Darynda Jones - First Grave on the Right

He opened his desk drawer and withdrew a flash drive. “You mean this one?”

Yep. He was precisely stupid enough. While my insides were doing a Snoopy dance, my outsides were starting to panic. Angel and Sussman had stepped from the room behind Price with a thumbs-up. The camera was recording.

“Can I go watch the strippers now?” Angel asked.

With teeth gritted, I shot him a quick glare, then continued to hyperventilate. Price smiled one of those superior smiles of Mafia bosses and nursing home directors. Sussman stood back, glared at him.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” Angel said. Hopping over to me, he popped open the top button on my too-tight blouse, giving Price, and hopefully the camera, a nice shot of my cleavage. Price’s gaze landed instantly on the erotic zone. Danger and Will Robinson. Distractions extraordinaire. When he looked back up, a few strands of my hair had magically fallen to frame my face just so.

I pushed up my glasses in a nervous gesture. “I can assure you, that’s not the same one.” After licking my lips slowly in thought, I said, “He handed me a flash drive.… I know it has … he said it had evidence. It was encrypted, but—”

“Perhaps he handed you the wrong one?” Price offered politely.

“No, that’s not possible. He has … I mean, he has several thousand flash drives on his desk at any given moment, but…”

“I promise you, little beauty, my man took this directly off your lawyer. Seconds after he died.”

Little beauty? What was I? A racehorse? You’d think a man who hung around beautiful women all day could come up with something a little less corny.

While I was doing my best to hyperventilate without actually hyperventilating, Price stood, walked around his desk, and leaned against it in front of me. Partly, I was certain, so he could look down his nose while watching his newest victim squirm, like watching an ant burn through a magnifying glass. But a bigger part of the partly was so he could check out the girls.

Taking advantage of the situation, Angel went for another button, an evil smirk glittering on his face. I pretended to close my blouse and slapped his hand away in the process — the little perv. Angel frowned in disappointment.

“Were you after money?” Price asked, so cool an inferno wouldn’t have melted his bravado. He gestured for blondie to leave.

I gulped, unable to meet his stare any longer — in theory — and nodded.

He reached down and pulled off my glasses. Guilt, utterly remorseless guilt, oozed off him and pooled at his feet. “And you just decided to waltz in here and demand some from me?”

“Yes. I’m … in trouble. With the deaths of the lawyers at my firm, there’ll be an audit.”

“Ah,” he said, folding the glasses and placing them on his desk. “And you’ve been a naughty girl.”

“You … killed them? It was you?” Without raising my chin, I looked up at him through my lashes. He seemed to enjoy it.

“Of course not. I have men for that.”

Damn. Could he be any more evasive? I needed a confession, not a paltry assertion any lawyer worth his weight could weasel him out of.

I struggled to get to my feet, but he was ridiculously close. I brushed against him, making sure my shoulder grazed over his erection. “You sent men to kill my bosses? Why would you do that?”

As with most criminals, his arrogance was his downfall. He wrapped a hand around my arm and helped me up. “Because I can.”

After sucking in an appalled breath, I tried to wrench free of his grip. I pretended to pretend like I was pretending to be confident when I said, “I’m leaving.” He had just confessed to conspiracy. No way on Earth was I getting out of that office alive.

“What’s your hurry?”

“If I don’t show up by nine o’clock tonight, you will go to prison.”

Price glanced at his watch, then pulled me closer, encircled my waist with his arms. “That gives us almost three exquisite hours to find out who your friends are.”

Oddly, I was finding it easier and easier to act afraid. With a toss of my head, I gave Angel the signal. He nodded and took off, but Sussman stood there, cemented to the spot, a peculiar hatred seething in his eyes.

“So, in answer to your question, yes, I did kill those three lawyers.” He ran a finger along my collarbone, dipped it into my cleavage. “But you don’t have to be next.”

Yeah, right. I pushed against his chest all helpless-like. Seriously, how long can it take to storm into a room? All Angel had to do was tug on Uncle Bob’s tie, thus giving the signal for Ubie to send his men in with guns blazing. It wasn’t brain surgery.

“You mean we could work something out?” I asked, my voice breathy with fear.

A sleazy smile widened across his once-handsome face. The face of a killer and a kidnapper who sold children as slaves. Or worse. He wrapped a confident hand around my throat, dipped his head to access one corner of my mouth. I was beginning to wonder if I’d underestimated him.

Suddenly a red light on Price’s desk started flashing. He straightened in surprise as his bodyguard rushed into the room.

“Cops,” the guard said, and Price turned an astonished gaze on me.

I could have been a smart-ass and said something like, Don’t drop the soap. But the look on Price’s face convinced me to bite my tongue. For once. He seemed, I don’t know, annoyed. His face reddened within the span of a heartbeat.

Before I could warn him about the dangers of sudden acute spikes in blood pressure, he wrapped a hand around my arm with enough force to break it and pushed me back against the wall. Only it wasn’t a wall. It opened to a dark hallway lined on one side with two-way mirrors. We could see directly into his office.

As I struggled with Price, the tactical team smashed into the room and tackled the bodyguard to the ground before scanning the area for me. I took a deep breath, readying myself to scream as Price dragged me down the hall, but his large hand clamped down on my face none too gently. It cut off my scream and my air supply. Which sucked. Blue was not my best color.

Then I felt Reyes. I felt him even before I saw him. A heat wave rushed over me, and I watched as he materialized in front of us. A swirling dark mass of smoke, thick and palpable. The air was suddenly drenched in his anger, bringing the water molecules to a boiling point that prickled hotly over my skin. Panic clutched my throat. How would I explain another severed spine?

Since I could hardly scream what I was thinking — which was basically, Down boy! — I formed the command in my mind. He had read my thoughts before. Maybe he would again.

Don’t you dare, I thought. Really hard. Trying to project my sentiments past the wall of his anger and into his head.

The high-pitched ring of his blade being drawn halted, and Reyes paused. Though I couldn’t see his face, I felt him staring at me from behind the hood.

Don’t even think about it, Reyes Farrow.

He leaned over us and grumbled at me, but I held my ground. With legs flailing and lungs burning, I thought, Do it and I will kick your ass.

The mass stepped back, seemingly surprised that I would threaten him. But I didn’t have time to worry about that. Or contemplate how exactly I would go about carrying out such a threat.

Clawing at Price’s hands was getting me nowhere. Time to tap into my inner ninja. The first move of what I’d hoped would be many was to kick my assailant in the shins. Well-placed kicks could bring down the stoutest of opponents. And with heels? Forget about it.

As my mind raced to prepare for the kick and figure out my next move, I felt a sharp pain shoot from my neck down my spinal cord, saw a burst of white-hot light, and heard a loud crack echo against the walls. I turned to jelly in the blink of an eye. In the seconds before I felt consciousness slip completely away, I realized Price had broken my neck. Asshole.