The buzz was louder.
The traffic was faster.
She found the address she was looking for, took the elevator to the third floor and got dumped in a vestibule. To the left was a copper door set in a glass cinderblock wall. Lights and movement on the other side distorted through the rounded glass bricks.
The place was hopping.
Above the door was red lettering.
She took a deep breath, opened the door and stepped in. The reception desk was cluttered with papers but had no human inhabitant in the chair. Waverly stood in front of it and waited.
A minute passed, then another.
Lots of men scurried around plus an occasional woman but no one paid her any attention.
Then a man appeared from her left and handed her a ten-dollar bill. “Do me a favor,” he said. “Run down to Murphy’s and get me an Italian sausage with everything, plus an RC and a bag of chips.”
He was in his mid-thirties and wore it well, in a rough, manly way.
His eyes were wolfen-blue.
He reminded her of a Marlboro billboard.
She looked down to see if he was wearing a ring. He wasn’t, but his pinky finger was missing. She had a strange urge to touch the stub.
He must have seen the expression on her face because he said, “It got shot off. If you’re temping for more than just today, I’ll tell you about it some time. Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Temping tomorrow too?”
She shrugged.
“I’m not sure yet.”
Then she noticed something.
His shirt was buttoned wrong.
She unbuttoned the top button, re-buttoned it in the proper hole and said, “Just follow my lead the rest of the way down.”
He smiled.
“I can’t believe nobody told me.”
She shoved the ten in her purse and headed for the elevator. Over her shoulder she heard, “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Waverly Paige.”
He was Sean.
Sean Waterfield.
He was happy to meet her.
15
River didn’t want to kill the bikers but that changed when the first knife swished past his head. They tried to surround him but he darted this way and that, forever elusive, leading them deeper and deeper into the terrain. They got more desperate, trying to get him in the middle. River bided his time and waited for his move.
Then it came.
One of the guys tripped over a rock and went down. River kicked him in the face, wrestled the knife away and stabbed it with full force into the side of the asshole’s head.
The woman screamed and charged.
River backed up as if escaping then suddenly closed the gap with a leap forward and punched her in the face.
She went down, bloody, and curled into a ball.
Now there was one, the one with the chain, the big one.
“You’re going to die, asshole,” he said.
River pointed his index finger at the man and then moved it in a come-here motion.
“Come on and do it,” he said.
The man charged and swung the chain with so much strength that River didn’t dare grab it. He skirted it and got his footing.
The woman was getting to her feet.
“Stay down!” River said.
Her face was covered in blood.
The only clean part was the whites of her eyes.
She didn’t stay down.
She couldn’t.
She was insane with rage and charged.
River grabbed her, wrapped his arm around her neck and held her in front of him-a human shield. “Put the chain down and I’ll let her go,” he said. “We’ll finish it fist to fist.”
The chain didn’t drop.
The man didn’t move.
“Do it!” River said. “Do it or I’ll snap her neck!”
“Screw you and screw her!”
He charged and swung the chain.
River dropped and forced the woman with him. The chain passed over their heads. Before the man could get it cocked again River got a hand on his arm and swung him to the ground.
A punch landed on his face with the force of a rock.
He tried to shake it off before another one came.
It didn’t work.
A second one landed, so hard that the inside of River’s head exploded in colors.
Then a third landed.
He was dying.
A few more and he’d be dead.
He made a desperate move to close the gap and get the man in a bear hug.
It worked.
The fists kept pounding but they were more on his back than his head and weren’t full force. River kept the man locked in position until the explosions in his head softened, then he wrapped his arm around the man’s neck.
At that second, they locked eyes.
The man made a desperate move, trying to twist.
It partially worked but not enough to get away.
River rolled and jerked with all his might.
The man’s neck snapped, then he twitched for a few seconds and stopped moving.
