Gone Tomorrow

from.”
    “I don’t like goats.”
    The room went quiet. It felt damp and cold. I stood there in nothing except my new white boxers. The P220 was rock steady in Lila’s hand. Muscles like thin cords stood out in her arm. Next to the bathroom the dead guy continued to leak. Outside the window it was five o’clock in the morning and the city was starting to stir.
    Svetlana bustled about and balled up my gun and my shoes and my clothes into a tidy bundle and threw it behind the kitchen counter. She followed it with the two hard chairs. She picked up my phone, and shut it off, and tossed it away. She was clearing the space. She was emptying it. The living room part of the studio was about twenty feet by twelve. I was backed up against the center of one of the long walls. Lila tracked around in front of me, keeping her distance, pointing the gun. She stopped in the far corner, by the window. Now she was facing me at a shallow angle.
    Svetlana went into the kitchen. I heard a drawer rattle open. Heard it close. Saw Svetlana come back.
    With two knives.
    They were long butcher’s tools. For gutting or filleting or boning. They had black handles. Steel blades. Wicked wafer-thin cutting edges. Svetlana threw one of them to Lila. She caught it expertly by the handle with her free hand. Svetlana moved to the corner opposite her. They had me triangulated. Lila was forty-five degrees to my left, Svetlana was forty-five degrees to my right.
    Lila twisted her upper body and jammed the P220’s silencer hard into the angle where the front wall met the side. She found the catch at the heel of the butt with her thumb and dropped the magazine. It fell out and hit the floor in the corner of the room. Three rounds showed in the slot. Therefore one was still chambered. She threw the gun itself into the other corner, behind Svetlana. The gun and the magazine were now twenty feet apart, one behind one woman, and the other behind the other.
    “Like a treasure hunt,” Lila said. “The gun won’t fire without the magazine in place. To prevent an accidental discharge if a round is mistakenly left in the chamber. The Swiss are very cautious people. So you need to pick up the gun, and then pick up the magazine. Or vice versa. But first, of course, you need to get past us.”
    I said nothing.
    She said, “If you should succeed, in a mad wounded scramble, then I recommend you use the first round on yourself.”
    And then she smiled, and stepped forward a pace. Svetlana did the same. They held their knives low, fingers below the handle, thumbs above. Like street fighters. Like experts.
    The long blades winked in the light.
    I stood still.
    Lila said, “We’re going to enjoy this more than you could possibly imagine.”
    I did nothing.
    Lila said, “A delay is good. It heightens the anticipation.”
    I stood still.
    Lila said, “But if we get bored waiting, we’ll come and get you.”
    I said nothing. Stood still.
    Then I reached behind me and came out with my Benchmade 3300, from where it had been duct-taped to the small of my back.

Chapter 83
    I thumbed the release and the blade snapped out with a sound that was halfway between a click and a thump. A loud sound, in the silent room. And an unhappy sound. I don’t like knives. I never have. I have no real talent with them.
    But I have as much of an instinct for self-preservation as any guy.
    Maybe more than most.
    And by that point I had been scuffling since the age of five, and all of my defeats had been minor. And I’m the kind of guy who watches and learns. I had seen knife fights all over the world. The Far East, Europe, the hardscrabble scrublands outside army bases in the southern United States, in streets, in alleys, outside bars and pool halls.
    First rule: Don’t get cut early. Nothing weakens you faster than blood loss.
    Svetlana was more than a foot shorter than me and she was thick and wide and her arms were proportional. Lila was taller, more loose-limbed, more graceful. But all in all I figured that even against blades six inches longer than mine, I still had the advantage.
    Plus I had just changed the game, and they were still dealing with the surprise.
    Plus they were fighting for fun, and I was fighting for my life.
    I wanted to get to the kitchen, so I danced toward Svetlana, who was between me and it. She was up on her toes, knife down at her knees, feinting left, feinting right. I kept my blade down low, to match hers. She swung. I arched back. Her blade hissed