“I told you to be careful, Kropp. You could have killed me!”
I lost it. It really was too much, after all I’d been through that week, to have this jerk scold me like I was some little kid.
I hadn’t asked for any of it—in fact, I had wanted the exact opposite, and here he was acting like I had dragged him into this crap.
I grabbed his wrist and tore his hand away, and then I hit him as hard as I could in the jaw. He fell back onto his butt with a startled expression.
“Maybe that’s my problem,” I snarled at him. “Maybe that’s why I can’t extract myself from you nutcases—I keep killing the wrong people! You knew who Jourdain Garmot was the whole time, didn’t you? You knew he was Mogart’s son, didn’t you?”
“Does that matter?” he asked, rubbing his jaw, but somehow smiling his annoying ironic smile.
“You’re damn right it matters! You knew who he was and where he was, and you could have stopped him!”
I pulled my fist back to pop him again. He scooted backward and rose to his full height.
“I am authorized to kill you if I have to,”
he said.
“Really? Well, that’s where I’m one up on you. I don’t need anyone’s authorization!” I raised the handheld rocket launcher and took dead aim at his little Spanish smile.
“Do that and you will never reach the airport alive,” he said.
“How did you find me at the warehouse?” I asked.
“We followed Vosch, of course.”
“Jourdain said they weren’t followed.”
Nueve shrugged.
“What is the Thirteenth Skull?”
He stared at me, stone-faced.
“Jourdain needs it so Michael will return the gift. The gift is the Sword, isn’t it? Jourdain’s after Excalibur and he needs the Thirteenth Skull to get it.”
He didn’t say anything. He just shrugged.
“Don’t shrug,” I said. “Don’t ever shrug again in front of me, understand?”
“It is only a shrug.”
“Don’t change the subject either.”
“I didn’t. You changed the subject.”
“Stop it. It doesn’t matter who changed the subject.”
“Then why tell me not to?”
“Yes or no, you knew the whole time Jourdain was behind all this.”
“Why does it matter?”
“Because you could have stopped him!”
“Have we not done that? Are you not still alive? Have I not saved your miserable las nalgas more times than either of us can recall?”