When No One Is Watching(81)

“How could you do this to people?”

I’ve seen Sydney freak out, but right now her voice is flat. I want to reach out to her, but these people hurt her, not me. And she’s so out of it that she’s not watching their movements.

The woman doesn’t answer her and Sydney pushes. “How do you do some shit like this and think you can just get away with it? Don’t you care that you’re hurting people? Don’t you care that you’re ruining lives, taking from people when you already have enough for yourself?”

Gianetti suddenly looks annoyed when she should be frightened. “I’m tired of you people. You’re saying all this now when you weren’t even responsible enough to make your appointment on Thursday! Just like your mother, crying after the fact and expecting special treatment. If your mother wanted to keep her house she should have paid her taxes and not been so ignorant she fell for—”

The woman’s words are cut off again, but not by surprise or by a question—this time it’s by the bullet currently lodged in the area of her brain located behind her palate.

The blast of the gunshot reverberates in the vestibule and the woman keels forward onto the gurney, eyes wide.

“Christ, Sydney,” I yell, jumping back, but she ignores me, her focus laser sharp on William.

“Bill Bil.” She turns her gun toward him. Her voice is loud, like her ears are still ringing. “Got anything to say about my mother?”

“Didn’t know her, but she was a very fine woman, I’m sure.” His expression is smooth like an oil slick even though bits of his colleague’s brains have splattered on him.

“Good. Then you can answer some of the many questions we have.” Sydney’s gaze drops down to Gianetti and then moves back up to William. “What is this gurney for? Why are you talking about having dibs on Mr. Perkins’s house?”

He shrugs, glances back over his shoulder. From where I’m standing, I can follow his line of sight to the red emergency alarm lever on the wall a little more than an arm’s length away from him.

“I think there’s been some kind of misunderstanding.” William takes a step back and Sydney closes the space between them.

“If there was a misunderstanding, you’d be a little more concerned by the fact I just blew a hole in homegirl’s head. Talk.”

“I’m just doing my job, right? They told me I could choose from one of the houses on the street if everything went well.” His hand reaches behind him and I take aim for his shoulder.

“Stop moving,” I say.

His hand stills.

“How did you think you would get that house? Magic?” she presses. “How can you lay claim to something that belongs to somebody else?”

“I didn’t know they were hurting people,” William continues, tears springing up in his eyes. “They said they were paying people for the houses.”

“Then what’s the gurney for?” Sydney asks.

“Oh. This? Um.” His eyes dart back and forth between us. “Well . . .”

The gurney suddenly surges toward Sydney—I’ve been watching his hands, not his feet, and he’s kicked it toward her. It hits her in the thighs before rebounding off her, and she stumbles back into the door. William leans back, his fingers grasping toward the alarm.

My gun is already aimed. The element of surprise is all we have and if he alerts people to our presence we’re dead. I squeeze off one silent shot.

The reverberation of the Glock’s blast jangles through me, and William Bilford slumps forward onto the gurney over his friend, a spray of blood misting out of his chest. His chest and not his arm. There’s a gaping hole where a heart is usually located.

Shit.

“Why did you kill him?” Sydney’s eyes are wide. She wipes frantically at her cheeks, where droplets of blood spattered. “I was trying to get him to tell us what’s going on here.”

I scrunch my face contritely and exhale sharply through my nose.

“That was supposed to be an arm shot to stop him from pulling the alarm, but apparently my aim isn’t as good as yours. I’m more of a fists or knives kind of guy.”

“It’s okay. I killed one, you killed one.” She looks down at the two bodies. “All right. They’re dead. They’re dead.”

“Sydney?”

She bends and starts pushing the gurney, struggling with the weight of it. “We can’t leave them here in case someone comes through. And we don’t know if the people ahead will be armed. We can use this for cover.”

I move beside her and we push the gurney through the door.

“She’s the lawyer who said she could help me get the house back,” she says as we enter what seems to be another hallway, nodding her chin toward the woman’s body. “She strung me along for almost a year, acting so concerned and enraged on my mother’s behalf. I’m starting to wonder if all of you are evil.”

“Nothing I say right now will put you at ease about that.” I inhale and the smell of blood fills my nostrils. “I hope we make it out of here alive. Because I like you a lot. I want to spend some time with you that isn’t us actively caught up in a web of conspiracy. I know I probably shouldn’t be saying this while we’re pushing dead bodies around, but life is short.”