back, literally, but Dylan was damn glad to say that she hadn’t. His girl was back up on the comm console where she belonged—at least for now.
“That’s Sam Walls over there,” Tyler said with a lift of his head. He couldn’t lift anything else. After Kid had dropped him off and headed back to the Kashmir Club, Dylan and Quinn had given Crutchfield the deluxe duct tape restraint workup. The guy was practically married to his chair.
“Yep, that’s Walls.” Who was no longer married to his chair.
“Is he dead?”
“Not yet” was the honest reply. Walls wasn’t dead, and there wasn’t a mark on him, except where Quinn had pulled off the duct tape, but he was more or less comatose over on the pool deck, sleeping off his Thai syringe.
With King and Rock massacred at Mama’s, and Walls and Crutchfield secure in Steele Street’s pool room, that left only Rick Karola and Lancaster on the loose—and Dylan didn’t think either of them had killed King and Rock. And so help him God, deep in his heart, he didn’t think J.T. had torn the two men apart, either, and that only left him with one other choice.
There was somebody else running wild on Lieutenant Loretta’s streets tonight, but who?
“I’ve only got one more question for you, Tyler. I know you and Walls and Karola came to Denver with Lancaster, and I know King Banner and Rock Howe are here, so to speak, but did you bring someone else? Somebody who maybe had some kind of beef with King and Rock?”
Crutchfield’s gaze narrowed. “No,” he said hesitantly. “No one else. What do you mean, King and Rock are here ‘so to speak’? What does that mean?”
It was a pure lawyer question, and Dylan was happy to explain.
He whipped out his cellphone and brought up the photos Hawkins had sent. They were damn grim by anybody’s standards.
Stepping closer to Tyler’s chair, he showed the first photo to him and then clicked through the next four. At number five, the lawyer threw up on himself.
Geezus.
Dylan carefully stepped away from the guy.
“Do you know anybody who had it in for those boys?” Everybody had enemies. What Dylan wanted was names.
“You’re … you’re smarter than this, Hart.”
Yeah, maybe he was.
“I’m not saying Conroy Farrel didn’t kill them,” he said. “He certainly had every reason in the world, including self-defense, if it came down to that. But this is vicious, unlike him—”
“You don’t know what he’s like,” Crutchfield snapped, his nerves obviously fried, frazzled, and frayed.
“No,” Dylan agreed. “But I know what he used to be like, and nothing I saw here today, when he came and rescued the girl, told me anything different than what I used to know. I don’t think he did this.”
“Then you’re a fool. The man is a beast.”
“Then he’s a beast of Lancaster’s making. You might want to think about that while you contemplate the pool.” He signaled Quinn, then turned and headed for the door.
Quinn walked over to where the pulleys hung from a boom on the ceiling. Taking hold of one of the ropes, he started swinging the whole rig around to Tyler’s side of the pool deck.
“No!” Crutchfield cried out, squirming in his chair, his voice sharp with panic. “You … you can’t … can’t do this. Can’t let him … can’t. You can’t.”
Oh, yes, I can, Dylan thought, still walking.
“I know all about Moscow.” The man’s voice rose along with his panic. “About the deal you had with the KGB. How you sold them state secrets you … you bastard!”
Tyler Crutchfield didn’t know anything other than what Randolph Lancaster had told him, and it was all lies. Dylan had delivered the diplomatic pouch exactly to where White Rook had told him to deliver it. The deal had gone south and had been hanging over Dylan’s head for the last fourteen years.
But that was over tonight.
It would die with Randolph Lancaster.
Dylan wasn’t planning on killing Lancaster, but the faster this night wound down, the less sure he was that he could do anything to keep him alive.
“Wait!” Crutchfield called out. “Wait … please wait.”
Dylan stopped and, after a moment, turned back to the lawyer.
Crutchfield just sat there and stared at him, panting for breath with puke on his shirt and eyes full of fear and distress.
“Don’t waste my time,” he warned the guy.
“There … there might be someone, an operator besides Farrel who’s … enhanced, or whatever all these guys are. We were in Bangkok, and—”