The Lawless Man With A Thousand Chains

008 Cheap

Forty relatives stopped breathing at once. Then they all started at the same time.

"Somebody shut him up."

"He's going to get every one of us killed."

"Vanessa, for God's sake."

"Get away from him," Marcus said under his breath. "Get away from him right now."

Vanessa's blood went to ice water. He had just called the most dangerous man in Dorne City cheap, in front of forty witnesses, over a coffin.

But the reaction that mattered was happening eight meters away, at the head of a dozen armed men.

The Iceman had turned toward the voice with the beginnings of a smile.

The smile died from the bottom of his face upward.

Plain jacket, cheap shoes, unhurried eyes.

The man from Room 256.

Every drop of blood went out of the Iceman's face. His mouth opened and nothing came out of it.

Behind him, twelve enforcers felt the temperature change and put their hands inside their coats.

"Boss. Say the word and we take him."

"Nobody moves."

"Boss, he just called you cheap in front of forty people."

"I said nobody moves."

Twenty hours ago this man had unmade a birth defect in his body in five seconds and then billed him for it.

Eight hours ago the Iceman had put every man he owned on one task. Find out who he is.

The report wasn't finished, and the phones were still running.

And the subject of it was standing in the Quinn family's great room, in the middle of a debt collection. Calling him cheap.

The Iceman looked at Vanessa standing beside him. She had walked in at his shoulder, in a house full of her own relatives.

One of his men leaned in behind him.

"Boss. What is it."

Married. He's married into this family.

I brought a coffin into the house of a man whose name I don't know yet.

That was the thought that turned his spine to water.

There were whispers this week out of the North Pole facility. About a man they kept in there that even the monsters obeyed.

If that name came back on the report tomorrow, and tonight he had put a casket on this family's floor.

His breathing went shallow and fast, and he couldn't stop it.

And into that silence, the front doors opened.

"Grandpa Quinn! Many happy returns of the day!"

Shane Dutton came through the entrance hall with his arms half spread, radiating the confidence of a man who had never been unwelcome.

He got three steps in before he saw the twelve men in dark coats.

"Mr. Iceman, you're here too? What's with the coffin?"

Nobody answered him. Nobody breathed.

Shane didn't notice that either, and kept smiling at the room.

The Iceman looked at the newcomer for half a second and priced him at nothing. Then he went back to the only calculation that mattered.

Talking to Damon Huntley was out of the question.

Damon was standing in a room full of people who plainly had no idea what he was. Dressed like a laborer, and treated as garbage by his own in-laws.

And he hadn't glanced at the Iceman once since he spoke. That was no accident.

He's here under a cover. If I greet him properly in front of forty people, I blow it for him.

Eleven years at the top had taught him one thing his rivals never learned. The fastest way to die is to make yourself inconvenient to a man above your weight.

Insulting the Phantom would kill him. Exposing the Phantom would kill him slower.

He did the arithmetic and took the only door out of the room.

"Mr. Quinn."

He inclined his head. It hadn't gone down for anyone in Dorne City in eleven years.

"I've had bad information and I've walked into a family occasion. My apologies, and many happy returns of the day."

He turned so fast that two of his own men flinched.

"Out. All of you. Take the box."

They took the box.

Nobody in the Quinn family understood what they were seeing.

The four bearers carried the coffin back out through the hall, at a walk that badly wanted to be a run.

Twelve enforcers went after them. The white suit went last, and he didn't look back.

The front doors shut behind the Coldblood gang with a soft, expensive click.

Nobody in the great room moved.

Forty relatives stood staring at an empty patch of marble. Thirty seconds ago their annihilation had been standing on it.

Elias's stick came off the floor and his knees went. Two aunts caught him under the arms and put him in a chair.

"Water. Somebody get him water."

Marcus's mouth hung open.

"He left. He just left."

"Thirty seconds. He came in here with a coffin and he left."

Then every head in the room turned toward Shane Dutton, standing near the door in his tailored suit.

The relief that broke over Marcus Quinn was almost violent. He crossed the room and took Shane's hand in both of his.

"Shane. You have no idea what you just walked into.

"He came here to end us. A coffin, in this room, six hundred million dollars or my father's life."

Marcus's voice cracked.

"And he took one look at you and left. Ten seconds. You walked in, and he left."

"He did?"

"Ten seconds," an uncle said. "We all watched it."

Shane had no idea what had happened in this room. The Iceman had never in his life taken a phone call from a Dutton.

But Shane had been raised in houses where credit was currency. He had never once let a windfall walk past him unclaimed.

He waited exactly long enough for a man with a conscience to correct the record.

Then he let a modest smile assemble itself, and straightened his tie.

"Well. I wouldn't want to overstate my part in it.

"But my father dines with the metropolitan police commissioner most weekends, and gentlemen of Mr. Iceman's profession prefer to stay well clear of that. I imagine he recognized the car."

The room went up like a firework.

"Ten seconds! He walked in and the Iceman ran!"

"That's the Dutton name in this city!"

"Six hundred million, he wanted. Six hundred million, and he walked out with nothing."

"Thank God you came, Shane. Thank God."

"Sit him down. Get him a drink."

Marcus already had an arm around Shane's shoulders and was steering him toward the bar. Elias sat with his hand pressed flat against his chest, saying something to the portrait on the wall.

The caterers started serving the birthday lunch.

Nobody looked at the ex-convict standing at the back of the room, who hadn't moved at all.

Except one person.

Vanessa was still standing where the whole thing had left her, and she was not looking at Shane.

She was going back over the last minute, piece by piece.

The Iceman had never once looked at Shane. Not when he came through the door, and not when he spoke.

Shane had asked that man a direct question about the coffin. The Iceman had stared straight past him for three long seconds, as if he were a chair that had learned to talk.

He had been staring at the back of the room, at the man standing beside her.

The man who called the Iceman cheap to his face. Who then stood there in no hurry at all while the most dangerous man in the city changed his mind about killing them.

Coincidence, she told herself.

The word did not fit the shape of what she had just watched.

She turned to see what her husband made of it.

Damon was watching the caterers bring out the cake.