95

Coming out of the upstairs half bath, Canker and Yessman heard Blackridge call to them from the far end of the hallway, but they didn't hear what he said because they were still laughing about a diarrhea joke that Yessman had told. Yessman always laughed at his own jokes louder and longer than anyone, which was okay with Canker because they were usually damn funny. Besides, Yessman's laugh was infectious.

As Blackridge disappeared into the master bedroom, which they had searched mere minutes earlier, the screaming started downstairs. It sounded like the girl, Amity, which was something of a surprise because both Canker and Yessman had thought Falkirk would have his fun with the woman. Canker didn't care if the boss man got it off with the full-quart beauty or the half-pint, whatever turned him on. Vince Canker wasn't judgmental. Wrong and right were just words. If it felt right, it was right. If it felt wrong, you were probably just confused, and if you thought about it some more, then it would feel right.

When Canker went into the master bedroom, with Yessman close behind, Blackridge was on the floor, either dead or waiting for a fast ride to the ICU. Coltrane had a pistol, and Harkenbach had a shotgun, and none of this made any sense to Vince Canker. They had ported out before the sedative gas got them. They were gone and free, and there was no reason for them to port back here fifteen minutes later. They wouldn't have come back for Pellafino. Who the hell was he to them? Nobody. The woman was a looker, but the world was full of lookers. You didn't put your ass on the line for any woman, and the girl was just a damn kid, in a world with too damn many noisy kids causing global warming and wasting government money getting useless college degrees in the literature of Fiji when those funds could better be used to increase the salaries for men like Vince who did the hard work that kept the country functioning.

Canker and Yessman had entered the bedroom with their pistols holstered. They didn't raise their hands high like in old Western movies, but they acted suitably chagrined and respectful, waiting for an opening. Guns weren't the end-all and be-all. They had knives and razor-sharp throwing stars and wicked retractable blades in the toes of their boots. Even at a disadvantage like this, they knew a score of ways to turn the tables and kill their adversaries, and they had done so before. The best thing they had going for them was that Harkenbach was a prissy professor scientist who wore bow ties and ran away from his troubles, while Coltrane was an antique geek with more books in his house than any real man would ever tolerate. Blackridge appeared to be in a bad way, true enough, but the two men who had done that to him were pale faced and sweaty and obviously sickened by the violence they had committed. They didn't have the guts for this, and if you didn't have the guts for the game, you were dead men standing.

"Let's be reasonable," Vince said. "A little negotiation, and we can all be winners here."

The volume of gunfire came as a surprise to him.