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He turns to me.
“You’re nothing but a loudmouth hustler. You have the skills to watch the room? Bullshit. You’re some hotshot killer? Bullshit. You’ve been to Hell? That’s the biggest bullshit of all. But it’s a nice line to the right people. The kind of unhinged street trash you spend your time with.”
I check the time on my phone again. I swear time has stopped completely.
“Ishii wants to kill me. Did you know that?”
“Good luck to him, I say,” Willem says.
“But I work for Abbot.”
“I know.”
“Which means you sort of work for me. I mean, as part of security it’s your job to fall on a grenade for anyone on the council.”
“I know.”
“That means me.”
“Unfortunately.”
I lean back.
“Still like your job?”
“I like my job fine. I just want you to stop talking.”
“You got it, pal.”
We watch the party for a while. The monitors hurt my eyes. I’m afraid they’re going to give me another Trotsky headache.
“Audsley was a friend of mine,” says Willem.
“You need better friends.”
“It really would be a black mark on the whole security team’s record if he was to kill you.”
Abbot looks up into one of the cameras and twirls his finger a little, saying it’s almost time to wrap things up.
Willem zooms in on him.
“The thing to remember about security is we’re only human. We have good days and bad. If Audsley was to show up . . .” Willem shrugs. “It could be one of our bad days.”
He grins at me and I grin back, but his smile is bigger because I know he means every word of it. Some people just can’t take a joke.
AS THE GUESTS straggle out, Abbot comes into the surveillance room.
“What do you think?” he says. “Did you see or hear anything?”
I shrug.
“It was all manicures and shrimp puffs down here. Did you pick up anything, Willem?”
“I’m not the Wormwood expert,” he says.
“Still, did you notice anything unusual?” says Abbot.
“No, sir.”
