“Yeah,” Simon said dryly. The nudge of his elbow put Jacob more firmly behind him, and Jacob let it. He supposed it was an insult to his manliness or something, but he didn’t mind. “For a dead man, Clayton gets a lot of visitors.”
The arm holding the gun belonged to a tall man with broad shoulders and an oddly narrow face—as though someone had pinched it in a vise. Blood hummed in Jacob’s ears, and he felt a wash of hot dizziness flood through him. It made his knees feel wonky and his stomach twist with pain. That was the guy who kicked him in the ribs, the one who tackled Clayton to the ground and cursed him when he died.
Shit. He’d always called himself a coward, but he never really thought it was true.
“I heard you were a Marine,” Pinch-face said.
“I am a Marine.”
Pinch-face smirked. “Yeah, whatever,” he said. “It’s a shame, really. Shaw told the boss we should have used you—but the boss didn’t think you could be bought. Too uptight.”
“Your boss is a good judge of character.”
The exchange gave Jacob enough time to pull himself together and squeeze some spit back into his mouth. He licked his lips. “What do you want?”
“Same thing I wanted last time,” Pinch-face said. “The data packet that you stole from Syntech.”
“And I told you the going rate,” Jacob said. “Why do you care what’s on it anyhow?”
The man shrugged. “I don’t. I’m just paid to collect it. Now give me the data, and I’ll let you walk.”
Simon shifted his weight to the side and moved one foot forward. The barrel of the gun twitched as Pinch-face focused on Simon. “That seems unlikely, doesn’t it?”
A tight little smile pulled at the man’s lips. “You might have a point there. How about this? I won’t break the thief’s other hand before I kill him.”
“Sounds fair to me,” Jacob said and took a half step backward. The gun twitched a bit farther. “I’m a fan of working fingers.”
He eased in another half step, and then Pinch-face waggled the gun in his direction. “Don’t try to run. You saw what happened to Clayton.”
“Then you’ll never get the data,” Simon said as he moved forward.
The gun stayed on Jacob, but Pinch-face’s attention shifted back to Simon. It was, apparently, all the distraction Simon thought he needed. He took a long, quick step and aimed a short kick at Pinch-face’s knee and slapped Pinch-face’s gun hand to the side at the same time. The gun went off with a muffled cough, and the bullet hammered into the floor a few inches from Jacob’s feet.
Shit. Shit.
He scrambled for the oversized chair and threw himself into its shadow in a sliding fall.Plan. Plan. Damn it.Jacob wasgoodat plans, but no one would give him the time to put together a good one. He glanced around the leather side of the chair. The gun was on the floor, lying on the probably hideously expensive black-and-white cowhide rug as Pinch-face and Simon traded blows. They moved so fast that, to Jacob, who’d mostly seen fights on TV, it looked like the blows barely connected. Pinch-face clipped the side of Simon’s jaw, and he turned the stagger into a sweeping kick. Simon’s fist buried in Pinch-face’s gut turned into a joint lock that made Simon’s face go bleak with pain as he went to his knees.
“Heard youwerea Marine,” Pinch-face panted as he drove his knuckles into Simon’s armpit, “before they had to staple your arm back on.”
Jacob jack-in-the-boxed to his feet, head swimming with fear and the realization that, apparently, he was going to improvise. Or piss himself. Maybe both.
“Here.” He waved the Kindle in the air. “I’ve got the data here. Just let Simon go. This isn’t anything to do with him.”
Pinch-face snorted. “He should have thought of that before he interfered.” He squinted as he tried to get a good look at the Kindle Jacob juggled from one hand to the other. “He’s not the sort of man you leave with a grudge.”
Simon twisted. His arm achieved an unnatural angle, and he hammered his fist into the side of Pinch-face’s knee. It popped out from under him, and Simon threw his weight and turned Pinch-face’s stagger into a fall. A scuffle of knees and elbows ended when Simon kneeled on Pinch-face and punched his head down into the rich wooden floor.
It wasn’tquitethe same noise that Clayton’s head had made as it hit the ground, but it was close enough to make Jacob cringe. He didn’t have time to puke, though—he doubted Pinch-Face was on his own. He scrambled over the arm of the chair and grabbed the gun. The weight of it was strange. The addition of the silencer changed the balance of the thing more than he expected. He ran to the door.
“Fucking… stay here,” Simon snarled.
Jacob glanced back over his shoulder and saw Simon get to his feet, his jaw gritted so tightly that the muscles bulged under his skin and his arm swung loose and weird from his shoulder. He could probably still kick Jacob’s ass, but, apparently, the unwelcome revelation that he really was a coward had left Jacob with a need to prove something. He ducked out into the hall just as a lean scruffy thug skidded down the stairs and stumbled to a stop as he saw Jacob lift the gun and aim it at him. After a second’s surprise, he smirked and showed a broken tooth next to his incisor.
“Please,” he said. “You’re a petty thief. You go through people’s garbage for a living. You’ve never even used a gun.”
Something about him didn’t read quite as dangerous as the others Jacob had met—Pinch-face and the nondescript Shaw. Simon. The sort of people who had to try tonotlook like they could kill you in a hundred different ways. This guy postured like a street tough—all attitude and snarl.
Jacob straightened his elbow and brought his free hand up to steady his grip. “I’ve never shot anyone,” he said. The smirk dug in deeper, and the man took a step down. “I’ve used a gun, though, and I have the Junior ROTC ribbon at home to prove it. I’ll probably puke my guts out afterward, but I’ll still put a bullet through you.”
