He had picked up the knife; still had it in his hands. While he was still figuring things out, his hand swept up with the knife still in it, pressed against Kittrell's abdomen. Kittrell's draw had been fast. Maybe he was naturally gun-slick—fast enough, maybe, for a lightning draw like that to be natural to him. Maybe he was, but maybe he was just burning up the years of his life twice as fast as normal under the influence of the drug.
"If you don't want your gut slit, Kittrell, keep your hands where they are!" Mac grated, his voice suddenly gone flat and hard.
Kittrell's hand had fluttered toward his shoulder holster; it stopped as Mac spoke.
"I don't know whether you're really Kittrell or not—probably you are," Mac muttered. "But if you're in TPL now, you'll be out pretty soon. As soon as I tell them you're a hophead."
Kittrell's face had gone white. Other than that there was no change as his bleak eyes bored steadily into MacCauley's. "What are you talking about?" he said evenly. "Take that thing out of my stomach."
"Oh, no!" Mac shook his head decisively. "You killed one of my witnesses; you'll take his place. You're going to tell me how to find the guy that sells you the narcophene."
"Sorry," said Kittrell, tautening still more, "but I can't." At the last possible second his eyes flicked behind and over Mac's shoulder.
The thing that hit MacCauley on the back of the neck first didn't quite knock him out. He was stunned, but in the half-second before the next blow jolted him into complete darkness, he heard Kittrell conclude, most casually: "You see, I am the guy who sells the narcophene."
A shiver rippled along Mac's spine, and another one. That was his first waking impression. He was cold, frozen stiff, he decided next, when his limbs failed to react to the stimuli of his neural commands. As the fog cleared away from his aching head he discovered that his hands were tightly bound behind him, hobbles on his feet to keep him from walking far or fast.