attitude clearly said, so what was the problem? “What do you want us to do with her?”
My scalp prickled at the prospect of a bullet in the stomach and a ride out to the swamp. More than that I tasted the sour tang of defeat, of failure. Gerri had been stalling me and I’d let her do it. I should have pulled the trigger the moment I’d walked into the office and I berated myself for the weakness of my hesitation. Even without Walt’s tape recorder running I realised I’d needed to hear her admit her guilt before I’d done it.
“Get her up,” Brown said now and I was hauled roughly to my feet. One of the men produced a set of plasticuffs from his back pocket and used it to yank my wrists together behind my back. I was a good six inches shorter than either of them but they kept a firm hold on my arms, just in case. I don’t know quite what they expected I was going to try and do, restrained and groggy. They started to push me towards the door.
“Now wait just a minute,” Gerri Raybourn said sharply, smoothing down her suit and retrieving her fallen shoe along with her dignity. “That little bitch was going to kill me. She’s not going anywhere until I’ve got some answers out of her.”
The men exchanged a brief glance that hinted they thought the only talking that anyone should be doing with me ought to involve a pair of steel-toecap boots. But they did as they were ordered, swivelling me back towards the desk and bracing me in front of it. It was like being forcibly stood to attention and I’d been through too much of that before.
Brown had moved back to his own side of the desk by this time. He sat down, letting out a slight grunt as his knees bent so far and then dropped him the rest of the way into his seat. For a moment he regarded me, his expression one of bemused perplexity. I tried to keep my own thoughts guarded, even though all I wanted to do was fall to my knees and weep.
“There’s nothing to be said,” I said, weary when I was trying for defiant. “Just get on with it.”
Gerri was on her feet and prowling. “Oh no, you don’t get away that easy,” she said, her voice tight and vicious now the threat was over. “You can’t just come barging in here and accuse
When I still didn’t speak she took a couple of quick steps forwards and backhanded me across the face. I wasn’t ready for it and my vision momentarily disintegrated into jagged cracks of dark and light.
For someone so slight she packed quite a punch. The force of the blow sent me staggering sideways into the man who’d originally knocked me down. He shoved me upright again with as much care as if I was an unstable piece of cheap furniture. I noticed he was smiling.
“Cut that out!” Brown barked, half rising to lean on the desk. “Goddamn it, Gerri, I won’t have that kinda behaviour in my office. Get a grip on yourself, y’hear me?”
Gerri had been watching the effect of her strike with narrowed, glittering eyes. Now she turned away and sat down again, tucking her feet underneath her chair almost daintily. She even checked to see that she hadn’t broken a nail.
I shook my head to clear it. I had been right in my first assessment of Gerri’s rings, I realised. The stones in them had gouged a lump out of the flesh across my cheekbone that felt an inch wide. I could feel a small trickle of blood already running down the line of my jaw.
“Thank you,” Brown said, more quietly. He waved a hand towards the plasticuffs. “Now get those damned things off of her and leave her be. She’s not much more than a kid herself. Let’s try and be civilized about this, huh?”
The moustached man did as he was ordered while the one with the Colt kept me covered, then they both stepped back. I rubbed reflectively at my wrists and looked at Brown.
“Where was your panic button, by the way?” I asked idly. “I was watching your hands and never saw them move. Or did good old Randy raise the alarm?”
Brown scowled a little at the mention of his employee’s name. “No, looks like he don’t even have the wit for that,” he said readily enough, regaining his own seat. His eyes were bright and filled with a deep intelligence that the rest of his easygoing, slightly crumpled features had a tendency to disguise. “I have a switch down here on the floor. All I had to do was put my foot on it.”
“Nice touch,” I said.
Gerri let out a gusty sigh. “If you’ve
Brown nodded and looked over my shoulder to where his security men were skulking. “Mason, get the lady a chair and then go see if you can rustle up some coffee,” he said.
The one who’d knocked me down brought forwards another chair like the one we’d broken in the struggle. His feet crackled over the shards of broken glass and pottery as he moved across the carpet. He plonked the chair down facing Gerri’s, keeping his attitude just a sliver this side of resentful at being asked to play the waiter. Then he went out, disengaging the handle of the door from the wall panel with a stiff jerk and closing it behind him.
The other man stayed in the background but he kept the Colt out and his attention firmly fixed on me. As I sat down I could almost feel his eyes boring into the back of my skull.
“So, Charlie, you wanna tell us what’s going on?” Brown asked then. His tone was calm and reasonable and almost kindly, and maybe because of that I felt much more inclined to answer him than Gerri.
“Keith Pelzner’s been kidnapped by Gerri and her boys because they want to get their hands on the finance program he was working on,” I said. “They tried to get Trey, too, but—”
“What?” Gerri cut in, strident now. “You and Meyer must be mad if you think anyone’s going to go for that fucking crap!”
Brown held up a placatory hand, old-fashioned enough to look faintly embarrassed at the profanity. “Now, now, Gerri, let’s hear her out,” he said.
“Sean’s dead,” I said coldly.
Gerri’s brows came together. She, too, turned to the old man. “You saw Keith the morning he vanished?” she said to him, the rising inflection making it a question. She sounded annoyed and puzzled at the same time. “You sure never mentioned that to me.”
“Didn’t I?” the old man said, his smiling fading. “I coulda swore I told you all about it. Maybe it was that Whitmarsh feller.” He thought a moment longer, then brightened. “Yes, I do believe it was.”
Before Gerri could respond to that the door opened again and the security man, Mason, returned with three cups of coffee, and a little bowl containing three straws and packets of powdered creamer and sugar, on a brown plastic canteen-type tray. He put the tray down on the desk to one side of his boss.
He’d put my SIG into his right-hand trouser pocket in order to carry the tray. I could see the end of the pistol grip sticking out by his hip as he unloaded the contents and just for a second I considered making a grab for it.
Then I flicked my eyes up to Mason’s face and found he was watching me out of the corner of his eye with a sneaky little half smile lifting the edge of his mouth, making the moustache wrinkle upwards. I didn’t want to make his day any more than I had done already so I sat still and kept my hands in my lap. As he moved back to join his mate I contented myself instead with the rudeness of not saying thank you.
Gerri was still apparently frowning over Brown’s last remark, making a big performance out of it. The action produced two deep grooves between her carefully plucked eyebrows.
“She and Meyer took them both,” she said now, talking firmly to Brown, as though I wasn’t there. “I admit I kinda got the feeling Meyer was the ringleader and she was having second thoughts, or she wouldn’t have called me from the motel. But maybe he found out what she’d done. By the time my people got down there, they’d already killed a couple who’d gotten in their way and lit out.”
I flashed her a dirty look but followed suit, speaking to Brown like he was judge and jury. “I told her we were in a different room,” I said. “Partly deliberately, partly by accident. But when Whitmarsh and Chris turned up, they burst straight in there and shot the people inside without giving them a chance.” I glanced at Gerri but she was keeping her face devoid of emotion, a smooth, cosmetic facade. “That’s when Trey and I did a runner.”
She turned to me. “You really
“You tell me,” I said softly. “Why would he and Haines be all fired-up for killing the pair of us – until they found out how vital Trey was to your precious program?”
“Now, now, ladies,” Brown interrupted, pushing a cup of coffee towards each of us, as though a hit of
