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Reggie looked around nervously. “If they find you here?”
“What? They’ll kill me?”
“We don’t do that,” she said sternly.
“Oh really?” He reached in his jacket pocket and slipped out the syringe he’d taken from Niles Jansen at the cottage where he had been held captive. He held it up.
Reggie looked from the syringe to Shaw. “What are you doing with that?”
“They were going to kill me with it, Reggie.”
“That’s impossible. We never told anyone—”
“The guy I knocked out said the order came from someone else.” He looked in the direction of the mansion. “Maybe somebody in the big house I passed?”
“Shaw, that is just not possible.”
“So do you guys just carry this stuff around with you?”
“That poison was intended for Kuchin. But we already had a syringe with us.”
“So why a second one?”
“In case something happened to the first, I imagine,” she said lamely.
“Or in case someone got in the way. Like me.”
“This is absurd. He actually said that somebody ordered him to kill you?”
“I’m not really in the habit of making stuff like that up. I mean, what would be the point?”
Reggie slowly moved away from him and slumped down on a weathered stone bench on the edge of the small cemetery. Shaw joined her there, drawing up his collar against the chilly air and cloudy skies that had come back to England with a vengeance as if to make up for the rare heat and sunshine.
“The plan was to let you go once we’d finished with Kuchin.”
“Plans change if the right person wants them to. Who here has that kind of clout?”
Reggie involuntarily glanced toward the mansion.
“So I was right. They’re in there. You got a name?”
“Why? Are you going to go in there and arrest him?”
“So it’s a he? Trouble is, I don’t actually have any authority to arrest anyone.”
“Then what? Kill him? You go after him you’ll have a lot of other people you’ll have to kill too.”
“Including you?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation.
“Well, then I find my options limited.” He handed her the syringe. “Just make sure whoever you stick with that really needs killing. No second chances there.”
Reggie held the capped needle in her open palm while gazing up at Shaw. “Why did you come here?”
“Wanted to see for myself the competition, I guess. Nice digs. My office is either at forty thousand feet or right at ground level with lots of excitement going on all around me.”
“Is that all?”
