Chapter Eight

Rufus clipped the table with his hip hard enough that there was a moment—a second, really—as he was falling to the floor, that he wondered if he’d broken the bone. He had no idea how much force it took to break a hip. Not as much as breaking a femur, that he knew. He’d read all about bone breaks after his bully at PS14 had chucked him down a flight of stairs and Rufus had broken his arm on the asbestos-ridden linoleum.

4,000 newtons of force.

And maybe he remembered that so well because he’d been a dumb kid and thought the book meant newtons as in Fig Newtons. So he’d asked the school’s librarian about it, and they’d gently corrected him, which was how Rufus had come to learn that 4,000 newtons of force actually meant about 900 pounds.

Anyway. He didn’t break his hip.

“ Sonofabitch !” Rufus shouted as he hit the floor. White-hot pain, like the senses in his body momentarily lost all reason, shot up and down his hip, his leg, all the way to his toes. But when Rufus looked up from where he’d landed, all pain ceased—like his body suddenly waved a white flag and his brain had accepted its surrender. He watched a well-built guy sucker punch Sam and knock him back against the wall beside the doors they’d just exited.

“—shouldn’t have shown your face again, Auden,” the guy in a too-tight suit was saying as he grabbed the front of Sam’s shirt, pinning him in place.

Stumbling to his feet, Rufus ran at the guy and punched him in the right kidney as hard as he fucking could. When the stranger reared back and screamed, Sam shoved him away, but the movement didn’t have much force behind it—Sam still looked a little cross-eyed.

Rufus pushed the asshat out of the way, grabbed Sam’s hand, and dragged him along the hall that opened back up on the lower floor’s exhibition area. Over his shoulder, Rufus shouted, “Piss blood and get fucked!” He plowed through the crowd, making a beeline for the escalators, his vision tunneling, noise turning into something staticky—like an old television set with bunny ear antennas.

Rufus wasn’t even entirely sure why he was running.

Instinct .

He’d survived this long because he wasn’t stupid enough to stick around. But being here—surrounded by rich people, powerful people, smart people talking in another fucking language—and then someone touching Sam, hurting Sam, calling Sam by name … Rufus knew nothing started here would end in their favor.

He didn’t stop moving, didn’t stop dragging Sam along, not until they were upstairs and out the glass doors of the Javits. Only then, with the salted sidewalk crunching under his every step, did Rufus stop to take a breath.

“Come on,” Rufus said once he had enough air in his lungs.

He started toward Thirty-Fourth Street, looking over his shoulder a few times, but no one was following them. It was just Rufus, Sam, the clank of the flagpole overhead, and a few dozen other attendees leaving for the day, wandering in different directions to various hotels surrounding the Javits.

“Who was that guy?” Rufus finally asked. “I hope he wasn’t someone important, because I punched him pretty good.”

Sam rubbed his jaw. “That sucker-punching, shit-eating, pusillanimous walking cock hole is Brady Ellsworth. He looks like shit; that’s why I didn’t recognize him at first.”

They crossed the street and Rufus tried for something lighthearted—to cut the tension. “You’re cute when you talk like that.”

“He’s Lew’s best friend—that’s how he’d describe it. Lew, being an even bigger and more gaping bloody gash than Ellsworth, doesn’t really have friends, though, so Brady is really more like Lew’s pet troll he sends out to fuck things up.”

Across from them was Fifty-Five Hudson Yards, a new skyscraper with weirdly rounded glass walls that sort of looked like LEGO pieces. Rufus didn’t like it. He thought Sam probably didn’t either. That is, if Sam were in the right mindset in which to take in the surrounding architecture. After passing the glass abomination of fifty-something stories, Rufus turned onto Thirty-Third to escape a wind tunnel.

On the corner, he stopped to look up at Sam. “Why would Brady appear out of nowhere just to pop you one? Are you ok, by the way?” Rufus touched Sam’s face.

“Fine. And Brady is here because Lew is here.” For a moment, the tension seemed to go out of Sam, and he rested against Rufus’s touch. His eyelids lowered, a heartbeat passed, and then they snapped open again, and Sam straightened. “He was in that room. The Conasauga panel, I mean. That’s who I saw, and that’s why I freaked the fuck out and sent us right back into Brady’s path.”

Rufus lowered his hand, tucked it into his jacket pocket. “Lew was in there? Which guy was he? The one talking?”

“No. Lew was sitting in the front. He was having some kind of argument—that’s what it looked like, anyway.”

“So… if this Brady Bunch Bitch was waiting for you, does that mean Lew saw you?”

“I don’t know.” Sam pinched the bridge of his nose, and his eyes shuttered for another heart-stopping moment. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Ok.” Rufus hunched his shoulders a little before nodding to himself. “Ok,” he repeated. “What do you want to do?”

A taxi was slowing down on the street as it approached them, and Sam fixed it with more than his usual level of hatred. He caught Rufus’s arm and pulled him into a walk. The taxi rolled behind them, and Sam threw another look over his shoulder before walking faster.

“Fuck me,” he muttered. In a louder voice, he said, “It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that Shareed contacts me out of the blue, offering to sell me information about Stonefish, information that she says Lew Frazer was interested in, and then Shareed ends up dead after calling a convention where Lew just happens to be offering corporate blowjobs to the same dumbfuck company that was behind Stonefish in the first place.”

“I admit,” Rufus ventured after a pause. “The probabilities of it all being chance seem slim.”

“So, the next step is to fill in the blanks. What did Shareed have? Why did Lew kill her? And how?”

“Well, if she had something tangible, it wasn’t left behind in that hotel room. Give me your hand.”

Sam held out his hand.

Rufus took it, sliding his cold fingers between Sam’s own warm ones. He thought about Edmund Burn, PhD, the third edition of What to Do When Anxiety Strikes . You were supposed to utilize the five senses to regain control of your body and mind, but Sam was intent on moving, was probably too agitated to stop and humor Rufus’s request that he see, touch, hear, smell, and taste. So Rufus improvised and hoped that his touch would be as comforting as Sam’s was when he was working himself up. “I wanted to hold your hand,” Rufus lied while shrugging. “But someone back there probably would’ve strung me up to the flagpole by my wiener.”

“Do you want to tell Erik about Lew and what we think might be going on?”

“If you want me to involve Erik, I will. You might have to rub burn ointment on my ass, though, because he’s going to be feisty.”

“Erik wouldn’t be able to do anything,” Sam said, more to himself than to Rufus. “I don’t even know if he’d believe me. Not without something concrete.”

“Then I guess we should ask more questions about Shareed,” Rufus concluded. “Like, for one, why do you think Lew murdered her? I mean, Lew specifically. Because setting up an elaborate display meant to look like an OD…. I don’t know the guy, but that seems sort of overdramatic, you know?”

“It seems like a good way to keep anyone from thinking she was murdered.”

“But that wasn’t my only question, Sam.” Rufus looked at him. “Why do you think Lew is a murderer?”

“Because she said his name, Rufus. She said he wanted the information she had. This is Benning all over again, do you get that? Went killed himself because they pinned it on him, and nobody would look twice at Lew Frazer because they thought he’d hung the moon, even though I knew he was hiding something. Now he killed this woman, and I can’t even get you to believe me. Why the fuck would I expect Erik to?”

Rufus pulled Sam to a stop. “Don’t make it sound like that. I’m asking because—because I don’t know who any of these people are. I don’t know what happened firsthand at Benning. I barely fucking understood those stupid keywords the panelists were flinging at the audience. Shareed said Lew’s name, ok I get that. Said he wanted information on Stonefish, as well. Fine. But she said your name too, and you want information too, and you surely didn’t fucking kill her.” Rufus worked his jaw for a minute before swallowing the softball lodged in his throat. “I don’t want you having tunnel vision.”

“Right.” His voice was tight. “Thanks.”

“Sam,” Rufus protested. “I’m on your side. I’m always on your side.”

“No, you’re right. I’m obsessing. But I don’t think I’m wrong about Shareed. Someone killed her.”

“Then we need to prove it without a forensics or medical degree,” Rufus said, offering a hesitant smile.

“Fuck, we don’t even know who she is, not really.”

“We can start there, then.”

“Fine,” Sam said as he started walking again.