The Pursuit by Janet Evanovich

She took a swig from the half-empty bottle. “You rewarded Zarko by pushing him off a cliff to protect your lie from ever being revealed.”
    Dragan pitied her. She was a versatile operative, able to go undercover to lay the groundwork for a heist, or use her body to seduce a useful person of either sex, or participate as a pinch hitter in any aspect of the robbery itself. But as effective as she was, she lacked imagination, a chess player’s ability to see several moves ahead. She would never become more than she was today, a pawn in someone else’s game.
His game.
He didn’t like explaining himself to anyone, but he saw it would be necessary if he wanted to keep her.
    “You are mistaken, Litija, about why I did it. I made a strategic decision to achieve our objectives. I hadn’t counted on Nick escaping, but since fate stepped in and brought him to me I decided he would be an asset. Zarko and Nick would never have worked well together, and I needed the skills that Nick has more than those that Zarko possessed. The only asset Zarko retained was the benefit I could derive from his death. It sent a message to Nick that I was clearing the path for him to join us. So I sacrificed Zarko for the mission.”
    This was all true. But Dragan had also been eager to try out his Tiberius Drop. Zarko happened to be standing in the right spot, and Dragan had almost no impulse control. He didn’t see the need to share any of that with Litija.
    “You see no value in loyalty,” Litija said. “Everyone is expendable to you. You sacrificed Zarko, a fellow Serbian, a man who had loyally served you for years. You have no heart.”
    It was a good thing they weren’t outside standing on the terrace when she’d said that, or she would have experienced the Tiberius Drop herself. Dragan had zero tolerance for criticism. He supposed he could break her neck, but that would require more effort than he was willing to expend right now. And finding her replacement would be tedious. It would take weeks of interviews, watching candidates demonstrate weapons skills, watching them in hand-to-hand combat with his men, watching them fuck his entire staff, including ugly old toothless Maria, who tended the garden and smelled like dead fish. A shiver of revulsion ripped through him at the memory of Litija with Maria. He had to give it to her. The girl had stamina. And as if all that wasn’t exhausting enough, he would have to personally test out the few women who survived. He didn’t have the time right now to go through that, so he ignored the insult and answered the underlying question.
    “Nick is brilliant, but he doesn’t always work alone,” Dragan said. “He often assembles a highly skilled crew for his jobs, and individually they’re nearly as good as he is. Until his escape, I didn’t know that his crew had any lasting allegiance to him. Now we not only get Nick, but his people, too, to help us on the next phase of our plan, assuming that he passes the place Vendôme test first. We’ll be able to accomplish our near-term and long-term objectives much sooner, and with a greater chance of success, than we could have without him.”
    —
    Nick and Kate left the house and walked to the far edge of the pool to stand by the waterfall where they couldn’t be overheard.
    “Airborne?” Kate said. “Are you kidding me? We’re going airborne and then we’re going to crash through a storefront and smash jewelry cases with a hammer. What is this, Hollywood? That stuff only happens in movies. They use stunt drivers and fake storefronts. People don’t actually do this stuff. It isn’t done!”
    “I think I can do it,” Nick said.
    “Think? That indicates doubt. That’s right next to I
don’t
think I can do it. I want no part of this ridiculous scheme. I’m not robbing a jewelry store in place Vendôme.”
    “It could be fun,” Nick said, grinning at Kate. “Flying through the air, smashing into stuff.”
    “Seriously?”
    Nick shook