Every Kind of Wicked (A Gardiner and Renner Novel Book 6)
Every Kind of Wicked: Chapter 34

Monday, 5:35 p. m.

If Wayne had been faking his knee injury in order to keep his crutch-weapon close to him, he no longer needed to. He clutched his knee and groaned about the now-torn ligament, the lumps on his head, and the cuts on his checks and mouth. He sat on the floor of the reception desk area, its harsh fluorescent lights illuminating every grimace—not that the others spared any sympathy. Riley had called for an ambulance, but no one told Wayne that.

Maggie, meanwhile, helped herself to medical supplies from one of the exam rooms and taped a large gauze pad to the small wound next to her breastbone. It hurt, but when she steeled herself to look at it, she could see how shallow the track went. “Just a flesh wound,” she told her reflection in the mirror over the exam room sink, then repeated it more forcefully when she saw a sneaky tear well up in each eye. Death had been, quite literally, only an inch away. She pulled her stained shirt back down and opened the door, not about to give herself time to think how an adhesive bandage couldn’t fix all that had gone wrong. If she did, she would be there all night.

Jack had cleared all the rooms of the office and lights blazed from each. She passed a door, saw movement, and found Jack combing the good doctor’s office, a tiny space with framed diplomas and swag from pharmaceutical companies and not much else. Jack rummaged through the drawers of an old metal desk but stopped when she appeared. “You okay?”

She drew a shaky breath, feeling the tiny ache where the wound gaped. “Yeah.”

As if she had said no he crossed the room in two steps and grasped her shoulders. “Is it still bleeding? Do you need stitches? Can you breathe okay?”

He started to pull her shirt up and she slapped his hand, so hard and so instinctively that it gave her the giggles. The idea of maintaining her modesty under these circumstances suddenly seemed friggin’ hysterical, and she clapped one hand over her mouth to stifle it. He dropped his arm and stood back, awkwardly hovering.

She insisted through a giggle, “I’m fine. It’s nothing. Did you find anything?”

“These.” He waved his hand at the desk, where four prescription pads with Phillip J. Castleman preprinted at the top. “A fairly perfect setup. Should we come looking for Phillip J., he gives us the innocent routine—ex-partner, don’t know where he is, sorry. If we thought about asking his customers to put a face to the name, none of them would want to give up their pill supply to help us out.”

“What was he planning to do when the real Castleman comes back from the Congo?”

“He probably hoped he wouldn’t. It’s a dangerous place. Found this, too,” he added, holding out a paper. It was a bill for rental of a business space, but not the space they stood in.

“What is it?”

“It’s the link.”

They burst back into the reception desk area, where Wayne sat and moaned and Riley searched drawers while pointing out how he, Wayne, had killed a cop so whether he, Riley, turned him over to an angry mob of homicide detectives or the state with its new and improved method of lethal injection, Wayne’s future appeared less than rosy. If he cooperated now, he might spare himself a bit of mistreatment—as in, death—down the road.

Wayne wasn’t buying it. Or he writhed with too much pain to buy it. Maggie had probably dislocated his knee, about which she felt not a twinge of guilt. She felt worse for the sugar glider. She straightened up his cage, refilled his food and water, and scooped him back inside.

Jack waved the invoice in the guy’s face. “Who rents this place? You or Jeffers?”

Wayne glanced at the paper, puffed short breaths in and out, and said, “That’s got nothing to do with me.”

“Then what is it? Why is Jeffers renting it?”

“I just work here.”

“You killed three people for this guy. And you can’t tell us what’s in this building?”

Wayne looked up at Jack with the ghost of his old insouciance. “I didn’t kill nobody. And you can’t prove I did.”

Jack straightened. “Fine. We’ll go there and see for ourselves, then.”

“No.” The word seemed to burst from Wayne before he could stop it, and they watched his face as he tried to think of something clever. “I’ll . . . I’ve got information…. I can tell you about the pills—”

“Wayne, Wayne, Wayne,” Riley said, clucking regretfully. “Too little, too late, dude. Our next step is plain, and I’m kinda feeling like we don’t need you anymore.”

And on that note the backup officers and the paramedics arrived, ready to take over, and Riley and Jack left them to it. Maggie heard the nurse/killer continue to protest as they slipped out the door.

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