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“Very funny.”
“Seriously, maybe you should have gotten some brains to go along with that hair.”
It only makes him chuckle. “Bad-mouth me all you want, girlie. It’s not gonna change a thing.”
Risa thought there was no way she could possibly hate this man more . . . but calling her “girlie” opens up a whole new level of loathing. She begins her next round of attacks—this time against his family. His gene pool. His mother.
“So did they slaughter the cow that gave birth to you, or did it die of natural causes?”
He continues his stall tidying, but his focus is gone. Risa can tell he’s getting rankled. “You shut up. I don’t gotta take crap like that from a dirty Unwind bitch!”
Good. Let him curse at her. Because the angrier he gets, the more it plays in Risa’s favor. Now she delivers her final salvo. A series of cruel assertions about the man’s anatomy. Assertions of severe inadequacy. At least some of them must be true, because he loses it, getting red in the face.
“When I’m done with you,” he growls, “you ain’t gonna be worth what you are now—that’s for sure!”
He lunges for her, his big hands out in front of him—and as he throws himself forward, Risa raises the pitchfork that she’s concealed in the hay. She doesn’t have to do any more than that: just hold the thing up. His weight and momentum do all the work.
The amateur parts pirate thoroughly impales himself and pulls back, taking the pitchfork with him.
“Whad’ya do to me! Whad’ya do!”
The pitchfork flails back and forth like an appendage in his chest as he curses and screams. Risa knows it’s hit some vital organ because of all the blood and the speed at which he goes down. In less than ten seconds, he collapses against the far wall of the stall and dies with his eyes open and staring not quite at her, but off to her left, as if maybe in his last moments he saw an angel over her shoulder, or Satan, or whatever a man like him sees when he dies.
Risa considers herself a compassionate human being, but she feels no remorse for this man. She does, however, begin to feel a deepening sense of regret. Because her hand is still caught in the cable. And the only human being who knows she’s here is now lying across the stall, dead.
And Risa cannot believe the situation she’s put herself in. Again.
* * *
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“You wonder who I am? Yeah, sometimes I do too. My name is Cyrus Finch. My name is also Tyler Walker. At least one-eighth of me is. See, it’s like that when you get jacked up on some other dude’s gray matter, dig? Now I don’t feel like me or him, but less than both of us. Less than whole.
“If you’ve gotten yourself an unwound part and regret it, you’re not alone. That’s why I started the Tyler Walker Foundation. Call us at 800-555-1010. We don’t want your money; we don’t want your vote—we just want to fix what’s broken. That’s 800-555-1010. We’ll help you make peace with your piece.”
ront door is unlocked—careless of her to leave it that way. But a moment later, as he crosses from the foyer into the living room, he learns in no uncertain terms that it wasn’t her doing. He’s hit in the head with one of his wife’s heavier knickknacks and falls to the ground. Dazed, but still conscious, he looks up to see the face of his attacker.
It’s just a kid of maybe sixteen. One of the “ferals” the news and neighbors keep complaining about. The lawless, vicious by-product of modern civilization. He’s gangly and malnourished, with an anger in his eyes that was only partially relieved by smashing a stranger in the head.
“Where’s the money?” he demands. “Where’s the safe?”
Even in pain, Janson can almost laugh. “There is no safe.”
“Don’t lie to me! A house like this always has a safe!”
He marvels at how the boy can be so dangerous and so naive at once. But then again, ignorance and blind cruelty have been known to go hand in hand. On a dark whim, Rheinschild reaches into his coat pocket and tosses the kid his medal.
“Take it. It’s gold,” he says. “I have no use for it anymore.”
The kid catches the medal in a hand that’s missing two fingers. “You’re lying. This ain’t gold.”
“Fine,” says Rheinschild. “So kill me.”
The kid turns the medallion over in his hands a few times. “The Nobel Prize? I don’t think so. It’s fake.”
“Fine,” says Rheinschild again. “So kill me.”
“Shut up! I didn’t say anything about killing you, did I?” The teen hefts it, feeling its weight. Rheinschild pulls himself up to a sitting position, still feeling his head spin from the blow. He may have a concussion. He doesn’t care.
