“We always take at least one board seat and more depending on our investment piece. But keep in mind this is not Apple or Google, these are start-ups. They actually need our business expertise. I usually like to have my hand in, and we just closed our twentieth deal last month. And the other nineteen? I think we’re going to hit home runs in all but two.”

“That’s a much higher percentage than the Wall Street boys have.”

“I get to really dig into the business plans and meet the people before the dollars go in. And then I’m right here watching my investment and jumping in or pulling the plug if I have to.”

“You ever think of going somewhere else?”

“Every second of every day. But I’ve got time on my side and a plan, a big one.”

“The new Silkwell empire?”

“The new Dak empire.”

The two men ate their meal and then went their separate ways.

As Devine was walking back to the inn, he looked to the sky, which was growing cloudy. The wind was picking up. He could feel the barometric pressure dropping as the storm system moved in. He was halfway back to the inn when he was confronted by three men who stepped out from the darkness in a particularly lonely area of Putnam. And these men were not drunk and stupid local yokels like the ones who had followed him out of the bar. They got Devine’s immediate attention primarily for one reason.

They look like me right before I go into battle. Calm, focused, and lethal.

Chapter 27

Three guns to his one made it a quick end to a fight that never materialized. Devine was disarmed and pulled into an alley, where his hands were zip-tied behind him, and then he was taken to an SUV with blacked-out windows that was parked there. No hood was put over his head and he wasn’t blindfolded.

They aren’t worried about me knowing where I’m going because they know I won’t be coming back.

He studied the three men. One driving and one on either side of him. They hadn’t uttered a word; they had let their weapons and hand signals do the messaging.

He guessed two of the men’s ethnicity to be Middle Eastern, and the third was clearly Asian. This was business to them and they deployed the ideal skill set to get the job done. They were all around six feet, lean and wiry, without the big flashy muscles that most people believed signified great strength and fighting ability.

Nothing could be further from the truth, Devine knew. Being strong was great for one’s health and longevity, but he had seen six-foot-five dudes with six-packs and bulging biceps and quads taken down by short, skinny guys who understood precisely how to wreck a person without an ounce of remorse; that made them unpredictably dangerous and, crucially, a millisecond faster. And that was the whole ballgame when you were fighting for your life.

None of the men looked at him, not because they were afraid he could identify them but because they were probably bored. This was business, and the hard part — the abduction — had gone seamlessly. Now there was just the execution phase to come, which would be the easiest element of the job. Then it was on to the next assignment. They were as different from the Alpha and Bravo from the Geneva train as it was possible to be. That pair had relied on their guns. When that failed them, they were roadkill to anyone like Devine, who actually knew what they were doing.

The drive took them out of town, along the coast and due south, Devine gauged. After about twenty minutes they turned off the road, and the SUV trundled over a bumpy, unpaved street. Another turnoff there, and about five hundred feet later over crunching gravel they came to a stop.

Devine was bundled into a small wooden house that was closer to falling down than remaining standing. He could feel tendrils of cold air coming in through cracks in the exterior walls. He was hurried up a narrow, enclosed set of stairs, down a hall, and into a room that was bare except for a chair in the middle. He was pushed into the chair and duct-taped to it. With his hands still zip-tied behind him, he appeared to be securely immobilized.

He had swept the room doing a KIM recon, or Keep In Mind. You looked at as many different details as possible in a short amount of time, with the ability to recall them later, as needed. This told him there was one window where the curtains were flapping because the window was either open or the glass was missing. The floor was made of wooden planks. The only door was the one they had entered. The walls looked to be solid plaster. There was a nail sticking out of the plaster where a picture had probably hung. The chair was an ordinary wooden one, with spindly arms. It might have already been in the house, or they had bought it at some junk shop to use as his execution perch. It felt fragile under his 220 pounds.