He knew better than to credit himself with talking Goliad out of shooting him. Goliad had realized the difficulties involved even before Rye had rattled them off to him. So, no, he didn’t fire the pistol, but neither did he pack it away.

He turned it on Brynn. “Where’s the stuff?”

Before she could answer, Rye said, “One more thing. Another deterrent that you should think about.”

Goliad looked at him.

All glibness gone, Rye said, “If you hurt her, I will kill you, and I don’t care how many witnesses there are.”

Goliad’s eyes narrowed fractionally, but he shifted his gaze back to Brynn. “Your boyfriend here, I had just as soon see dead. But I don’t want this to end badly for you, because you seem like a caring lady, and I admire that.”

“Thank you.”

“Just give me the drug, I leave, you go on about your business.”

“The drug is my business.”

“And this is mine,” he said, tightening his grip on the pistol.

She drew a steadying breath. “You know that Senator Hunt has much more time. The progression of his cancer—”

“I don’t make these choices.”

“But you should,” she stressed. “Did you watch the news story about Violet? If so, you saw how temporary she is. This is her only hope.”

“Give me the drug.”

He spoke with the slow, precise emphasis that Rye associated with him. The Hunts’ stranglehold on him was unassailable. It superseded compassion and human decency, perhaps even his own moral convictions. Regardless of how passionate and persuasive Brynn’s appeal, this man wasn’t going to be swayed.

She looked at Rye as though asking what she should do. He blinked in a way that said, Better hand it over.

To Goliad she said, “It’s in my coat pocket. Don’t shoot me for reaching for it.”

He gave a nod, then held up a hand to halt her. “You,” he said to Rye, “move back ten feet, put your bag on the floor, turn around and raise your jacket and shirttail.”

“You think I’m carrying? What would be the point? I haven’t replaced the clip you took.”

“Now, Mallett.”

Rye looked at the other man with consternation, but did as told, and showed Goliad his waistband all the way around. When they were facing again, Goliad told him to keep his hands up and away from his body, which he did.

Goliad made a motion to Brynn, who unzipped her coat pocket, and took out the bubble-wrapped package. “It’s sensitive to light and heat, and any exposure to bacteria would be—”

“I’ll be careful.” Goliad extended his hand.

Startling them all, a door opened a short distance away, and a housekeeper pushed a rattling cart into the corridor. In a singsong voice, she wished them a cheerful good morning.

Taking Goliad completely off guard, and shocking the hell out of Rye, Brynn went around Goliad and walked briskly toward the woman in the pink uniform. “I’m so glad you arrived when you did. We used all our towels last night. May I please have some extras?”

Without waiting for a response, Brynn lifted several from the stack on the cart and then broke into a sprint. Both Goliad and Rye charged after her, but Goliad had a ten-foot head start.

The housekeeper flattened herself against the wall in fright. As Goliad passed her, he one-handedly hauled her cart into the middle of the hallway. Running full out, Rye barreled into it, knocking it over and scattering everything it carried. He hurdled piles of fresh laundry and rolls of toilet tissue.

Brynn’s intention had probably been to take the fire stairs, but just as she drew even with the elevator, the bell above it dinged. She heaved the stack of towels toward Goliad. He batted them down, stumbled over them, kicked them aside as he chased after her.

The elevator doors opened. Brynn stepped in. Goliad, pistol held close to his side and out of sight, got in behind her. Rye put on a burst of speed and slipped in between the two closing doors.

He crowded in behind Goliad to make room for himself, because there were five other people in the elevator: a silver-haired couple looking annoyed for having been herded to the back; two teenage girls wearing earbuds and staring into their phones; a heavyset man in shorts and flip-flops.

Affably, he bellowed to the newcomers, “Morning, folks. Headed down to the buffet? The biscuits and gravy are tops. Grits, too.”

The teenagers continued to peck on their phones without looking up. The older couple smiled politely, but neither spoke. Brynn was on Rye’s left, huddled in the corner of the elevator, as though trying to go unnoticed. She didn’t speak. Rye thought she might have been holding her breath.

Goliad turned around to face out. Rye had kept his back to the door, so he and Goliad were now eye to eye. With everyone else in the cubicle unaware, Rye poked the short barrel of his pocket pistol into Goliad’s stomach. The man’s eyes registered surprise, and his abs contracted, but he didn’t react so that anyone else would notice.

Rye whispered, “I was just fooling about the clip.” During the chase down the hallway, he’d managed to retrieve his pistol from the pocket of his bomber jacket. Last night he’d loaded it with the spare clip he carried in his flight bag.

Given the close quarters, there was no way he could verbally communicate with Brynn. He couldn’t have advised her anyway, because he had no idea what Goliad planned to do when the elevator doors opened. Raise his gun hand and commence a shootout? That seemed unlikely, but Rye couldn’t dismiss the possibility.

Brynn had forced Goliad’s hand. He had proposed a peaceful settlement where nobody got hurt. But it had to be clear to him now that she wasn’t going to surrender the GX-42 without a fight.

Whatever Goliad did, Rye would have only seconds in which to process it and react correctly, or people could die. But years of pilot training had taught him to do just that.

Goliad’s method of problem-solving was more stolid.

Giving Rye the advantage here.

He hoped.

The elevator stopped. The double doors behind him began to open. Brynn once again seized an opportunity. Wraithlike, she slipped around behind Rye and cleared the doors before they had even opened all the way.

“She wants those biscuits while they’re hot,” the flip-flop man said around a booming laugh.

Rye pretended that Brynn had pushed against him on her way out. He fell forward into Goliad, throwing him off balance. “Sorry, man.” The apology was for the benefit of the others in the elevator, but he jabbed Goliad’s middle with his pistol for emphasis before whipping around and running after Brynn.

Rather than trying to navigate the crowded lobby, she’d headed down the long corridor that came to a dead end at the side door they’d been using. When she reached it, she looked back to ensure that Rye was behind her before she pushed through the door to the outside. By the time Rye got to the door, he saw her through the glass, splashing across the parking lot in a mad dash toward Wes’s car.

His relief was short-lived.

Before he could depress the bar to let himself out, Goliad caught up to him, grabbed him by the collar of his jacket, hurled him against the wall, then landed a punch in Rye’s diaphragm that robbed him of breath. It also hurt like bloody hell, but not as bad as a bullet would have. Goliad still didn’t want a firefight, especially not after a terrorized housekeeper had witnessed their race down the hallway.

But bare hands could be just as deadly as guns if one knew how to apply them. Goliad outweighed and outmuscled him. Rye couldn’t bring him down. Not in a fistfight, not by swapping swings. So he folded his arms across his midsection and, with a grunt of pain, bent double.

Then he came up beneath Goliad’s chin with his head. Goliad’s teeth clacked, his head snapped back, and when he brought it upright, Rye’s hands were folded around his pistol, the short barrel pressed up against the soft underside of Goliad’s jaw.

Rye wheezed, “Drop the gun.”

Goliad’s weapon landed with a dull thud on the carpet near their feet.

Still raspy, Rye said, “Why don’t you just back off and let the kid have the drug?”

“Because she’s not who I work for.”

“Stubborn son of a bitch.”

With the hilt of his pistol, Rye rapped Goliad hard, right on the bridge of his nose, then pivoted and pushed through the door. Rain and cold air blasted him in the face, but it felt good. It cleared his head in time for him to leap backward, out of the way of an oncoming, speeding car. Wes’s car. Brynn behind the wheel.

The car skidded to a stop inches from him. In his haste to get the passenger door open, he nearly dislocated his shoulder. Brynn accelerated before he’d pulled in his right leg. Through the glass exit door, he saw Goliad down on one knee, holding a hand to his face.

Rye and Brynn didn’t speak until they were out of the parking lot, up the ramp onto the freeway, and speeding along in the outside lane. By then, Rye had almost regained his breath. “Tell me you still have it.”

“I still have it.”

“Intact?”

“Yes.”

He laid his head back and closed his eyes. “That’s what matters.”

“You matter, too. Are you in pain?”

“I’ll live.”

“Goliad?”

“Not as pretty as he used to be. He’ll need a nose job.”