“Partial as I am to All City Coffee,” Dox said, his eyes going from Manus’s face to the tip of the Espada protruding from his front pants pocket and back again, “I think we’d be better off reconnecting outside the city limits. How’d you get here and how were you planning to leave?”
“No,” Manus said. “I don’t want to split up.”
“Well, it’s not my first choice either, but—”
“I want to know who’s behind this. Who hired me. Who hired you. Who sent those people.”
“Fine, we can talk about that when—”
“I’m not taking a chance on you two ghosting. We stick together until you tell me what you know.”
“Hey,” Larison said. “I don’t want to hear your demands. We just saved your ass back there.”
Manus shook his head. “I saved yours.”
“Why the fuck would we ghost? The only reason you’re not dead right now is because someone wants to know why you were sent to kill Diaz.”
“You want what I know?” Manus said. “You go first.”
Larison took a step back and to the side. “No. You.”
Well, that wasn’t good. A typical posturer would have stepped in to make a point. When Larison stepped offline, it was the opposite. He wasn’t making a point. He was going to shoot you.
“Hold on,” Dox said. “Hold on. We’re all a little upset and we need to take a deep breath. Mr. Manus, my name’s Dox. And this here is Larison.”
“Jesus,” Larison said. “Why don’t you just give him our driver’s licenses?”
“You’re right that we need to put our heads together,” Dox went on. “And we want the same thing you do. So I’ll tell you what. We have a car—a minivan, as it happens. One of us can drive, the other two can lie down. When we get somewhere quiet, we can park and all sit in back and debrief to our hearts’ content. Maybe even bring in a little takeout. I don’t know about you, but I always get hungry after surviving a gunfight.”
“What are you doing?” Larison said. “We had a bugout point, why are you changing the plan?”
Good God, anytime something seemed to be cooling off, Larison had to turn a damn flamethrower on it. “Because, in case you haven’t been keeping up on current events, so far this morning not one thing has gone according to plan.”
“Bullshit. You want to stick around because you want to see Livia.”
That riled him, mostly because it was true. He stared at Larison. “Why are you saying her name in front of him?”
Larison took a step closer. “You can say mine and I can’t say hers?”
In spite of everything, Dox couldn’t help but smile at that. In contrast to what he’d done with Manus, Larison had stepped closer to Dox to emphasize his anger.
“Remember when we used to fight?” Dox said. “We’d be an eyeblink from shooting each other. And now? All you’re thinking to do is punch me in the face. That’s some kind of in-group we’ve formed, and I for one am proud of it.”
For a second, Larison stared at him, incredulous. Then he started laughing. “I give up,” he said. “You crazy bastard, I’ll get the van.”
chapter
seventeen
DIAZ
For a long moment, Diaz stood rooted to the steps, watching the now-empty street, unsure of what to do. Had that man really told her not to go into the park? That people were trying to hurt her in connection with . . . what, with Schrader? There had been three of them, hadn’t there? But suddenly she was unsure. It felt so surreal, she wondered if it had even really happened.