Page 5 of Capitol Matters

“In the flesh,” I replied with a grin.

The expression she returned was pure terror.

Donovan reached around me to take the remaining length of rope. “I’ve got it.” He grabbed the woman’s companion and started tying him up.

Across the room, Ripley had discarded the medicinebottles and stood with his arms crossed. “Now what?” He glowered at Vinton, who flapped a dismissive hand.

“Lemme think.”

“Don’t strain yourself,” I muttered.

The bald man looked around. Other than the medical equipment strewn across the floor and the sniveling janitors now tethered together, nothing had changed. So, I didn’t quite track his train of thought when he said, “Let’s make it an accident.”

“Come again?” Ripley’s eyebrow arched up into the curtain of his black hair.

“What iftheyhad an accident?” Vinton waved at the cleaners immobilized on the ground. “There’s plague all over this place. If they got too much exposure, they’d die.” His angled glance at Ripley asked for confirmation but received none.

I fought the urge to laugh again. “You think they would have done that while mopping, or…?”

Vinton turned his hulking form toward Ripley. “Breathe on them.”

The two men squared off. I snickered at the sight of Vinton—six and a half feet tall and two hundred plus pounds of muscle—and Ripley quite the opposite, posturing at one another.

The scrawny teen didn’t budge as he huffed a breath. “No,” he said. “And this is taking entirely too long. If you’ll excuse me, I have a zombie to check on.”

He started walking back the way we’d come in, but Vinton surged forward and caught him by the wrist. Ripley jerked immediately free, then whipped around to scowl at the muscular man with such venom it silencedthe room. I’d seen enough in the past three weeks to know better than to invade Ripley’s personal space. Forget breathing on the cleaning crew, he could lip lock with Vinton right now and flood him with poison like a living balloon.

“Do it, orhe’llmake you.” Vinton stabbed a gnarled finger at me.

I leaned close to Donovan’s ear to brag, “That definitely counts.”

The two continued their stare down as I approached on tiptoe. I circled around behind Ripley, preferring to be opposite the receiving end if he decided to attack.

“I want no part of this,” I began. “But, if I did, how exactly am I supposed to make him spew plague? It’s not like twisting his arm.”

“Try something,” Vinton seethed, talking to me without breaking eye contact with Ripley. “You’ll figure it out.”

Priceless. Definitely one of my better decisions to tag along on this job. Where else could I source this kind of quality entertainment?

“Right.” I dragged the word out. “So, how about I squeeze him really hard and see what comes out?”

“Blood, probably,” Donovan whispered.

My cackling laugh shattered the tension in the room. Both Vinton and Ripley looked at me with varying shades of aggravation.

“This is ridiculous.” I shook my head. “You wanna trash this place? Blow it up. As for these poor schmucks—” the janitors gawked as I gestured their way—“bring them with us. We’ll go to Bitters’ and pickup some magical roofies. We can drug them, then drop them off somewhere. You’re making this whole thing harder than it has to be.”

And I might have been making it too easy. Our friendly neighborhood alchemist, Nicholas Nash, had a potion for every problem, but the plague had been hell on his business, for which he rightly blamed us. The question was not if hecouldhelp us with this problem, but if hewould.

“We’re not taking them anywhere,” Vinton said. “Too much work.”

I aimed my flashlight between his beady eyes. “I know you’ve got a hard-on for death, but there are other ways of dealing with people. They don’t need to die.”

“Have you been practicing that rhetoric, Capitol man?” Avery shot me an impudent grin.

I recoiled from the accusation as he continued.

“But I do think you’re onto something. Let’s blow the place.” He nodded to the janitors. “And them with it.”

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