Davy nodded his encouragement of that line of thought. “We can work together. You and me. It’s been a while, after all, since I was in the game on this side.”
The muzzle of the gun swung indecisively back and forth between Davy’s head and Fraser’s. After a second’s thought
Reynolds pulled his lips tight against his teeth and shook his head.
“He’s your brother,” he said. “You expect me to believe you’d turn on him? Huh?!”
Davy traded a brief, confused glance with Fraser. The idea that theywouldn’tturn on each other had never come up before. It had always been taken as a given, if anything.
“Have you met him?” they both asked at the same time.
“Then why are you trying to save his life?” Reynolds asked.
“Because he can’t sign the company back over to me if he’s dead,” Davy said. “What do you think, that I want to go back? Do you know what it’s like on the other side, Reynolds?”
The hook swung in the air. Davy had baited it, now to see if Reynolds would bite. There weren’t many people in their line of work who wouldn’t. After you’d sent four or five people ahead of you, most people started to wonder. A few near-death experiences of their own, and it kept you up at night.
“What is it like?” Reynolds asked with a sort of queasy fascination.
“Boring, mostly,” Davy said, falling back on the truth when he couldn’t come up with a lie that sounded better. “And the cost-of-death is sky high around here.”
Reynolds looked irritated. “Are you mocking me?” he asked. “Iloveyou. I did this for you. It was your idea to kill him.”
“Yeah,” Davy said. “Are you ever going to?”
Reynolds flushed. Two spots of red rode high on his cheekbones as he took a step forward and lifted the gun jerkily to point at Fraser’s head. His finger, nails bitten down to the bloody quick, tightened.
“Look at my desk,” Fraser blurted out. “The first envelope. Look at it. He’s lying to you. My brother isn’t dead. He’s probably behind this, but not as a spirit.”
Reynolds licked his lips. “You’re trying to fool me,” he said.
“No.”
“He is. Don’t listen to him.”
Reynolds hesitated a second and then stepped forward to shuffle, one-handed, through the paperwork on the desk. He picked up a heavy, manila envelope and shook out a handful of documents.
“See?” Fraser said. “He’s alive. My brother faked his own death. This was all Hill.”
The gun sagged slightly as Reynold let it drop while he fumbled through the IDs. Fraser dug his own hand down on the makeshift dressing as Davy pushed himself quietly to his feet.
“How do I even know this is real?” Reynolds muttered in protest as he opened the passport to look at it. “This could be anyone.”
Davy grabbed a chair by the back, stepped forward, and swung it in one smooth movement. The arc ended as the chair shattered against Reynolds’s back. Two legs snapped, splinters dug into Reynolds’s shoulders, and the leather seat flapped forlornly from studs as Davy dropped it.
When people heard someone was good in a fight, they always expected something out of the Karate Kid. In Davy’s experience, that wasn’t necessary. A crane kick might look impressive, but it didn’t accomplish anything that the application of something heavy to the back of the head would do just as effectively.
Of course, hecoulddo both.
Reynolds staggered and Davy swept the man’s feet out from under him. As he went down, Davy grabbed his gun hand. He dug his fingers in, crushing Reynolds’s hand as they wrestled for control of the weapon.
“This was what you wanted,” Reynolds snarled into Davy’s face. “This is what you asked me to do so that you’d love me.”
Davy shrugged. “Plans change,” he said as he shoved his tentacles up Reynolds’s nose and into his brain. The static discharge of lust and twisted memory poured back and forth between them. Davy gritted his teeth against it. “And I lie. If you love me, you have to accept that about me.”
Rage twisted Reynolds’s face and, a little too late, Davy wondered if repeated exposure might have helped the man work up some sort of resistance. The answer was probably yes, since instead of staggering off to puke, Reynolds snapped his head forward. He drove the top of his skull into Davy’s face, thealmost airypopof a broken nose spilling hot, wet pain into Davy’s head.
Davy recoiled, blood dripping down his chest, and realized it didn’t hurt as much as he expected. The pain was there, but it felt like being scorched through a layer of silicone. Distanced, insulated. Realization made him glance at the clock on the wall. It was an aesthetic but unnecessary bit of interior design in a digital era, but it provided a suitably sombre notice that there were under five minutes to midnight.
