The pounding in my skull was just a preview of the headache the buckshot was about to provide. But through it, I was able to utter a single question, at the same time an accusation:
"Why?!"
Nausea distorted time, and maybe it's a minute, or an hour, while my friend-turned-executor considers an answer. The pressure of the barrel lightens. I'm back in the present. There's a sigh.
"Max…" Vladimir begins, and I recognize the tone: the same I had used with Father Roy as he sat listening in the judgment side of the sin box. "It is…how you say…among thieves there is honor, da? My life was saved. My life is owed."
I raise my head slightly, and my vision explodes into a Hubble photograph of sparkling pain. Through gritted teeth I spit out another question; another few moments to pad the time between life and death.
"Mona."
"Da, yes. She put a bullet in that Punchinello animal. She saved me and, it seems, you, Max…"
The barrel disappeared altogether then as Vladimir's voice trailed off in a sort of stunned contemplation. I already knew the question that had rolled into his mind and I pushed it home with the completion of my monosyllabic trilogy: "Why?"
But the stunning conclusion was put on hold as the all too familiar cries of police sirens, screaming once more at my crimes against the dregs of humanity, whispered from the distance. There was a pause of decision, then a helping arm hooked under my own.
"Come my friend. Now we make our fast getaway."
Our paired stumble to his car was dream-like; misty. I lost track of time and myself and the splashes of light in my eyes turned from pain to streetlights.
The sirens were far behind now, and things seemed to be clearing. Vlad had lost his cool, and was glancing in all the mirrors, on the off chance that objects were closer than they appeared.
"I swear, Max, Vlad was not knowing you were alive. I was told there might be trouble when loading the ship, but…"
His voice trailed off into a sneer of regret and frustration, and mine bubbled up out of the fog of concussion.
"We're being played, Vlad. I'm just not sure by who, yet. What did Mona tell you?"
"She said only that my life was saved because she needed things shipped secretly. Business has been good the last few months. Vlad has many connections. For saving my life, it did not seem like a bad deal."
I nodded, not because I agreed but because I was rolling over this new info. How was Mona alive? Why would she be shipping Valkyr? How –
Revelation hit me harder than Vlad's shotgun had.
"How did Mona know where you were?"
Vlad gave me a look of puzzlement that might as well have come in a 500 piece box set. But all that changed when the missing piece fell into place. And then it was all anger. He turned his eyes back on the road, but his face grim.
"Da. Played. We were set up."
In the plush seat of the BMW, I turn to watch the city streak by, and I take myself back to school. I hated school.
Today's lesson, students: Cause and Effect.
Cause: Vlad's life is saved by Mona. Effect: Vlad owes Mona, and Mona collects.
Now take a step back.
Cause: Vlad is kidnapped by the Punchinellos. Effect: Mona shows up to save Vlad.
But no, professor, that doesn't follow unless Mona knew Vlad had been kidnapped, and by whom, and where he had been taken.
Another step back.
Cause: Warehouse blown up is a Punchinello front. Police on the radio said Vlad did it. Effect: Vlad is kidnapped.
But Vlad didn't blow up the warehouse. I did. I did because there was a trap there, set up by...
Woden.
Some days, it hurts more to be smart enough to see how stupid you are.