Mack sat back on his heels, reached a hand up to push his hair out of his face, and left a streak of blood across his forehead. “He’s dead,” he said in a flat voice.
Maggie opened her mouth, tried to speak, and then shut it again, swallowing back the nausea. “No kidding,” she finally managed, moving into the room and shutting the door behind her with a silent click. “Did you do it?”
There was no feigning his astonishment. “Why the hell would I kill him? He was supposed to be my ticket out of this mess.”
“Maybe.” She moved closer. She’d seen dead men before, far too many. People dead from violence, from starvation, from the ravages of illness. But she never got used to it. “How long have you been here?”
“Just a few minutes.”
“And he was like this when you got here?”
“No.”
“No?” She looked up, startled, into his bleak face.
“He was still alive. He tried to say something, but I couldn’t quite get all of it.”
“What did you get?”
“He thought I was Jeffrey Van Zandt.”
“What makes you think that?”
“That’s what he kept calling me,” Mack snapped.
“Maybe he wasn’t calling you that at all. Maybe he was telling you to find him. If Peter can’t help us”—there was a catch to her voice—“then Van Zandt’s our only other possibility. At least that I know of.”
“Wallace wasn’t in much shape to be cross-examined, Maggie,” Mack said dryly, moving away from the body.
Maggie stared down at him for a moment longer. “Damn you, Pulaski,” she said in a quiet, bitter voice without looking up. “You may not care that a man is dead, but I do. He was my boss, my lover, and my friend. And I haven’t got enough of them to spare.”
“Enough what? Lovers or friends?”
She turned to him, ready to do b
attle, when she realized that he’d said it on purpose, to jolt her from her grief. His next words verified it.
“Are you okay?” She looked at him, and his hazel eyes seemed more concerned with her than with their sudden, untenable situation.
“I’m okay. We’ve got to get the hell out of here.” There was blood on her hands, and she wiped them on the carpet before rising on surprisingly steady feet.
“But the police …”
“Will probably be here any moment. And I don’t think they’re going to want to hear what we have to tell them. I think we’ve been set up. What the hell are you doing down here anyway? I thought you were taking a nap.”
“I answered the phone,” he admitted somewhat sheepishly. “It was Wallace, asking me to meet him here. What about you? I thought you were buying us some clothes.”
“I got the clothes. I thought it might be worth checking in here in case Peter got here earlier. Apparently he did.” She was suddenly very still. “Do you hear sirens?”
“I can’t tell in this building,” Mack said.
“They’re probably already here,” she said bitterly. “I think—” Her voice stopped as the shrill telephone broke through. They both turned to stare at it with a kind of repulsive fascination.
“Should I answer it?” Mack asked finally.
“No.”
“But what if it’s Van Zandt? What if it’s someone with the answers?”