Page 124 of Witness 8

She landed heavily, her right arm twisting behind her.

When she looked back at the door, a man stood there. For a moment, she couldn’t see his face.

His right arm was extended, and his features obscured by the gun pointed at Ruby’s head.

‘Get up, right now,’ said Brett Bale.

Ruby’s arm howled, the pain snaking up her forearm, into her triceps and the back of her shoulder. She didn’t know if it was the pain or the sudden shockwave of fear, but Ruby found that she could not move.

‘Up, now,’ said Bale. He reached over with his free hand and grabbed Ruby’s hair, hauling her to her feet as she let out a yelp of pain. Her scalp was on fire.

‘Not here,’ said Bale, and roughly turned her around, pointed her at the front door and still with a handful of her hair, shoved her forward. Ruby lost her footing, tripped and fell down the front steps to land on her back in the street.

She heard a door slamming, and managed to get her feet beneath her, ready to get up and run, when he grabbed her byher injured arm, at the wrist, and pushed her toward a Land Rover. The vehicle unlocked as he approached.

‘Get in,’ he said, and pushed the barrel of the pistol into her side, making her wince.

Ruby opened the passenger door, got in. Bale slammed her door shut, ran around to the driver’s seat, closed the door and hit the ignition button.

With the seatbelt warning signal pinging, he pulled away, steering with one hand. His other in his lap, the pistol pointed at Ruby’s belly.

‘You got a quarter of a million dollars from me. I paid it so I could find you. There’s no way you could know about me and Maggs unless she told you. Tell me exactly what she said . . .’

58

Mr. Christmas

Mr. Christmas had learned that if you have to burn your current mode of transport to hide evidence, it’s best to do it close to an airport.

He’d walked for ten minutes through a dark neighborhood, putting some distance between him and the burning vehicle, and then called a different rental company, but they had no Lincolns available. He decided on a Cadillac, black, of course, and handed over one of many credit cards that he had in his wallet, under one of many names that he carried around like extra lives.

Soon he was back in Manhattan.

He’d driven around for a while, in likely places, looking for Flynn’s Mustang, but couldn’t find it.

Instead, he parked and waited.

While he waited, he thought about the seventy-five thousand dollars Flynn had cost him. And all the trouble of killing his client. Considering that development, he thought it best to tell his man now.

He always picked up quickly for Mr. Christmas.

‘Good evening, it’s Mr. Christmas calling . . .’

‘How’d it go?’

‘I’m afraid I have to report there has been something of a dip in my standards of customer care.’

‘A dip?’

‘More of a failure, or a collapse, in those standards, really.’

‘How big of a failure?’

‘Catastrophic.’

‘So he’s dead? I told him this wasn’t a good idea. It’s not how we operate, but he insisted.’

‘In my defense, he was rather disagreeable.’