Ben Jones reeled back from the slap, his mouth open, hand to his face. “Hey!” he squawked.
The doctor said levelly, “I’m telling you this just one time, Ben. Don’t cross me. You’ve got the guns, but I’ve got these.” He held up his spread hands. “You can shoot me, I won’t deny that. But you can’t make me do your dirty work for you. From now on things go my way—with these three people, with my own life, with the bootleg plastic surgery we do to keep you in armored cars. Or else there won’t be any plastic surgery.”
Ben Jones swallowed, and Ross could see the man fighting himself. He said after a moment, “No reason to act sore, Doc. Haven’t we always got along? The only thing is, maybe you don’t realize how dangerous these three——”
“Shut up,” said the doctor. “Right, boys?”
The other two Joneses in the room shuffled and looked uncomfortable. One of them said, “Don’t get mad, Ben, but it kind of looks as if he’s right. We and the doc had a little talk before you got here. It figures, you have to admit it. He does the work; we ought to let him have something to say about it.”
The look that Ben Jones gave him was pure poison, but the man stood up to it, and in a minute Ben Jones looked away. “Sure,” he said distantly. “You go right ahead, Doc. We’ll talk this over again later on, when we’ve all had a chance to cool off.”
The doctor nodded coldly and followed Ross out. Helena and Bernie, suitably Jonesified for the occasion, were already in the car; Ross and the doctor jumped in with them, and they drove away. Now that the strain was relaxed a bit the doctor was panting, but there was a grin on his lips. “Son-of-a-Jones,” he said happily, “I’ve been waiting five years for this day!”
Ross asked, “Is it all right? They won’t chase after us?”
“No, not Ben Jones. He has his own way of handling things. Now if we were stupid enough to go back there, after he had a chance to talk to the others without me around, that would be something different. But we aren’t going back.”
Ross’s eyes widened. “Not even you, Doc?”