“Do not,” the man said in a voice so low, it was almost a growl, “come closer, or you will swim in your own blood, shortlife.”
Both the Neds’ eyebrows went up.
All right. Maybe I didn’t have my thumb quite as tight on the situation as I’d like, but language like that was not allowed in my house.
“Easy,” I said. “No one needs to swim in anything. You don’t want to hurt us. We don’t want to hurt you.” That might have sounded more convincing if one of us weren’t pointing a gun at his head. “And I’d appreciate it if you stowed your bigotry.”
He said something in a language I didn’t understand. Russian, maybe? I was passable with French and Spanish, but Quinten had always handled Russian. Still, it didn’t sound like a bygones-be-bygones sort of speech.
“What’s his name?” I asked Right Ned. “Did you find anything in his pockets? An identification card of some sort?”
“No. There isn’t even a label on his jacket.”
“You’re gonna let her go, big man,” Left Ned said. “Or I’ll blow you full of so many holes, you’ll be recycled for spare parts.”
Death threats. Sure, that’d make him relax.
“Ned Harris,” I said. “I’ll have none of that kind of talk in front of our guest.”
“The stitch is crazy,” Left Ned said. “And there isn’t any mending you can do to fix crazy. He should be taken down before he hurts someone, Matilda Case.”
At the sound of my name, the man behind me jerked. I expected the scissors to fly from his hand toward Neds, but instead his arm around my shoulder loosened and he released me.
“Case?” he said as if he’d just remembered where he was. He inhaled, his breath hard and wet—who knew what kind of damage rolling off the bed had done to his existing wounds—and his posture straightened. The scissors fell to the floor with aclunk.
Suddenly I wasn’t standing against him at all.
“Step to the side, Tilly,” Left Ned said, the gun still trained up and to my right a bit, aimed at what I supposed was the man’s head.
Right Ned nodded slightly, a silent plea for me to clear away for the shot.
Instead, I turned and faced the man.
He slumped against the wall, both hands at his side, his stomach dripping with blood and showing far too much of his insides. His color had gone chalk gray, with green shaded in the hollows of his cheeks and around his lips. Eyes that just a moment before had burned sharp were now as dull as cold ash.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Please. Forgive my manners. Your hospitality has been . . . has been more than kind . . .”
“You got that right,” Left Ned said. “Now we’ve run all out of hospitable.”
The slosh of the water bucket hitting the floor startled me. I glanced over my shoulder just in time to see Right Ned with another gun in his hand.
It occurred to me that my hired hand was packing an awful lot of heat around the farm. I had a brief moment to wonder if Neds had even more artillery stashed in his overalls before Right Ned squeezed the trigger.
Instinct made me duck. Good thing too. That gun was aimed straight away at me, as much as at the man.
The projectile dart hit the big man square in the chest. He frowned, looked at the yellow feather sticking out of his skin, then slid down the wall, out cold.
“I cannot believe you just— Put the guns down!” I said.
“It’s a tranquilizer,” Right Ned said.
“Now. Down. Both of them,” I said. “We do not shoot our guests. Honestly, I don’t know what’s gotten into those heads of yours.”
“Sense,” Left Ned said. “He was holding you hostage. You understand that, Matilda? How dangerous a thing he is? How powerful?Galvanized.” He spit.
“What in the—? Since when do you have an opinion on the galvanized? Do you know him? Know something about him I don’t know? Because now would be a good time to share.”
Grandma peeked around the corner of the door. “There you are, dear. Is it time to go? The men are outside,” she said. “Men in cars.”
