Infected: Shift Read Free Page B

and seemed to treat him like an actual person and not a piece of meat. Surely there was another doctor who was like that. He just hadn’t looked hard enough.
     
    Ah, fuck it. He just liked people who didn’t take shit, and Rosenberg didn’t take shit from anyone. He should have kept in mind that included him.
     
    He’d only been working on the bag for another five minutes when the drugs started to really kick in, and then his cell phone rang. He’d changed the number to one only three people knew: Dylan, Fiona, and Dee (he’d have to give it to Holden one of these days, or Fi would), so he had no problem answering this phone. “Yeah?”
     
    “Oh, you have to come in,” Fi said, keeping her voice low. “We got an actual customer, and Christ on a stick, you hafta look at this guy.”
     
    “Cute?”
     
    “No—huge. I mean, shit, you need a guy your own size to pick on? This may be him. He also has fresh stitches in his chin, but he doesn’t look like an assassin otherwise.”
     
    Fresh stitches in his face? Possible domestic violence and/or bar fight was the most likely answer, but if the guy was a professional troublemaker, he might be wearing his work home with him. “You’re not getting a bad vibe off him, are you?”
     
    “No, he’s been as pleasant as can be. Looks like he’s had his nose broken a while ago. Could he be one of those MMA cage fighters?”
     
    “You tell me. I’m on my way.”
     
    He hung up and a quick sniff told him he hadn’t had enough of a workout to stink, so he simply changed into more presentable clothes and took the bike out, since it was a clear day and it was much easier to outrun news teams on the Buell. The Vicodin gave him a pleasantly mellow feeling.
     
    He parked out behind the cemetery (oddly, there was one across the street from the office park, kind of run-down and overgrown—if it was a statement of some kind, he wasn’t sure what) and walked into work still wearing his mirrored motorcycle helmet, so if there was someone snapping photos in the lot, they got a shitload of nothing. Once inside his office, he took off the helmet.
     
    “Ah, here he is,” Fiona said, gesturing to him, as a huge man got up from the front room’s chair and approached him with his hand out.
     
    He was six foot three at least, maybe two ten, all muscle, his shoulders and chest nearly Paris broad. He was wearing a baggy black T-shirt and baggy jeans, so he wasn’t trying to show off, and his worn Converse sneakers and even more worn brown leather jacket seemed to indicate he either had no money or nothing approaching fashion awareness. He had a beat-up olive-drab backpack slung over one shoulder.
     
    His brown hair was cut short and streamlined, but it did inadvertently highlight a face that had seen many fights. He had the ghost of a white scar on his forehead, something of a divot in his right cheek, a bump on the bridge of a strong nose (definitely suggesting at least one previous break), and those fresh stitches Fi had mentioned, stretching out for an inch and a half in a rough, perpendicular line across his chin. He was neither handsome nor ugly, but his many facial wounds made him interesting to look at and strangely fascinating. His eyes were that odd watery blue you sometimes encountered and could never quite believe was real. He was in his early to mid-twenties at a best guess, but he was one of those guys who had probably never looked boyish.
     
    “Hey, hi, I’m Grey Williams,” the big man said, shaking his hand. He almost crushed his fingers, and Roan knew he was actively trying not to. Hell of a grip. If Roan heard the flatness of his vowels correctly, he was either originally from Minnesota or spent a lot of time there.
     
    “Hello, Roan McKichan. Why don’t we go into my office?”
     
    “Sure,” he agreed amiably. He followed him in, saying a polite “Bye” to Fiona as they went. What the hell was he, a brawling farm boy?
     
    “So what brings you