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DERRICK’S ATTENTION was all on Hauser. He made some argument, but I wasn’t paying attention to him.
While they were both busy, I pulled out my phone and started it recording.
That was the plan, anyway.
I was trying to be subtle, working the phone down at waist level, and only glancing at it in my periphery. But doing it that way, I tried three times to unlock the screen. It wouldn’t recognize my fingerprint.
Once I had it unlocked, I had a new problem. How was I supposed to record them? I was pretty sure my phone came with a voice recorder app, but I’d never used it. And after swiping for several seconds, I realized my apps weren’t sorted alphabetically. I couldn’t tell how they were sorted.
After a few frantic passes, I gave up on the voice recorder app and swiped back to my camera. I switched it to video mode and hit the Record button.
I tried, rather. Just as I was pushing the button, Derrick chopped my wrist like I was coming at him with a knife. He shouted, “Hey! What are you doing?” But he didn’t wait for an answer.
My phone smashed against the doorframe with the high-tech crish of an $800 touchscreen breaking into spiderwebs.
Rage flooded my vision with red, and every sense of self-preservation went out the door.
“Are you high?!” I screamed at him. “That was my phone! I still have payments on that!”
He raised a fist, like an offer to give me a drubbing, and I fell silent. Meek as a mouse.
He shook his head at me. “You think I want to kill you?” He made it sound like the answer was no.
Hauser was gone. My phone was on the floor, but it might have been recording. I put on a sympathetic tone. “Of course you don’t.”
“Of course I don’t!” he said. “I just want to sell the drugs and spend the money. It’s Hauser keeps making me kill people.”
I didn’t look at my phone. I held Derrick’s eye. “That’s so unfair! He made you kill the banker?”
“Yeah! And kidnap the P. I. All of it!”
“The P. I?” I asked it automatically, unthinking.
“That girl! Trina!” He frowned. Angry. “The drugs was easy. All this — is hard.”
“You don’t have to kill me,” I said. I tacked on, just a moment late, “Derrick.” For the record. Then I asked, “Hey, what’s your last name?”
He’d been lost in his own complaints, but now he focused on me again, and I regretted it instantly.
“You think I want to kill you?”
“No, Derrick!” I said it confidently. Like a salesman or something. “I think you’re trapped in a bad situation, and you want a way out.”
“I am trapped. And want out.” Even when he was agreeing with me, he made it sound like a threat.
I leaned toward him, conspiratorial. “You can get out now. Run. This apartment is the farthest from the action. You can walk out that door and disappear.” I sighed, disappointed. “Like Cass.”
I had him. I could see the hope of a bright new future shiny in his eyes. And I watched it die when I said her name.
“I ain’t no Cass,” he said. “I ain’t smart like that.”
“You’re smart enough to get out of here without another murder on your hands. The cops are on their way right now—”
He shook his head, almost disappointed. “Hauser will sort them out. That’s what he’s good at.”
“Not this time,” I said. He was clearly demoralized. If I could talk him into bailing on his boss, I could catch Hauser with Trina and pin the gun on him, too! “Not this time. I have lots of cops coming. They know about everything. The banker. The backrooms. The drugs. All of it.”
“—!”
“You didn’t want any of this,” I said. “Walk away now. Be smart like Cass. Let Hauser take the fall.”
It was a good pitch. I sold it well. It felt right, y’know? I could just tell I’d nailed it.
But he said, “Nah. I’m not smart like them.”
He wasn’t giving me much to work with. Just moping and complaining. I needed a new plan anyway. Everything I’d set in motion had already fallen apart.
I allowed myself a glance at the phone. It was face-down in the shag carpet. I had no idea if it was recording, and if so, how much it was picking up. Getting a confession on tape was always really important in movies, but I hadn’t planned through any of the angles to do that here. And I intended to use other evidence to put these guys away.
I just needed to get rid of Derrick....
His head snapped up, eyes wide and mouth open like a cartoon character having an epiphany. “The gun!” He raised his fist like he meant to kill me in one blow—his go-to move—and snarled at me, “Where’s the gun, smart guy?!”
It was so sudden and theatrical, I almost laughed. It seemed so artificial. So staged. Like he was role-playing, too.
I had a horrible, creeping realization about the nature of the universe. Before it could fully settle on me, though, he gave me a quick schoolyard shove with his free hand. “Hey! How about it?”
Yeah. He had planned that “smart guy” line before he busted in. That’s how Cass had lured him here in the first place—the promise of the gun.
It had been my plan to give it to him, too. But not like this. Not when he could hide it or run with it or—god forbid!—shoot me with it.
Ben had disarmed it, right?
It didn’t matter. I didn’t want it in their hands until I knew the rest of the plan would work. If I gave it up and Hauser “dealt with” the cops somehow, I’d have nothing at all.
“I don’t have it,” I shouted.
“Cass said—”
“Cass is a liar! You know that.”
“Yeah, but—”
“It’s not here! She lied. But I can tell you where it is. You can go get it. There’s still time.”
He said softly, apologetically, “I still have to kill you first.”
“You don’t!” I cried. “And you don’t have time. Just go!”
He crinkled up his nose, running numbers in his head. “I could do it. I...yeah. I could do it.” He rolled his shoulders, limbering up.
Then he hit me with a catchphrase. “Say your prayers, smart boy. You weren’t smart enough.”