He kept his hand steady and his finger curled around the trigger.
It bought him a second as the man eyed him up. “You’re bluffing,” he said finally, and he shifted his weight for another step.
“I’m not,” Simon rasped as he stepped out through the door. Sweating and with blood clotting on his upper lip, he pointed his gun one-handed. “Move again, and I’ll blow your kneecaps off.”
It didn’t even take a second. The thug threw his scar-knuckled hands up in the air, flashing hairy wrists and a heavy diver’s watch. He folded them behind his head at a jerk of Simon’s gun. Maybe their boss didn’t pay enough to risk losing body parts on the job.
“On your knees,” Simon said. The man folded like someone had taken a bar to the back of his legs, and his kneecaps hit the wood with a crack. Sweat beaded on his forehead as his eyes tracked Simon nervously, and he caught the tip of his tongue between his teeth.
“It was business,” he said. “You’ve been there. Right?”
Simon snorted and then wiped bloody snot on the back of his hand. “Yeah. I’ve never been where you are,” he said. “Anyone else here? Lie, and I’ll shoot you before them.”
“No. No one else. Just me and Nigel.”
That would be Pinch-face, Jacob supposed. It suited him.
“Why are you here?”
The man’s gaze flickered past them to the front door. Simon didn’t let his attention falter, so Jacob turned around to check. A large water cooler tub that hadn’t been there before sat next to the wall. It was hard to tell through the plastic, but the water looked thicker than normal and almost iridescent.
“Turn out your pockets,” Simon said.
A pointed jab of Simon’s gun convinced the man to do as he was told. He pulled his hands from behind his head, dug into his pockets, tossed a roll of quarters, three condoms, and a couple of birthday candles onto the floor.
“They were going to burn it,” Jacob said. “There’s something here that whoever hired these two really doesn’t want us to find.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.” The man put his hands back behind his head. “You weren’t mentioned. It’s just damage control.”
“By whom?” Simon asked.
“Can’t tell you.”
Simon let the gun track down from the man’s face to his knees, and the worn patches pulled tight over his kneecaps suddenly looked like targets. The man pulled his hands from behind his head and held them out placatingly.
“Not won’t. Can’t,” he said. “I don’t know. I’ve never met them. None of us have, except for Shaw. He works with a private security company, and someone called in a favor to get some work done… off the books.”
“Clayton’s death?”
The man shook his head. “No. That wasn’t meant to happen. Itwasan accident. Things got of hand. He was meant to give us the data packet. Then we’d hold him until the boss got there. That was all.”
“Why?”
The man let his hands drop to his sides. “I really don’t know. The important thing was that we got the data before he could do anything with it and we kept him out of circulation for a while. Except he had to play the hero.”
“Put your hands back up,” Simon ordered flatly. He stepped forward. “When did your contact call you in?”
In the middle of raising his hands, the man hesitated as he thought back. “About a week before the handover with your boy.”
Simon slapped the gun against his temple and coldcocked him. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he pitched over onto his side. He dribbled spit from the corner of his mouth and blood from the knot on his forehead. Simon shoved the gun awkwardly into the waistband of his jeans and leaned down to check for a pulse.
“Is he…?”
“Fine.” Simon straightened up and leaned against the wall. His mouth was a grim blood-scabbed gash. It seemed a bit on the optimistic side to Jacob, but he supposed “not quite dead” could count as fine.
“Drag him into the living room with his colleague, would you?” Simon asked.
“Does that make me the muscle?” Jacob asked. His voice sounded steadier than he thought it would. However sloppy he’d been in some regards, his lies were still on point. He copied Simon and shoved the borrowed gun into his jeans. The extra length of the silencer dug into his thigh uncomfortably as he bent down, grabbed the unconscious man’s ankles, and gave his legs a tug to test the weight. The limp body slid a few slow, resistant inches. It wasn’t the weight so much as the dead slog of the man.
