Page 32 of One Minute Out

“I’ve got the gun, so my business is whatever I want to make it.”

She belts out a nervy laugh. “You are a gangster.”

“I’m not a gangster. Gangsters work for gangs. I don’t. I’m self-employed.”

She makes no reply, but I gather she doesn’t believe me. Her terror continues, and it’s absolutely palpable. Even in the poor light she appears almost ill to me.

Now I want to calm her down a little, because she’s no good to me while she’s this amped up, and I don’t need her tossing her cookies in my lap. I say, “Relax, Ms. Corbu. It’s possible you and I aren’t enemies. I’m after Vukovic, too.”

“Why?” she asks with genuine surprise.

“You first.”

“I am... I am here looking for someone.”

“Who?”

“I... I don’t have to tell you.”

I shake my head in disbelief. “You really have no idea how this whole ‘being held at gunpoint’ thing works, do you? I’m pretty sure that, in fact, you do have to tell me.”

She doesn’t speak for fifteen seconds, and then she starts to cry. I don’t love making women cry, but I don’t let off the pressure, because I don’t know what the hell is going on here.

I shout now. “Who?”

And then, to my surprise, the meek little mouse shouts back at me. “My sister! I’m looking for my sister!”

I didn’t see that coming.

“Your... your sister?”

Talyssa Corbu nods, tears dripping into her lap. She looks like a child again as she speaks through sobs. “Roxana. She disappeared nine days ago. Her flatmate said she went to a nightclub in Bucharest, where she lives, and then she never came home. I flew in the next day. Local police were no help, even to me, a Europol analyst. They said she probably ran off to Germany or Italy or France like all stupid girls. But Roxana would never do that. I did everything I could to find her, but then the police tried to stop me. I reached out to my office for assistance, but they just told me I needed to deal with family issues on my free time. I had to take a leave of absence to continue looking for her alone.”

“That’s harsh,” I say.

“Then my mother received a phone call that I was later able to trace to Belgrade. She said the man had a Serbian accent, and this Serb said he found my mother’s number in Roxana’s phone. He wanted her to know he’d personally killed her daughter for meddling in the affairs of the Serbian mob.”

I blow out a sigh. She’s not looking for her sister. Whether she can admit it to herself or not, she’s looking for her sister’s body.

She keeps talking, wiping her eyes with her sleeve.

“The man on the phone said he shot her in Belgrade and then threw her into the river. Her body hasn’t been recovered.” She looks at me, and her sad and exhausted eyes fill with hope for an instant. “Maybe... maybe she isn’t dead.”

It’s not my place to force her to face the facts. Instead, I say, “What did... what does your sister do for a living?”

“She is a student at the University of Bucharest.”

“That’s all?”

“Well... she is an actress, too.”

With an incredulous look I repeat her words. “An actress.”

“Yes. Some TV commercials. Some plays. Nothing that paid the bills.”

“But why was she in Belgrade? And why would she be involved with the Serbian mob?”

The young woman looks down at her hands. “I have no idea.”

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