The Blonde

7:39 a.m.

Jack Eisley was in the exact position he thought he’d be this morning: on his knees, clutching his testicles, feeling the worst pain of his life.

But instead of kneeling before Donovan Piatt, he was standing in front of some beefy, thin-haired jackass. Someone who could tell him what this whole thing was about. The Mary Kates. The fake poison. His eleven-hour nightmare.

And even though Jack considered himself a reasonably nonviolent man, someone who preferred an honest conversation to physical blows—despite the fact that he’d punched a pretty woman in the stomach earlier this morning—he’d come to a philosophical breaking point. Before him was not a man for conversation. He was a man, clearly, who preferred the language of pain.

So Jack made a fist and nailed him in the lower part of his stomach—right where Kelly had stabbed him.

Oh, how he howled.

Jack liked the sound so much, he punched him in the same place again. The man had protected the area with his hands; Jack’s second blow landed on knuckles. Still, it had an appreciable effect. The man cried out, stumbled back, fell on his ass. Jack tried to stand up, but the pain in his balls was too intense, too crippling.

“Nice, Jack,” said a voice behind him. Kowalski. “Score one for the home team.”

Kowalski limped past him down the hall, toward the man with the thinning hair. He had one arm behind his back, syringe in hand, thumb stretched out and on the plunger. In the tube was a dark red fluid.

Jack almost felt sorry for the thin-haired man.