He pointed to a red car in the alley.
“Yorick owns a large number of hotels all over the Midwest. I bet he owns this hazard of a building too.” He climbed out of the car and went around to my side to open my door. “You ready for this?”
My heart hammered. Was I? I swallowed the lump in my throat and took his hand with my sweaty palm. Desi pulled me out and put his arm around my waist.
“Come on, we need to get in and get this done quickly,” he muttered. We rushed into the abandoned building, and as soon as we got inside, we could hear someone rustling loudly somewhere on a higher floor.
I looked around. The outside was far more worn than the interior. It just looked like a lobby, only dusty with no electricity. Desi pointed to the stairs, and we started up them.
“Yorick,” Desi shouted, “there’s no point in running. I’m not leaving until this is done.”
“Fuck you, Amato!” the old man who I had yet to see spat from the second floor. “I’m not going out without a fight. Come, get me, you pussy! I’ll carve you and that pretty girl up!”
“Isn’t there a saying?” Desi shouted back, the snark in his voice loud and clear. “It’s not smart to bring a knife to a gunfight?”
“In the old days, we didn’t use guns. Fight me like a real man, Amato.”
Desi looked over at me and rolled his eyes. “The guy he killed, the reason we’re here in the first place, he shot with a gun.”
As we climbed, so did Yorick. He shouted down at us with threats until we caught up with him. My blood ran cold when I finally reached the murderer we were here to kill. He was as Desi had described, old, glasses, and a mustache. Only, he was a lot larger and more muscular than I had imagined. He was twice the size of Desi and me.
My gaze flickered to the large knife grasped tightly in his fist. Yorick laughed.
“Scared, sweetie?”
“Don’t talk to her,” Desi snapped. He reached behind him and into his jacket. The sly grin on his face suddenly fell, and he began to pat his back furiously.
“What?” I asked softly.
“I dropped my gun.”
