“Did you say anything that wasn’t a lie?” He presses the knife harder against his neck. “I’ll know if you’re lying now.”
Argent knows the truth won’t help him, so he avoids the question. “If you kill me, there’ll be a lot of blood,” he says desperately. “And you wouldn’t have fed me if you really meant to kill me!”
“Every man deserves a last meal.” His presses the knife harder, drawing a bead of blood.
“Wait!” Argent hisses, pulling out the only ace he has to play. “There’s a tracking chip!”
“What are you talking about?”
“My sister! When she was little she always used to wander off, so my parents had them put this tracking chip in her skin behind her ear. If she’s still with Lassiter, we can find them. But I’m the only one who knows the chip’s tracking code. Kill me and the code dies with me.”
“You son of a bitch. You knew about that chip all along!”
“If I told you, you’d have no use for me!”
“I have no use for you now!” He drops the knife and uses his bare hand to close off Argent’s windpipe. No blood. No mess. “Now that I know, I can find that code without you.” Argent tries to fight him off, figuring he’ll lose and that this is the end—but to Argent’s surprise, he’s stronger than Nelson. In fact, the man seems uncharacteristically weak. He pushes Nelson off, and Nelson stumbles, falling to one knee.
“Stay still and let me kill you!” Nelson says.
Argent grabs the knife from the ground, ready to defend himself. But Nelson doesn’t come after him. His eyes roll. His lids flutter. He tries to stand, but falls again, this time on all fours.
“Damn it!”
Then his elbows give way, and he lands facedown on the carpet, as unconscious as if he’d been tranq’d.
Argent waits a moment. Then a moment more.
“Hey. You alive?”
Nothing. He reaches down to feel Nelson’s neck. There’s a pulse, rapid and strong—but he’s hot. Really hot.
Argent can run. He can just take off and get the hell out of this situation . . . but he hesitates and stares at the unconscious parts pirate on the floor before him. He lets the pinball bounce around in his head a bit, then puts the knife gently down on the mantel. The ball is still in play, and there are plenty of points left to be scored.
44 • Nelson
When he regains consciousness, it takes him a few moments to realize where he is. The OmniWilliam Penn in Pittsburgh. The presidential suite. A detour on a wild-goose chase he should never have allowed himself to be on.
The TV in his bedroom plays an action movie at low volume. The waste-of-life grocery checker sits there watching it while eating room service French fries. He turns to Nelson and, seeing he’s awake, pulls his chair over.
“Feeling better?”
Nelson doesn’t dignify him with a response.
“This hotel’s so fancy, they got a doctor on call,” Argent says. “Had him come to check you out. Don’t worry. I cleaned up the mess before he got here and put you all snug in the bed. You talked to him a little. You remember talking to him?”
Nelson still refuses to say a thing.
“Nah, didn’t think you would. You mumbled crazy crap about a graveyard and a tornado. The doctor said those bites you got on your arms and legs—whatever they are—they’re infected. He gave you a shot of antibiotics. Tried to convince me to take you to the emergency room, but I paid him cash and he shut up about it. I got it from your wallet. Hope you don’t mind under the circumstances. Didn’t cheat ya or anything. There’s a receipt. From the pharmacy too, on accounta I filled the prescription for more antibiotics. Take three times a day, with meals.”
Nelson is like a boulder in this stream of words. He gets some of it; the rest just flows past.
“What are you doing here?” Nelson finally asks.
“Couldn’t just leave you on the floor to die, could I? We’re a team. Right half, left half, and all.”
“Get out of my sight.”
When Argent doesn’t move. Nelson turns his head to look the other way. Moving his head just the slightest bit makes him feel like he’s on a carnival ride.
“I don’t blame you for being pissed at me,” Argent says. “And maybe you woulda killed me and maybe not. But if I’m gonna be your apprentice, I know I gotta put up with a lot.”
Nelson forces himself to look at Argent again. “What universe do you think you’re living in?”
“Same as you,” Argent says. He looks at the label of the pill vial and puts it on the nightstand, pointedly out of Nelson’s reach. “Whether you like it or not, you need me right now. As long as you need me, you won’t get rid of me. You might even teach me a thing or two about being a parts pirate. One hand washes the other, as they say. And both our hands are kind of dirty. So I stay, and we both get what we need.”
The fact that he is now entirely dependent on Argent Skinner makes Nelson want to laugh, if it didn’t hurt so much to do so. “Are you my male nurse now?”
“I’m what you need, when you need it,” Argent tells him. “Today you need a nurse, so that’s what I’ll be. Tomorrow maybe you’ll need someone to help you set an Unwind trap again, so that’s what I’ll be tomorrow. And when you do track down Connor Lassiter and you need help bringing him down, you’ll be real happy you kept me around.” Then he opens the room service menu. “So, I’m thinking soup for you. And if you’re good, maybe some ice cream after.”
• • •
It’s another day until Nelson feels strong enough to move around the suite. He’s given up trying to fight Argent. The kid might be an idiot, but he’s a shrewd idiot. He knows how to make himself indispensable to Nelson—at least for now.
“I know you’ll kick me to the curb the moment you see fit,” Argent tells him. “It’s my job to make sure you never see fit.”
They don’t talk about their mission. Nelson doesn’t ask him for the tracking code because he knows Argent won’t surrender his one bargaining chip until he’s good and ready. Besides, as much as Nelson wants to move forward, he knows he’s in no condition. He has little choice but to convalesce in the presidential suite.
“Being a parts pirate must pay pretty good if you can afford a place like this,” Argent comments more than once, baiting Nelson to talk about his profession. Although making conversation with Argent isn’t exactly on his list of enjoyable activities, Nelson is a captive audience, so he endures it. He even tells Argent some of the things he wants to know, explaining the details of his best traps. The concrete tunnel lined with glue. The cigarette carton on a mattress perched over a pit. Argent hangs so fully on every word, Nelson begins to enjoy bragging about his best catches.
“I once had an AWOL swallow a miniature poison grenade, and I told him I’d set it off remotely if he didn’t turn over his friends. He led five other kids right to me—each one of them a better specimen than him.”
“Did you detonate the grenade?”
“It wasn’t a grenade,” Nelson tells Argent. “It was a cranberry.”
It makes Argent laugh, and Nelson finds that his own laughter is genuine.
Nelson can’t say that he’s beginning to like Argent—there really isn’t much about him to like. But he’s coming to accept the necessity of Argent’s presence. Like the AWOL who surrendered his friends, Argent Skinner has value to Nelson. For his services, Nelson had set the cranberry-eating AWOL free, because, after all, fair is fair, and Nelson has always seen himself as a man of integrity. In the end, Nelson will make sure Argent gets his just reward.
• • •
They set out the next day, Nelson feeling stronger, if not fully recovered. The bites are still red and swollen, the burned half of his face still raw and peeling, but at least his fever has broken. He endures the troubled gazes from other hotel guests as he checks out, just as he endured them when he had checked in.