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NINETY-EIGHT

“I’M ON HER. I fucking see her.”

“Keep me on the line, Silas. Get her alone and tell her I want to talk to her.”

With his sunglasses still on, standing over by the coffee roasters by the front door, Silas switches the phone to his left hand. He tucks his right hand into his pocket, where his handgun resides. Marcie doesn’t know what he looks like. He’s always worn the balaclava. All she knows is his eyes, concealed now by his shades.

But he can’t get this wrong. He’s not wrong, is he? College sweatshirt and hat, but that sculpted face. That’s Marcie.

One way to find out. He moves toward her.

She jumps from her seat and rushes toward the exit.

He tries to be subtle — Don’t attract attention — moving into the “screens” area, picking up the pace, walking down the aisle of computers as she reaches the exit.

He glances at her computer station. Screen still open, computer still in use. She’s leaving in a hurry. The hallway to the exit door is long. Good. Once they’re outside, nobody will hear what he does to her from the inside.

He sees her open the exit door, notices something on the back of her collar.

A price tag. The sweatshirt is newly purchased. As if he had any doubt it was Marcie.

He hits the exit door hard, a solid door that doesn’t push, it pulls. He pulls it open, swinging it toward him to the right, stepping through the exit on the left.

Nothing in the alley but a large dumpster. He approaches it slowly.

“Come out, come out, Marcie,” he taunts, reaching for his gun.

In his peripheral vision, a blur, and then a sharp, stabbing pain, something piercing through his cheek, stabbing the gums in his mouth.

He cries out and instinctively reaches for the wound, just as another stab lands, this time puncturing the back of his right hand. As he crouches over in pain, he is shoved to his left, straight into a wall, smacking his head.

He hits the pavement hard, unable to focus, as he hears the primitive panting of a woman cornered, a woman he underestimated.