He couldn’t be late. He pled with the God he no longer believed in not to let him be too late. Not this time, notagain.
Her hands were trembling, but she did as told. When it came to typing in her password, she hesitated. He poked the tip of the switchblade through her hair and up against her brain stem. “Do it.” She typed in her password, then he asked, “What do all those letters stand for?”
“What difference does it make?”
“Not a fuck. But it had better work.”
She hit enter, and Microsoft opened up.
“Good girl,” he said. “Go to the records you keep on patients.”
“Any patient in particular?”
He nudged the back of her chair with his knee and said playfully, “Guess.”
“Roland Malone.”
“Got it on the first try.”
“It wasn’t so hard. Oz must’ve told you.”
“Malone was stupid enough to think Oz didn’t know about him, and you, and your talks. When he came to see you, did he lie down on the sofa? That must’ve been a sight. He was an ox.How are you coming on those files?”
“I’ve got all these firewalls in place. Did you kill Roland, El Paso?”
“Oh, so you’ve heard of me,” he said, sounding pleased and proud. “I did some of my best work on him.”
“I don’t think that cutting off a pinkie finger requires that much talent.”
“It wouldn’t, except that he wanted to keep the ring.”
“‘He’? You mean Oz?”
“Yeah. The mystery man. Hides in the dark.”
“He won’t be able to hide for long. They’re looking for him.”
“Who?” he asked.
“Who isn’t?”
He chuckled. “Waaay ahead of you. The ex-narc, right? Haskell?”
Then from behind them, Mitch said, “Waaay ahead of you.”
Chapter 42
Dylan responded to Mitch’s voice by ducking forward over the keyboard just as he clouted El Paso on the back of his head with his pistol.
He’d taken El Paso completely off guard, but, despite the blow, he reacted instantly by whipping around and taking a swipe at Mitch’s throat that missed his Adam’s apple by a hair’s breadth.
As El Paso made a second pass, Mitch caught him by the wrist, stretched his arm up as high as it would reach, backed him against the desk, and pinned him there with his body to render his legs useless. But he was a fighter. His free arm reached around to pound that fist against Mitch’s kidney.
Dylan grabbed that hand, opened the top drawer of her desk, and slammed it hard on his fingers, then held the drawer closed with her hip.
El Paso howled in pain, but he still had the knife and kept trying to make downward thrusting motions against Mitch’sresistance. Mitch aimed the bore of his pistol at El Paso’s fist. “Let go of the blade or I’ll shoot it out.”
El Paso scoffed. “Fuck if you will.”
