Page 45 of A Friend in the Glass

“Sam Auden.”

“Yes, and whoareyou, Mr. Auden?”

The question had the shape of a trap.

“Are you a journalist?” Jen asked.

“What?”

“Because let me tell you, you’re finished. Your editor or your publisher or whoever I’m going to sue after this debacle, they’re not going to be happy with you. This is private property. You’re breaking and entering. Not to mention being very, very stupid.”

Sam tried to come up with something, but nothing came. Adrenaline buzzed through him, making his hands tremble, and any kind of thought seemed a long way off.

“Who,” Jen asked slowly, “are you?”

He said the first thing that came to mind: “We know about Stonefish.”

Fear made her expression contract. Only for a moment. And only once. She was good, Sam thought, at putting it away. Good at hiding it. But it had been there. And he’d seen it.

“What does it matter?” her husband said. “Who cares who they are? You heard him—they know about Stonefish!”

This time, it wasn’t fear. It was closer to rage. And this time, Jen Nasta didn’t try to hide it. She turned on her husband, and when he saw her face, he shrank into his shitty little blazer so fast that the brass buttons quivered. She held him in her gaze for another heartbeat. And then she said to Chad, “Handle this.”

Chad nodded.

As Jen Nasta and her husband moved off down the hallway, Sam tried to think of something to say.

“We have the emails,” he called. “If anything happens to us, people are going to know.”

The low light rendered her more as a shape than anything else, all the fine details eroded away, but she stopped and glanced back. And then she said, “Find out if that’s true.”

They turned a corner, and their footsteps died into silence.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” Chad said, still playing little brother behind Jarhead. “You’re going to be real smart so nothing happens to your butt buddy here. Right?”

Sam nodded.

“Take a few steps back. Then I want you to turn around and put your hands behind your head.”

Sam cut his eyes to Rufus.

Rufus’s face was the color of dirty dishwater, his eyes wide with fear and wet with unshed tears, but he nodded at Sam.

Sam moved back, turned, and laced his fingers behind his head.

Shuffling sounds came, and then footsteps on carpet.

“Now this next part, don’t get any ideas,” Chad said. He was right behind Sam now. “I’m going to take this.” Chad shoved Sam’s coat out of the way and removed Sam’s pistol from its holster. He beat a quick retreat, and from the office he’d just left came the sound of a desk drawer rattling open and then closed again. As Chad came back to the hallway, he said, “If you turn around, I’m going to shoot you. Then Shane’s going to shoot the dyke.”

“I’m not—” Rufus bit back any further offense.

“Clear?”

Sam nodded. Or he thought he did. His voice cracked when he made himself say, “Clear.”

“Ok. Here we go. Straight out the door to the elevator.”

Sam started toward the front of the office. He could hear Chad a few steps behind, and then the slightly uneven steps of Shane forcing Rufus along. As Sam walked, he looked for something, anything. But it was a hallway of closed doors, and there was nothing.

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