She gets up slow and sure. Her hair’s up in some kind of braided style. “Can you give me a clue? I want to help. I don’t want trouble.”
Something about her is off. She’s not fucked-up enough. She pretty much volunteered, didn’t she? You can’t trust a volunteer. I walk up to her, peer into her eyes. “You a cop?”
Her eyes widen. “Fuck no.”
Truth. Still, my gut says she’s hiding something. Valerie says to listen to my gut. Then again, if I kill this one, I have one of the guys as a tour guide—or the puddle of an old lady nurse. My gut doesn’t like that any better.
“I’ll help. Just don’t hurt anyone.”
“Oh, we’re gonna hurt someone, sister. But if you play nice, we’ll keep the body count down. Now we’re going to start at the end of the hall, and you’re going to introduce me around.” I pull open a slim door. Storage closet. “Get the rest of the guests in here, Mercal.”
We start the tour—me and the hot one, flanked by two of my best. One of the guys cries out. Mercal. He’s playing games. A fucking psycho. Is this how people used to see me?
We head in the first room.
She says, “This is Wendell, he’s—”
“No oldsters,” I say. “Kiro is in his early twenties. He’s been in here for a year. Anyone who meets that criteria—”
“S-so you don’t want to meet the guys who have been here forever?”
I shove the barrel of my Glock to her throat. “Does the term ‘a year’ have meaning for you or not?”
She leads us down the hall. She waves at a door. “Ronald’s fifty years old.”
I look in. Old guy. I look back, catch her monitoring me. I shove her.
We pass another. “Pearson’s been in two years. He might be little old…”
I go in. Blond. Wiry. “Stop wasting my fucking time.”
We go on. She’s nervous. We pass another room. The hair color’s right. I can’t see his face. “Him?”
“He’s forty. Been in twenty years. But this next guy could be it—the next guy could be your Kiro for sure.” She speeds up, like she really wants us to come and see this next guy.
We follow her in, but the next guy is a redhead. Clearly not a Dragusha. Fuck. We keep going, checking the guys. Nobody fits the description. We head back, and that’s when I happen to look into the dark-haired guy’s room. All that dark hair. The large frame. I slow.
She gives me a panicked look.
I grab her hair, drag her into the room.
He’s a fucking Dragusha if I ever saw one.
Kiro Dragusha.
I jerk her and shove the gun into her eye. “You trying to fuck with us? This guy’s not forty.”
“He’s not your guy!”
I twist her arm and use the torque to slam her face into the wall. “Wrong answer. Get the cameras rolling and get a lock of his hair,” I call over my shoulder.
“Leave him!”
“Trussed up and drugged. Thank you, Fitcher, or whatever this place is.”
It’s right then that the nurse decides it’s a good time to raise holy hell, screaming like a banshee, calling out the number 34.
She’s going crazy. I cock my gun. I’m about to pop her when I hear the crash. I spin around to find myself face to face with Kiro, a pair of scissors flashing in his bloody hands. He’s breathing hard. Coming at me.