Page 126 of One Minute Out

“Forced to what?” When she did not answer him, he repeated himself. “Forced... to... what?”

She looked down at the island, then meekly she replied, “I’ll be forced to come back here with a friend and let him convince you.” Her eyes flashed up to his now. “Believe me, I’ve seen what he can do, and you don’t want that.”

Maarten told himself this woman was insane; she was threatening him, in his house, telling him she’d be back with a dangerous man to force him to commit a crime.

He looked to his right on the kitchen island, and he saw the knife block. He thought if he could just snatch up one of his large blades and hold it up, then he could threaten her right back. He wouldn’t hurt her, he’d never hurt anyone, but he could intimidate her right out the door with a little push. He’d be well within his rights, because he’d asked her to leave many times, and it was obvious she was herself operating illegally.

She wouldn’t run to the cops about him pulling out some cutlery on her.

She shouted at him now. “Just do what I ask! Please!”

Insane, he told himself again. Maarten Meyer decided to go for the knife, just to intimidate. But as he stood quickly he telegraphed his intentions by locking his eyes onto the block.

Talyssa Corbu was closer, and she launched to her feet herself. She looked down the path of Meyer’s gaze. “No!” she shouted in a panic, then reached out for the block and knocked it out of the Dutchman’s reach with her forearm, causing it to spill to the floor. All the knives shot across the kitchen, then skittered down into the sunken living room behind her.

All the knives save for one.

A single butcher’s knife remained in Talyssa’s hand; she’d not even tried to take one as they fell, but she found her fingers wrapped around the hilt and the hardened steel blade pointed up and in the direction of the Dutch black-hat hacker. Meyer looked at her with fear, and then he turned to check behind him for something else to grab. He opened a drawer full of bakeware, then ran his hands across the counter, desperate for a weapon. He knocked over a coffee grinder and a rack of porcelain cups, and jostled a toaster, but he came up empty.

Spinning back around towards the woman with the knife, he found that Corbu had climbed over the island in desperation, and now she was inches away, the blade under his chin.

He froze solid, and she held her position without moving, either.

No one said a word for several seconds; they were both out of breath from the tension and action.

Finally she spoke through her rapid breathing. “We will go into your office and you will sit down.”

•••

Ten minutes later Talyssa Corbu left Meyer affixed to his chair by the legs and arms with the zip ties Harry had directed her to buy once she got to Amsterdam. Facing his monitors and the keyboard on his desk he sat there, staring straight ahead, sweat shining on his brow.

She stepped out of the room, but only into a hallway where she could still see her captive, and here she placed a call to the American who was so much better at this sort of thing than she.

“Harry?” she said as he answered.

“What’s wrong?”

“I... I have him. He is tied up. But he refuses to help.”

She could hear the American breathe a long sigh of relief, and this served as the first and only thing to relax her since she’d first rung Meyer’s doorbell thirty minutes earlier.

He then said, “It’s okay. You’ve done well so far. I doubted he’d go for that.”

“But you said—”

“I just had to get you this far. We can do it together from here.”

“Why are you whispering?”

She heard Harry chuckle a little. “You think you have problems?”

“What is happening there?”

“It’s fine. Let’s focus on Meyer. You are going to have to resort to other measures.”

With a tremble in her voice she tried and failed to control, she said, “I... I don’t think I can do what you are going to ask me to do.”

“We have to find answers. Look, I’m not going to get us what we need tonight. There are too many men around. I can’t threaten, capture, torture, follow, or kill anybody here tonight. So it’s up to you now. You have to get us some fresh intelligence.”

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