Page 73 of Tell Me Why
The man stepped to the side, indicating that they ought to join him on the elevator.
“Are you going to give me any cover for dealing with Daryll?” Tell asked as he moved onto the elevator, boxing subtly to keep Tina behind him and his own body between her and the bearded man.
“You’ll think of something,” the man said.
“I assume the two men downstairs aren’tdead,” Tell said. “If you’ve killed them, you’ve made this entire thing much more difficult.”
“Not dead,” the man said. “Just not going to be doing anything about it, for a while.”
The lack ofanythingwith which he said it was a bit sickening.
“I have research and contacts at the building that I need to be able to recover,” Tell said. “If you burn my bridge back in hopes that it makes me more likely to work for your master, you’ve made a miscalculation.”
“I just follow orders,” the man said.
“Ah, the mindless type,” Tell said. “I admire that. Certainly a top end to what you candowith your life, butneverhaving to think? I can’t begin to imagine what that would be like.”
The man grunted, a settling noise, and they waited for the elevator doors to open.
“Car’s outside,” the man said, stepping out of the liftbox and standing to block them from going straight toward the lobby. “You run, I’ll get a knife through her ribs before she hits the door, and then she won’t be walking, much less running.”
Tina could run with a knife wound. Heck, she could climb with multiple gunshot wounds. It implied something, and she was pretty certain that Tell saw it.
“I’m telling you that treating this like a simple business transaction is going to get you much more of what you want,” Tell said, sounding bored. “Threats just make me that much less likely towantto work with you and your master.”
“Except that he isn’t the thinky-thinky type,” Tina said, and the man’s head twitched.
She was pretty sure he was okay with Tell making fun of him, but he’d drawn the line at Tina teasing him. The corner of Tell’s mouth twitched up; permission.
If her misbehavior could be distracting, she’d buy Tell what opportunity that would give him.
Were they running?
She had an instinct that this was the trap closing, but in the opposite direction of what the shaved man thought.
One of the major players thought that Tell was giving Daryll a game-changing advantage, and was about to step out from the shadows.
This was thepoint.
Once more, Tina was the weak point of leverage that they intended to useagainstTell, but maybe letting them think that they had the upper hand was what made it possible. Tina only resented that it was sosimplefor them to deduce that all they had to do was threaten Tina and Tell would fall into line.
She wanted to be ferocious.
She really did.
She didn’tmindeffective.
Butferocious.
Oh, well.
It was good enough, for now. She’d keep working on the lethal-threat bit another time.
The way he’d put his arm out.
He hadn’t beenthatdefensive with her, mostly. She thought that the Kaija were likely still a bigger threat thanthis man, because they were just unthinking predators, but she had to respect that this was something she hadn’t dealt with before. That Tell had apparently built his life toavoidentanglements like this, among other reasons.
She watched the way the shaved man walked, the sense ofbulkhe had to him. He was impressive. He was one of those strong men who wore a lot of weight alongside his strength, the kind of weight that made him harder to stop, if reflexively slower, but there was nothingslackabout it. He was angry, just as a personality trait, and suspicious.
