Free Ultimate Weapon by Shannon McKenna

place and given it a thorough pounding.
    “Wake up, fool,” Novak said. “We have business to conduct.”
    Val ran a quick damage assessment as he rose carefully to his feet. A couple of teeth loose. Ribs cracked but probably not broken. A knot on his temple, sticky with blood. Hot red pain pulsing in his head with every heartbeat. Bruises, a shallow slash across his forearm, clotted and black, oozing fresh blood through the white sleeve.
    Not so bad. He’d taken much worse on other occasions. They hadn’t meant to hurt him, just subdue him.
    He looked around. He recognized András from the old days. That hulking, beady-eyed sadist had been Novak’s main man for years. Three more he remembered from the old guard, the rest were fresh blood. The blue-eyed blond man he had stabbed was not there. Dead, perhaps, or close to it. Several were marked. By him, he surmised, glancing around at the crushed noses, the split lips, the cold, murderous eyes.
    New enemies. God. As if he needed more of them.
    His eyes flicked back to Novak. He coughed to clear his throat and tasted blood. “This drama was not necessary,” he said. “You could have e-mailed or called.”
    Novak smiled. “You would have ignored me, as you have done for eleven years. Now that you have risen so high in the world, you have forgotten your old friends, no? And besides, important business is best conducted in person.”
    Dread settled deep inside him, heavy and greasy and cold. “We have no business,” he said. “I work for another organization.”
    Novak steepled his skeletal fingers, smiling thinly. “Yes, of course. PSS bought you from me for a tidy sum, but I always suspected that I accepted too low a price for you. But this is special. I have a business proposition that you might find interesting.”
    “I’m out of this business,” he repeated.
    “Yes, yes. We know the success story. Vajda, prostitute, drug dealer, and gunrunner, who repented his wicked ways and now conducts a glamorous double life—covert operative by night, pampered entrepreneur and gigolo playboy by day. I follow your cover career on the Internet, you see. Very inspiring. Makes the boys weep with envy, particularly all the women you fuck. Bad for discipline, Vajda.”
    “I do not want to—”
    “What you want does not interest me.” Novak’s voice cut through his. “You’ve forgotten your manners. Must I re-educate you?”
    Val shut his eyes against the light, the pain, and Novak’s probing gaze. The man’s hot, foul breath was inches from Val’s face, like gas escaping from a decomposing corpse.
    Val hardened his belly to iron to control his gorge. He’d endured worse. In fact, he would endure worse tonight. Far worse, before this was all over. No way out. He tried to wrap his mind around it.
    He swallowed. “What do you want?”
    Novak seized Val’s shoulder, spun him around, and shoved him, stumbling, against a long, dented metal table. A file lay open upon it, a sheaf of photographs fanned out across it. “Her,” he said.
    Val stared at the photos. They were of Tamara Steele. The one on top showed her in a bikini, on the arm of a hairy middle-aged man on the deck of a yacht. She was laughing, holding a champagne flute. Blond hair swirled out in the wind like a pale flag.
    The next was a closeup. She wore a silvery evening gown. Her hair was red, coiled close against her head. She was looking over her shapely shoulder, listening to a man whisper in her ear. He recognized the blond, tight-lipped, pale-eyed young man. Novak’s son, Kurt. Her crimson lips curved in a secret smile. Jeweled earrings dangled low. Her huge eyes looked past the man, almost directly into the camera.
    In another, she was getting into a black Jaguar, beaded with rain. The place looked like Paris. Dark hair, long against her white raincoat.
    The next was unlike the others. It was black and white, shot by a long-range camera. She was oddly unglamorous, wearing a simple black dress,