook her head and reached for her tea. “I thought you might have heard of him, but I had no idea you’d been the one to…” She gestured with her cup, and shook her head again.

Pongo had grown thoughtful, which was ordinarily an amusing look on him, but one which Toly was too numb at the moment to enjoy. “Does this mean it’s about you?” he asked, motioning with his loaded fork, flicking sauce across the table. “Is this your old crew? And they saw you with Raven, and now they’re after her to get to you?” His brows jumped though Toly hadn’t answered. “Seems like a lotta trouble when they coulda just whacked you outside a bodega.”

“Pongo,” Melissa hissed.

A high-pitched whine had started up in Toly’s head, a shift in pressure that made the restaurant and all its noise seem very far away. He ran the possibilities, tried to follow a line of reasoning that would take Kozlov from him, to Raven, to the Butcher’s ear.

His pulse was knocking hard. Panic tasted metallic and familiar on the back of his tongue, but his hand was steady as he reached for his teacup and knocked back its contents. “It doesn’t make any sense,” he said, afterward, because itdidn’t.

Melissa sighed. “I wish I could tell you more. Analysis is similar to the first sample: the body was frozen for some time, and the ear was removed afterward.”

“Any sign it spent any time in a river?”

“I didn’t know to ask that – and I can – but given the time it spent frozen, and then was thawed–”

“Yeah.” He refilled his teacup and wished it was something stronger.

“As of right now, this isn’t an official investigation,” Melissa started, and he shook his head.

“Yeah. I know. Make sure your lab friend keeps her mouth shut.”

She made a face. “Yeah.” She wanted to say more, he thought, but returned to her food.

Pongo said, “What are you gonna do?”

“Dig.”

~*~

He got three strides down the sidewalk after lunch when he heard, “Hey! Hold up!”

Pongo.

He gritted his teeth…but, damn him, he stopped walking. He didn’t turn, though; made Pongo come to him, which he did so with a bounding, doglike stride that lived up to his namesake. He arrived beside Toly with a flop of curls across his forehead and a deep exhalation.

“Man, you walk fast for someone who’s all…” He shoved his hands in his pockets and adopted an exaggerated slouch.

“I don’t stand like that,” Toly said, and resumed walking.

“Uh, yeah, you do. Anyway.” He straightened up, and kept pace, and Toly accepted that this was happening, though he sighed about it a little.

“Don’t you want to stay with your girlfriend?” he tried.

“Nah, Dixie’s gotta get back to work. I think I was starting to get on her nerves, anyway.”