Double Take

I’m working with the local police. My wallet is in my jacket pocket. If you pull it out you can see my driver’s license.”
    “I have a feeling if I go hunting for your wallet you’re going to come at me. You figure you’re a big guy, strong, ready to go, ready to tune me up. With my luck lately, you just might manage it.”
    Dix felt the gun muzzle press harder against the back of his neck. “That surprises you, doesn’t it, that I can tell what you’d do by only looking at you? I don’t have a silencer on my gun and I really don’t want to risk the noise, not that you’d be around to hear it, of course.”
    There was something in his voice, something faintly British, and Dix knew in that instant who it was.
    The man behind him laughed. Dix felt the flutter of his breath in his ear.
    “Imagine a cop breaking into a private citizen’s house—and it’s not just any house, is it? It’s a penthouse owned by that distinguished gentleman Thomas Pallack. Now that doesn’t look too good, does it, Sheriff?”
    Dix said nothing.
    “Ah, you finally figured it out, huh?” The butt of a gun came down hard behind Dix’s right temple. Dix didn’t hit the ground; he wasn’t completely out. He felt the man lift him in a firefighter’s carry, and he wanted to puke with his head dangling down. “Now, I’ll take us back to Mr. Pallack’s little house in the clouds.”
    The cops, Dix thought, his brain nearly gone, surely the cops would see him.
    But they didn’t.
    He passed out cold when Makepeace started climbing up the stairs to the sixth floor.

CHAPTER 59
    Dix heard distant voices, then a woman’s voice closer—it sounded a bit like Christie, but it was Charlotte Pallack’s voice. He felt bile rise in his throat and wanted to gag, but he didn’t. He swallowed and kept swallowing until it eased. No way was he going to vomit. He didn’t move.
    He heard Thomas Pallack’s angry voice, then Makepeace’s, but he couldn’t make out the words. Slowly, his mind cleared. But it wasn’t the time to raise his head and say hi to everyone. He didn’t move, he just listened.
    “Why the hell did you bring him here? Are you insane?”
    “The cops had already been in here, I saw them leave. They were out front, not in back anymore. So I got the sheriff in through the service entrance to the stairs. I thought it was a good way to make a point, don’t you think, Pallack? I thought you might want to pay me to take him away.”
    “Do you have any idea who this is?”
    “He said he was Dixon Noble, a sheriff from Virginia. Why did he break in here?”
    “It doesn’t concern you. Jesus, the damned man was carrying an arsenal,” Pallack said, and looked down at his desk, where Makepeace had piled the sheriff’s weapons.
    “He was ready for business. A cell phone, one big Beretta, one little derringer in an ankle holster, and a tough little five-inch Fallkniven, a fine knife.”
    “It’s a knife, so what?”
    Dix wondered if Makepeace was going to take the knife his father had given him when he’d turned sixteen. “One should enjoy fine tools, Pallack.”
    Dix could hear Pallack prowling, back and forth, in front of him. “This is all we need, this fool sheriff playing vigilante. At least he didn’t get into the safe.”
    Charlotte asked, “But why did he break in? What could he have hoped to find?”
    “Don’t be stupid, Charlotte. The sheriff wanted to find the bracelet. If you hadn’t worn the damned thing—”
    “Then why did you give me that bracelet for a wedding present? Of course I’d wear it, for God’s sake.”
    “The sheriff broke in here to find a bracelet?” Makepeace said in a bemused voice. “What bracelet? Why should he want this bracelet so much?”
    Charlotte ignored him. “Thomas, you didn’t even bother to tell me it belonged to another woman until after the sheriff saw it on my wrist and recognized it. Why didn’t you tell me that when you gave it to me?”
    “Like you would have appreciated wearing another woman’s jewelry. Look, it doesn’t matter, Charlotte. I wasn’t really the one who wanted you to have that bracelet, it was—never mind. What’s done is done.”
    But Charlotte wasn’t buying it. “It was your little joke on me, wasn’t it? Yours or that bitch mother of yours.”
    “Don’t call her that! She isn’t—wasn’t a bitch. Damnation, I should have known you’d never have my mother’s heart, or her intelligence. You were supposed to find