Page 65 of Elliot

“Done,” he confirmed.

Elliot pulled out his Miranda card and read it to Ulman. The man said he understood and then looked between him and Silas. “If I testify against Jessica, I’ll get a lighter sentence, right?”

“Do you want a lawyer?” Silas bit back at the man.

“No. I’m willing to testify against her.”

“As I said, Jessica is dead. She won’t be on trial,” Silas said and sat down in a chair, holding a tea towel to his right arm.

“You mean I’m going to get the blame for all of this?” He sat forward. “Wait, I can give you information on the system. That would help, right?”

“The system?” Elliot drawled as he listened to sirens draw near. “Con, did you tell NYPD we’re on location?”

“Yeah, not my first rodeo. They’re responding because they have calls of shots fired. They aren’t going to let the good citizens of the Upper East Side think they aren’t policing effectively.”

Elliot nodded at Silas, who relaxed back into the chair.

Dillon stared at him. “Who are you talking to?”

“Does it matter? What’s the system?”

“That’s how she hired them—the men,” Dillon explained with a bit of hysteria.

Elliot smiled at him. “We have all the information we need on that company. Thank you.”

Dillon’s terrified expression slipped off his face, and the man’s eyes narrowed. A completely different voice came from him when he spoke next. He cocked his head, and a sneer appeared across his face. It was the weirdest thing Elliot had ever seen. “Even if you send him to prison, I’ll find a way to kill her, you know. Jessica was a tool that was damaged. I was going to kill her anyway.”

Silas’s eyes widened as much as Elliot felt his own widen. “Send him to jail?”

The man hissed in a breath and smiled. “Dillon.”

“And who are you?” Silas asked. The man slowly turned his head toward the seated man. “Nathanial.”

“Are you getting this?” Elliot asked Con.

“Dude, that’s some freaky shit. The voice doesn’t even sound the same,” Con said. “I’ve got a recording of everything.”

A NYPD cop announced his arrival. “Guardian Security,” Elliot called out, not taking his eyes off the man in front of him.

Just as quickly as the sneer appeared, it disappeared. Dillon put his hands to his eyes and started to cry. “I don’t want to go to jail. Don’t make me. Please.”

The cop walked into the living room and looked around. “Need anything?”

“Cuffs,” Elliot said, nodding to the crying man.

“Are you sure? Doesn’t seem like much of a threat to me.” The cop laughed as he pulled out two pairs of flex cuffs and handed them over.

“Yeah, you weren’t here a minute ago,” Silas said.

Elliot cuffed Dillon as securely as he could without damaging the man’s shoulder that had just been operated on. He wasn’t going to take chances, so he used the second pair of flex cuffs to ensure the man couldn’t escape.

“Man, you think he’s dangerous?” The cop laughed.

Dillon stopped crying and turned his head toward the cop. “No. They thinkI’mdangerous. They’re right.” He hissed in another breath and let it out slowly. “How would you like to die, officer?”

Elliot watched the officer turn white. The cop looked from their suspect to each of them in turn. “Holy hell, how did he do that?”

“Magic. Pure fucking magic.” Nathanial laughed a deep timbre that Dillon’s voice didn’t have.

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