“What’s going on?” shouted a guard as he and another reached the table. Mitch looked to Victor, who only shrugged. The smile was gone, a faint crease of concern between his eyes.
“No idea,” he said. “Guy comes over to talk. One minute he’s fine and the next”—Victor snapped his fingers, and Mitch flinched—“just starts convulsing. Better get him checked out before he hurts himself.”
The guards pinned the writhing Packer to the floor, and pried the blade from his shredded hand as his screams faded into groans and then into nothing. The convict had fainted. Somewhere between Packer attacking Victor, Victor dropping him with a look, and the guards reaching the scene, Mitch had extricated himself from the table bench, and now stood a few feet behind his cellmate, sipping his milk, and watching the events unfold, marveling in part at the scene, and in part at the fact that for once he hadn’t been blamed.
But what the hell had happened?
Mitch must have whispered the question, because Victor honored him with a pale raised brow before turning back toward the cell blocks. Mitch followed.
“Well?” asked Victor as they made their way down the concrete halls. “Do you feel I’m wasting your time and talent?”
Mitch considered the impossible man beside him. Something had changed. The discomfort, the aversion that he’d felt for three straight days had faded. Everyone else still seemed to bend away as they passed, but Mitch felt only wonder and, admittedly, a touch of fear. When they reached their cell, and he still hadn’t answered, Victor stopped, rested his back against the bars, and looked at him. Not at his hulking shoulders or his meaty fists with their scarred knuckles, or the tattoos that ran up his neck, but at his face. He looked him in the eyes, even if he had to look up a bit to do so.
“I don’t need a bodyguard,” said Victor.
“I noticed that,” said Mitch.
Victor let out a cough of a laugh. “Yes, well,” he said, “I don’t want everyone else to notice, too.”
Mitch had been right. Victor Vale was a wolf among sheep. And it took a lot to make 463 hardened criminals look the part of prey.
“So what do you want then?” he asked.
Victor’s lips curled into that same, dangerous smile. “A friend.”
“That’s all?” he asked, disbelieving.
“A good friend, Mr. Turner, is very hard to find.”
Mitch watched Victor push off the bars and head into the cell, lifting a library book from his cot before settling onto it.
Mitch didn’t know what had just happened back in the cafeteria, but a decade in and out of prison had taught him this: There were some people you had to stay away from, people who poisoned everything in reach. Then there were people you wanted to stick with, the ones with silver tongues and golden touches. And then, there were people you stood beside, because it meant you weren’t in their way. And whoever Victor Vale was, whatever he was, and whatever he was up to, the only thing Mitch knew was that he did not want to be in his way.
XXVI
TWO HOURS UNTIL MIDNIGHT
THE THREE CROWS BAR
ELI tapped his phone awake, tensing when he saw the time. Still no Victor, and Dominic seemed to be an installation at the bar. Eli frowned, and dialed Serena, but she didn’t pick up. When her voice mail kicked in, he hung up, eager to click End before her slow, melodic words could issue any instructions. He thought of Victor’s threat: It’s clever, using the police database to find your targets. I’m a bit insulted I haven’t shown up on there yet, but give it time. I just got here.
Eli logged on to the database, hoping for clues, but it was after ten, and the only flagged profile belonged to the man currently stationed at the counter, nursing his third Jack and Coke. Eli frowned and put the phone away. His bait didn’t seem to be drawing any fish. The seat beside Dominic emptied—it had been taken up and subsequently abandoned three times over the course of the hour—and Eli, tired of waiting, finished his beer and slid to the edge of the booth. He was about to make his way toward the target when a man appeared, approached the counter, and took the stool.
Eli stopped, and hovered at the edge of his booth.
He had seen the man before. In the lobby of the Esquire, and even though his presence here was less surprising—he fit in much better with the customers of the Three Crows than the suit-wearing clientele of the four-star hotel—his appearance still jarred Eli. There was something else about the man. He hadn’t thought of it when he saw him before, but here, on the heels of the presentation to the Merit Metro Police Department, it seemed obvious. No photos existed of Mitchell Turner, Victor’s partner in crime, but there had been generic thug descriptions: tall, burly, bald, tattooed. Dozens of men would fit the bill, but how many of them would cross Eli’s path twice in as many days?
Eli had long since abandoned the notion of coincidence.