Page 122 of Antihero

The guard sat heavily on the carpet, stared down at his arm flopping unnaturally at the elbow hinge, and vomited into his lap. DeGrado let out a squeal and darted past Evan.

Evan tripped him. He would have liked to call it a double ankle sweep, but it was just an old-fashioned schoolyard trip.

The guard hadn’t spoken, hadn’t made a noise. A cord of drool dangled off his chin. He was still studying his arm, the way it doubled back across his lap.

DeGrado lay sprawled on his back next to the guard, kilt askew, hands lifted defensively. “Look, man, we have serious fucking legal firepower. And I know who you are.”

Evan tapped the Taser against the outside of his thigh, aiming it down at the floor. The tungsten darts had considerable girth and barbed tips. “No,” he said, “you don’t.”

He enjoyed watching the terror work its way across DeGrado’s face. Considered walking out and leaving him in his fear and the puddle of puke.

Then he thought of the scarlet speckling the mattress in that subterranean Harlem apartment, lurched the stun gun north, and tased him in the scrotum.

The pitch and duration of the scream made Evan grateful for the soundproofed door. He waited patiently for the pause of an inhalation, then dropped the Taser and walked out.

Retracing his route through the corridor, he scattered the remaining flash drives in various offices and conference rooms, sliding them unseen through open doorways or leaving them atop empty desks.

When he reached the lobby, Gracie the receptionist hopped to her feet, and he tensed, expecting an altercation. But she’d risen to greet someone coming through the door. “How was your flight, Frankie?”

“Long.” The slender woman tore off an enormous pair of tortoise sunglasses, revealing a face smoothed with injections and makeup. The skin at her neck and her hands betrayed her age, late sixties or early seventies. She wore a sleek designer pantsuit, pinstriped gray, and shiny black crocodile-embossed boots. Short hair expensively cut, spiky bangs teased artfully across her forehead.

Evan stared at RedLite’s CEO.

She stared back at him.

He said, “Really?”

She nodded, seeming to get it. “Really,” she said, with something like pride.

He shook his head and brushed by her on the way out.

He hadn’t even cleared the lobby when Joey called.

He picked up. “Go.”

“I’m already in,” she said.

All it took was for one curious worker to spot a stray flash drive and plug it into a computer on the internal network to check what it held.

“The worm is roaring through the databases, nullifying their bytes. First thing it rooted out and zeroed was any stored video of Anca. Now it’s making its way through the rest of the data warehouse. It’s gonna take them days just to comprehend how fucked they are.”

It would probably take DeGrado as long to extract the probes from his nutsack.

“How about running down Anca’s attackers?”

“Biometrics are tricky given the ski masks—”

“Every hour we wait could mean another Anca. Figure something out.”

“Okay, okay. I am.”

Climbing in his truck, he said, “Good,” and hung up.

Driving for home, he thought about the vow he’d made to use nonlethal force, to ensure that the punishment fit the trespass. He pictured DeGrado rolling on his office rug, darts sunk deep beneath his designer kilt. Those sad-sack eyes had betrayed him, his hollowed-out core, the little-boy impotence hiding beneath the strained coolness. Then there was that facial tic, the not-quite-extinguished lisp, the desperation to keep one step ahead of the other bullies.

Evan caught himself.

Nah, he decided.