Or fumbling while drawing your gun.
Jack and Quinn were up to something. It seemed we were still in the middle of a grand performance. And I had yet to be given my script. Luckily, I've taken a few classes in improv.
The two Contrapasso guards gaped at each other, as if to say "What are we supposed to do about this?"
I helped them answer the question by pulling my gun on the unarmed woman tending to Henry. She stared at the gun, then up at me, eyes wide.
The moment I distracted the guards, Jack and Quinn each tackled one.
There was a scuffle. My part was easy--the medic just sat there, terrified. Only when the guys had their targets pinned did I lower my gun.
"Is he dead?" I said, nodding at Henry.
She stared at me. Maybe it was my conversational tone. Maybe it was the fact that I was using that tone while my partners grappled with the two guards.
I repeated the question. She finally nodded. Henry was dead. I don't know what else they expected, sending someone with a medical kit to tend to a guy shot through the heart. I suppose they felt they had to make the effort.
Across the room, the two guards were now trussed with zip ties. Jack and Quinn were patting them down for weapons. Neither had been shot or even badly injured. Quinn tossed me a zip tie for the medic. I asked her to turn around and put her hands behind her back. She did without argument. I put them on.
"You're okay," I said. "They're okay. But this would have gone a whole lot easier if your team hadn't double-crossed us. Remember that. We acted in good faith."
She nodded mutely.
I rose. "And talk to them about getting you a gun. Just because you're the medic doesn't mean you shouldn't know how to defend yourself."
A snorted laugh behind me. I turned to see Quinn shaking his head.
"What?" I said.
He started to reply, but Jack cut him off with an impatient "let's move" wave. We took off.
Jack led us along the empty hallway toward the stairwell. Quinn whispered to me as we went, telling me that the Contrapasso team consisted of five people. We'd left three in the model suite. Two had taken Koss, which meant we wouldn't encounter any guards lingering in the hall.
"So is anyone going to tell me what's going on?" I whispered.
"They took Koss," Jack said. "We're getting him back."
I glowered at him.
Quinn laughed softly, then said, "It's a long story. The short version is that Evelyn called me, and I got myself in on the Contrapasso operation. Jack made us coming in."
"Which you knew he would."
Jack waved for silence as he checked the stairwell. He held up a hand for us to stay there as he went in. Quinn held the door cracked open, making sure Jack didn't get jumped, and it was such an automatic response that I felt a pang of . . . regret, I guess, that it couldn't always be like this. Throw them into a situation together and they watched each other's back, anticipated each other's moves.
Jack waved us into the stairwell. We stayed silent there, the empty space too prone to echoes, but once we were on the first floor, I resumed talking as if we hadn't been interrupted.
"You knew the Contrapasso folks didn't intend to let us interrogate Koss," I said.
Quinn looked uncomfortable, and I knew that whatever Contrapasso had done here, he wasn't ready to frame them as the bad guys. "They couldn't. You and Jack, you're clearly doing the right thing, but . . ."
"We're still hitmen. We can't be trusted."
"But they would have interrogated him," Quinn said. "And he'd have disappeared afterward. This wasn't about cutting one of their own loose. When they got here and realized Henry Bryant was in on it, too? I thought Diaz--the guy who took Koss away--was going to be sick. He worked with Bryant for years."
"We done?" Jack said as he stopped us at the front door.
"Yes," I said. "The situation has been explained."