Free Dr. Knox by Peter Spiegelman

except people who need help.”
    “Somehow they’re never the ones with the guns. Believe me, I get it—that itch to make things right. I had it myself, and I scratched it till it bled. It’s why I signed on with Uncle in the first place, and why I signed off after seeing my work—work guys shed blood for—get turned to shit by dickheads looking to make a buck, or who couldn’t keep their Predators in their pants. But I’m over it now. Now I fill the hours with simpler things: having some fun, making some bread, taking care of family, trying to get through the day without killing anybody, shit like that. You, brother, muddy up those waters.”
    “Tonight we did the right thing.”
    “It’s great we’re so awesome,” Sutter said, sighing. “But I’m trying for simple, doc, and being your friend is sometimes the opposite of that.” I nodded and said nothing, but watched the streets turn darker and more empty as we neared my home.
    Sutter dropped me in the alley, by the clinic’s back door, and drove off. The alley was quiet, and smelled of garbage, piss, and soot. My Honda was parked in the shadows. It was dusty, old, and in need of new tires, and I felt much the same. I put my baggage down and was rattling my keys when the car came around the corner.
    It was a Land Rover, black with silver trim, neither dusty nor old, and its very large tires had an oily sheen in the sodium light. They squealed when the car swayed around the corner, and again when it rocked to a halt six inches from my knees.

CHAPTER 9
    I recognized them from Scotty’s description, as soon as they got out of the Rover.
Big and bigger. Ugly and uglier. Scary.
    The guy with blond cornrows was bigger, around six four, around 240 pounds. He wore black cowboy boots, black jeans, and a red tee shirt sprayed onto a chemically enhanced torso. His face was bony and pumpkin-colored under the lights, and when he smiled his teeth looked too large. His eyes were eager and darting, the pupils huge. Speeding. Maybe he thought the anabolic steroids didn’t make him aggressive enough.
    The other guy was definitely uglier. The tattoo on his chin was as Scotty had described—a black heart with a dagger through it—but Scotty hadn’t mentioned the ink on his cheeks and neck—stars, elaborate crosses, Cyrillic letters—or the shaved head, or the expression of animal meanness on his meaty face and in his black eyes. He was about five ten and maybe two hundred pounds, and he wore gray pinstriped pants that were too long, and a pink shirt unbuttoned almost to his waist. His torso was like a steamer trunk, and there was thick hair on his chest, and more Russian ink. Wired wrong, I thought. Crazy.
    “You the doctor?” Cornrows said. There was the trace of an accent in his voice, and he sounded like he was struggling not to laugh. I didn’t answer, but thought about the scalpels in my bags, and that I’d never get to them in time. “You’re him, right?” He looked at something in his hand. “Dr. Knox. And this is your clinic?”
    My pulse spiked, and I tasted the tang of adrenaline on my tongue. I looked at my car, and the Dumpster alongside it. Nothing there.
    “Who are you looking for?” I said, and took a step back.
    “C’mon, you’re him, right—the doctor?” Cornrows said, and smiled wider. Tats looked up and down the alley, and saw nothing that troubled him. He came toward me. Cornrows chuckled and said something in Russian; Tats stopped, though not happily.
    “What do you want?” I asked. “Is somebody sick?”
    Cornrows got a kick out of that, and the harder he laughed, the darker his face became. “Yeah—you. You’re coming down with something serious any minute, so better to take care of yourself now.”
    I took another step back. I looked around the back door and along the building’s back wall. Not a pipe or scrap of wood. I’d never seen the alley so fucking clean. I fingered my key ring, and slipped the longest and sharpest