Marcus leaned forward, his mouth two inches from my ear, his gravelly voice cutting through the seventy-decibel turbine roar:
“Arthur Sterling didn’t come to Lakewood with two street thugs, Sebastian.”
“Who did he bring, Marcus?” I asked, my voice sitting at that icy, unyielding baseline that had settled behind my ribs the moment I heard my daughter’s piano keys over the telephone.
“Arthur brought the personal executive extraction element of The Black-Briar Private Security Directorate,” Marcus shouted over the rotor noise:
“Eight former tier-one operators from the British Special Boat Service and the naval special warfare reserves. They drive armored Chevrolet Suburbans with run-flat tires and reinforced floorboards. They carry suppressed HK416s and carry private diplomatic passports issued through the embassy of a microstate in the Persian Gulf.”
Marcus tapped the digital tablet strapped to his forearm, bringing up a high-resolution, three-dimensional LIDAR map of 1442 Willow Court:
