Vicki Pettersson - The Given

He began to shut the door.

“Whatever,” Kit said, tossing him the word that summed up her entire generation. It had to irk him. It irked her, but then she’d never been one to shrug off anything lightly. “You’re so old now you likely couldn’t help me if you wanted to.”

The door cracked against the wall inside, and, already smiling, Kit turned again, this time catching Al Zicaro in all his aged glory: bony knees sticking out from beneath striped boxers, a ribbed tank revealing more hair on his chest than on his head. He pushed the walker into the hall before him like it was a shield.

“You little pissant! I’ve got more knowledge stored in my left ass cheek than you do in that entire pretty head of yours! So roll that up and smoke it for a while.”

“Really?”

“Hell yeah!”

His face had gone red and mottled, his rib cage heaving as he glared at her, and, wondering if she’d pushed him a little too much, Kit took a placating step forward. “Then why don’t you tell me about a woman named Barbara McCoy, who recently returned to the valley after fourteen long years away?”

The question didn’t surprise Zicaro the way it should have, and seeing her note it, he colored and turned back around. “No.”

“Yes,” she retorted, following so that she could stick her foot in the door this time. Her shoes were vintage patent leather, too, but she’d sacrifice them if she had to. “Why did you call Barbara on Friday?”

He fell back a step at that, eyes going wide, and Kit reached out a hand to steady him, but he shook it off. “Who told you that?”

Kit just shook her head. She was asking the questions now. “What did you mean when you told her you weren’t going to get rubbed on her account? What was she into that you were so wary of?”

“I don’t gotta tell you squat!”

Kit inclined her head. “True, but here’s what I already know. Barbara was a user, a nasty woman who liked to mess with people. She had secrets that went all the way back to her time as a kingpin’s wife, and an old newshound like you might prove particularly useful to her.”

“A DiMartino active in the valley again,” he said, almost to himself. He smacked his lips as he leaned forward. “You think she’s working with someone? Like a conspiracy?”

“You tell me.”

Zicaro made a sucking sound through his teeth, and Kit waited. She didn’t insert herself in the doorway, banking instead on his satisfaction that someone was finally listening to him. Finally, he motioned her inside.

But Kit shook her head. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“I don’t walk so well.”

“And I don’t trust this place.” She tilted her head at him. “Do you?”

He said nothing to that, but his averted gaze spoke volumes.

Feeling the momentum swing her way, Kit pushed. After all, Grif could only stall for so long. “Someone is telling you that you’re safe here, am I right? That there’s security? That Barbara and the DiMartinos and the past can’t get to you here? Is that why you stay? Is it why you keep your television volume so high? Or why you probably check for bugs in your room? For drugs in your . . . drugs?”

Kit was reaching now, but Zicaro’s expression was blasted wide like he’d been waiting for someone to confirm all his greatest worries. He shook his head, and it was like erasing a drawing on an Etch A Sketch. Wonder replaced his anger. “You are paranoid.”

“And you’re a legend,” she said firmly, holding his sharp gaze.

It was his emotional trifecta. She’d appealed to his reason, his ego, and his pride. He considered her with narrowed eyes, then nodded once. “Let me get my wheelchair.”

Kit nodded too . . . then inclined her head. “Don’t forget your pants.”

How do you know Mr. Z?” Mr. Allen asked, making small talk. He’d used the walkie-talkie at his waist to call Erin at the front desk and report Zicaro missing from his room. Grif had assured Allen that he could go look for the old guy himself, but Allen replied politely, and firmly, that under no circumstances could he leave Grif alone in Zicaro’s room.

So Grif spouted the same rap he’d told Erin, saying he was an old friend. Since there was an obvious age difference between his thirty-three years and Zicaro’s seventy-six, he added that his grandfather had known Zicaro first.

“They were both beat reporters back then,” he said as they waited. “My old man followed in Granddad’s footsteps, worked at a paper in Philly, but he lost his job in the recession. The newspaper business isn’t what it once was.”

“Nothing is,” Mr. Allen replied in a soft, bland voice. Grif imagined that working in a place like this, he’d seen that firsthand. “And how about you? You in the family business as well?”

Grif hesitated, but Allen’s wide face held nothing more than mere curiosity. “Nah. I don’t have the newshound bug in me. All that fact-checking, you know. I’m a man who relies more on gut instinct.”

Mr. Allen smiled. “Me, too.”

Then the phone rang at his hip. Turning away, Grif feigned interest in the wall clippings, glancing at Allen while trying to appear as though he were not watching. He wanted to go through each and every stack of paper. He had a feeling there were more answers he and Kit were seeking in Al Zicaro’s humble room than in the rest of the entire Las Vegas Valley, yet Mr. Allen headed back into the adjoining bedroom just as he put the phone to his ear, and that wouldn’t do. Why was a Life Enrichment Coordinator taking personal calls while on duty? Wouldn’t Erin have contacted him via the walkie-talkie at his other hip?

Grif followed, peering into the bedroom in time to catch Allen leaning over the nightstand, staring out the single window. It faced the same direction as the one over the desk, so Kit and Zicaro would be easy to spot if they hadn’t moved quickly. But what really had Grif holding his breath was the holster attached to the belt at the small of Allen’s back. A Life Enrichment Coordinator with a gun? That, along with the flash of white outside the window—two orderlies jogging in the same direction as Kit and Zicaro—brought Grif around the corner.

He kept his feet light and his movements relaxed as he slipped into the room, and just stared when Allen—still squatted low—turned back around. His worry for Kit must have shown. Maybe his shoulders were already drawn in a fighter’s hunch, or perhaps Mr. Allen didn’t like the way he flexed his fingertips.

Or maybe it was simply uncomfortable for a man used to towering over others to turn and find himself eye-level with Grif’s chest.

“What do you mean he’s with someone?” Allen said into the receiver, eyes rising to meet Grif’s. His gaze was no longer questioning or kind, and he was careful to remain in his half-crouch as if unwilling to scare a sleeping cobra. Good instinct. Because that’s exactly what Grif felt like, knowing that two men were after Kit.

Never losing eye contact, Mr. Allen whispered into the phone. “I don’t care if it is a woman. Round her up . . . because she’s not working alone.”

The plan had been for Kit to lead Zicaro away from the building, then circle back around to the Duetto in the front lot. That would keep them out of the eye of the surveillance cameras for as long as possible. However, Kit and Grif had clearly underestimated the staff’s interest in Zicaro.

Allen slowly lowered the phone from his ear as he straightened. Grif shifted, catching the slight bend in Allen’s knees, the looseness in the elbows. He leaned forward at the waist, a way to keep from telegraphing his lunge, and his left foot was forward, marking him as a righty. He had at least forty pounds on Grif, and from the way he mirrored Grif’s readiness, he knew how to use it.