Fletcher shot Waylon a look that was supposed to convey a general sense of dismay and exponentially growing panic, but he’d trained his gaze on Deepti and her pink stun gun as if trying to gauge how badly something bedazzled could hurt. (A lot, obviously.) It wasn’t the kind of weapon Dyer would have lying around—it was the kind she’d stash in a leather purse. One she definitely knew how to wield in emergencies.
“We tried to stop them,” Other Brian answered Bertram’s lingering question pathetically, “but the chandelier…it fell.”
“Disappointing,” Bertram mused over Brian’s lifeless shape as his protégé Wicked Witch of the Easted beneath the chandelier. “I hoped I’d be able to work with him for longer. Great ideas. Subpar execution.”
He dipped inside a refrigerator, masqueraded behind two cabinet doors. Fished out a bowl of cleaned, tailless shrimp. Pink and slimy. Tossing a crustacean down the gullet, Bertram made a noise of satisfaction at the back of his throat. Out of the corner of her eye, Other Brian shrunk into himself, his stomach clawing toward his spine.
Bertram’s beady eyes glanced between Waylon and Fletcher, Waylon and Fletcher. “I’ll admit, I am surprised to see the two ofyou in cahoots,” he said, pointing his half-eaten shrimp between them.
“We are not in cahoots!” she said. At the same time, Waylon groaned, “Cahoots? Really?”
The light from the fridge was blocked momentarily as Bertram reached back inside for a glass bottle filled with red. He shook some into a dish and swiped his next shrimp through it. Relishing the taste, he slurped all the sauce off the crustacean before biting into its flesh.
Across the room, Other Brian retched. Dragging himself off the floor, he limped toward the exit. “I’m sorry—I need to—” Another gag. “Get out.”
“You don’t like cocktail sauce?” Bertram asked, but he didn’t wait for an answer. With two unstabbed legs, he moved much quicker than Other Brian. Bertram daubed the shrimp in his vat of ketchup and horseradish, dangling it before his direct report.
Fletcher started toward them, “No, he can’t! He’s—”
But it was too late. Bertram poked the sauce-drenched shellfish between Other Brian’s pursed lips. His palm clamped over Other Brian’s mouth, refusing to let him spit it out. Other Brian’s hands found his throat, terror rearing in his eyes. Images of Other Brian’s untouched prawn on last night’s dinner plate shot through Fletcher’s mind. Soon, his lips would swell, the skin stretched taut.
“Allergic,” Fletcher said, deflating against the bar top.
Her brain was firing desperate neurons. Yes, Other Brian was responsible for aiding and abetting an attempted murder. And yes, that murder was supposed to be hers.
But she also knew there was an EpiPen in the emergency kit in the kitchen. She’d ordered one specifically for Other Brian and his overactive immune system.
She didn’t want to sit here, helpless, and watch him die.
Waylon hurled toward Deepti, fist-fighting the Taser out of hergrasp, but Fletcher couldn’t move. Her body felt frozen and on fire at the same time. Her muscles seized with fear. She didn’t register Betram reaching toward her until he had a vise grip on her shoulder.
A choking noise came from Other Brian’s direction that Fletcher had to look away from—both for the preservation of her own sanity and because Betram’s fist yanked her neck at an unsustainable angle. The joints in her spine popped, stretched, strained.
She bit down the begging whimper that threatened to spill out her mouth. Realistically, she’d be more than willing to grovel for her life, but she’d rather not have to.
Waylon pivoted his attention and tried to reach for her, but the marketer knotted his knuckles in her hair and said, “You want to watch her die? Take another step.”
Tension rippled down Waylon’s neck. “You know, I never was any good at doing what I’m told.”
“No time to learn like the present,” Bertram said, his words slurring with passion. “Fletcher and I are going to come to a little agreement. And if not, I’ll have to get rid of her.”
Waylon crept forward, testing the waters. “You won’t.”
Oh, thanks.Call his bluff when it was her life on the line.
Fletcher imagined Bertram’s eyes narrowing as his grip pulled against her roots. “You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you. I just won’t let it happen.”
He really had to stop vowing to protect her because it could too easily be misconstrued for kindness. Unfortunately, any heroism was short-lived. Deepti scooped her stun gun off the ground and jammed it into Waylon’s back. He hit the floor with athunkand a groan.
Fletcher had to figure this one out for herself.
Everything she knew about Bertram felt just out of reach. That could have something to do with the way her vertebrae sounded like a beloved breakfast cereal at the moment.Think, Fletcher. Think.
She knew his belly was putting too much pressure on the buttons of his collared shirt and that he should have invested some of his annual bonus in a cologne that didn’t smell like a seventh-grade locker room. She knew he’d been in charge of the Marketing department for a handful of years, but he wanted more. They all wanted more. That was why they came here.
Calendar pages populated behind her eyes as his finger grip tightened. Meetings with Dyer, did he have any?
