Page 57 of Damaged

The only thing that doesn’t add up is him saying he didn’t know I’d buy the artifacts from Karim. We’ve been photographed at business dinners together. It’s well known that Karim is a customer of mine, my first on the continent, and an old friend.

He’s lying. The plan was always to kidnap Sophia. Brock and I have got to go.

“You touched the girl, you die,” I say with venom. I move the knife up to his chest.

“No, no. I’ll give him up. I was a guard to Petrov for years before getting a burglary job. I know his routes. His houses. He’s yours.”

“Tell me who else is with you.”

“Mikhail. He’s no threat. He’s the computer guy. The planner. Not the muscle.”

I don’t believe him. I see the knife in my hand and picture how this man tried tokillSophia.

My hand grips the knife harder. I’d kill someone for looking at her funny. The punishment for swinging a knife at her will be far greater than just death.

The Russian must be able to see my rageful eyes better than I can see his small and beady ones, because he starts to shout and beg for his life. I move to plunge the knife, and he steps sideways and knocks something, a chunk of rotted wood from the railing, into the water.

It splashes, and just before I’m about to end this man’s life, there’s a much, much bigger splash.

Big enough to make us both freeze. It sounds like acarfell into the water.

I kick the Russian’s legs out from under him so he falls and leans over the railing. There’s a shape atop the dark water. Scaly and muscular. It stretches almost twenty feet.

It’s a Nile crocodile. Something else catches my eye. I look to the far riverbank to see a dozen boats have been dragged onto the sand. But my eyes adjust.

The boats move. One slides soundlessly into the water.

This is why Karim said this is a good place to get rid of a problem—the river here is infested with crocodiles.

I don’t bother with the knife anymore. I have a more suitable idea. I feel like a James Bond villain. The Russian lies on the ground, and there’s space under the railing to push him in. I put my hands on his shoulder and shove him over the edge.

“No!” he yells, and he starts to fall, but to my surprise, he stops. He’s dangling over the water upside-down. His arms are outstretched several feet above the river. It takes me a moment to see in the dark that he’s wrapped his legs around one of the railing’s support beams.

I start to uncouple his legs while he screams. He gets mean, as thugs often will before death. “The bitch deserved it! Mikhail will skin you both! I swear that on my fathers!”

Suddenly, there’s a light splash. And then a crunch. It’s followed by a silence-shatteringker-plunk.

The Russian’s legs go limp, and I frown, leaning over the railing. Where most of the Russian should be, stars ripple, reflecting in the black water of the Nile.

A crocodile jumped from the water and bit him clean in two. His legs let go of the railing and sail down with another splash.

I step back a little farther to watch the water pulse and stew. It looks like it’s boiling from the feeding frenzy of the beasts below.

I walk back to the car a little slowly. I think I’m in shock. Did I just feed a guy to crocodiles? This is, strangely, a childhood dream come true.

I’ve always liked the villain with the shark tank in the floor. And this is as close as I will ever get to Hollywood.

Brock is stacking rocks near the trunk.

“Um,” I say, interrupting him. I scratch my head in disbelief. “You’re not going to need those.”

The next morning, I wake Sophia up at seven. “Come on. We’ve got the morning off.”

She blinks slowly and stretches. Her hair is wild over her face. She toys with it a little, trying to tame it back. I can tell she’s a little embarrassed by her morning appearance, but wrapped in the crisp white sheets, I think she looks like Aphrodite.

“If we’re free, then why wake me up?”

“To do tourist shit.”

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