Page 62 of Two Kinds of Stranger (Eddie Flynn #9)

Logan

Logan hung up the call, completed the transfer of funds on his phone, then disappeared into the subway.

When he exited again, he walked five blocks and saw a man in the doorway to a dance club. The doorman was smaller than most, but his neck and shoulders were thick with muscle, filling out his black bomber jacket.

Logan nodded at the doorman as he went inside the club.

He paid the girl at the coat check ten bucks, but refused the stamp on his wrist. The club had five floors.

The first floor was a chill-out zone. Muted lamps, couches and a long bar.

Only a handful of patrons. It was still early in clubland.

A man in a long black coat sat at the corner of the bar, four cell phones in front of him.

Logan approached the man, said, ‘I’m just picking up my order.’

‘You got the chit?’ said the man.

Logan brought out his phone, showed the man a QR code. He scanned it on his phone, nodded, said, ‘Did you want the German, Austrian or American?’

‘Austrian,’ said Logan. ‘I ordered a potato too.’

The man checked his phone.

‘You sure did,’ he said, and nodded at a waitress standing at the bar. She gestured for Logan to follow her. They moved through the room toward a hallway with a bathroom sign on the wall. She led him into the lady’s bathroom. Logan followed. She shut the door behind her.

She went into a cubicle, removed a panel from behind the toilet bowl and reached inside.

She came back out with a Glock and a suppressor, both wrapped in plastic.

Logan removed the plastic, slid out the magazine from the Glock, checked the load in the clip and clicked it back home.

He screwed the silencer into the barrel, made sure it was tight and a good fit.

He chambered a round and tucked the weapon into the inside pocket of his jacket.

‘Happy?’ asked the woman.

Logan nodded, left the bathroom and the club and picked up his rental car.

He drove to the building he had been watching that afternoon, on the corner of First and East Fifth.

The street was quiet.

Coming up on nine thirty in the evening.

Dark.

But not yet dark enough.

Streetlights seemed to shun the south side of the building, at the entrance.

As if the city wanted to keep that doorway discreet.

There were still people on the sidewalks.

It wasn’t yet late enough for people to seek the comfort and security of their homes.

Crime was up. The city that never sleeps was increasingly somnolent late at night.

People stayed off the streets. Bad things happened in the dark.

Logan parked down the street from the bus stop he’d occupied earlier, so he could observe the building.

The same light was burning in the apartment window. Lake’s Pontiac Aztek was still in the space outside the building, next to Bloch’s Jeep.

Logan became very still.

And waited.