The penthouse on twenty-five had never held this many people at once without someone laughing. Tonight nobody was.
Erik told it plainly, standing near the window with the rain running down the glass behind him: the ambush on David's boat, six strangers waiting in a storefront, a rifle used on the hull instead of the crew. When he finished, the silence in the room had an edge to it.
"They let the boat pass," Silver said. He sat in the armchair nearest the door, one ankle over his knee, the python tattoo a dark ribbon along his wrist. "Then they shot it from behind, in the one stretch where it couldn't turn."
"Twice," Kai said. "The first miss was a range-finder."
"Desperate people usually grab what's in front of them," Silver said. "These ones thought about it. They picked the ground and the target, and they wanted the boat disabled and the people alive. That is what happens when hungry people have been failing for weeks and finally start learning."
