“All done?” Winger asked.
“Yeah,” Abraham said. “Uh, thanks, I guess, for…I don’t know. Whatever reason you were supposed to be here.”
He headed for the stairs.
“Mr. Delger, please. Not so fast,” Winger said.
“I’ve got things to do,” Abraham said, not stopping. “So if you’ll excuse me—”
“Actually, our instructions were to stick with you.”
That stopped Abraham. He turned back around. “What? Why?”
That’s when he realized Winger and Marguerite weren’t the only ones who’d been waiting on the deck. There were two others near the house.
“Because that’s what I told them to do,” Orlando said.
CHAPTER 11
The Dallas area was experiencing a cold snap. According to the weather forecast, there was a small chance of snow in the next forty-eight hours.
Nate didn’t hate the cold like Quinn did, but he didn’t like when it interfered with his work. In preplanning his and Daeng’s current assignment, he had decided on a course that involved a remote burial and the use of their standard chemical mix that would reduce a body to sludge before anyone could discover the grave and dig up the remains.
Unfortunately, the cold was causing two problems. The lesser issue was the ground freezing, making it harder to dig out a final resting place. The larger one concerned the chemical stew itself. It didn’t work very well when used at temperatures under forty degrees. The projected average Dallas temperature for the next seven days was thirty-one degrees. And tomorrow evening, the night of the op, the temperature was predicted to dip to as low as nineteen degrees, throwing Nate’s intended strategy out the window.
“May I make a suggestion?” Daeng asked.
“By all means,” Nate told him.
They were in Nate’s hotel room and had just confirmed the latest weather data.
“It’s very simple. In the future we don’t take work so far from a large body of water we can use to dump the remains.”
“Funny,” Nate said, not laughing. “But I’m not worried about the future at the moment. I’m worried about what we do now.”
“Naturally,” Daeng said. “That’s why I’m thinking of the bigger picture.”
“You do realize you’re not helping, right?”
“That is a matter of perspective.”
“And you realize saying that also doesn’t help?”
“What? Is my suggestion not a good one?”
“Your suggestion is impractical in the ‘bigger picture’ and unhelpful in the here and now.”
“But you already know what we’re going to do in the here and now.”
“Uh, no, I don’t. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
“You know it. You just don’t realize it yet.”
“That philosophical crap is going to eventually result in either Quinn or me killing you. You’ve been warned.”
“If it is my time to go, then so be it. I will gladly accept whatever is—”
“Oh, for the love of God!”
Daeng tried to hold a straight face, but only lasted a few seconds before he began to laugh. Nate frowned, but soon joined in. When they finally calmed down, they were both out of breath and smiling.
“Fine,” Nate said. “Basement protocol.”
“See, I told you that you already knew what to do.”
The basement protocol was nearly the same as the grave option Nate had originally planned. The only difference was the use of a basement floor, typically inside a business facility, and preferably a new one where concrete hadn’t been poured but soon would be. While basements might be cool, they seldom ever dipped below forty degrees. It wasn’t Nate’s favorite option. He thought the idea of burying a corpse underneath a building people would be spending their days in was kind of creepy.
Unfortunately, it didn’t look like they had a choice.
“Since you’re obviously the smarter of the two of us tonight,” Nate said, “I’m going to let you find our location.”
“That honor should go to you,” Daeng said.
“Uh-uh. You’re not talking your way out of this one.”
“But—”
Nate held up a hand. “It’s all you, brother.” He stood up and patted Daeng on the back. “I’m sure there are plenty of new buildings going up not too far away.”
Before Daeng could argue again, Nate walked into the suite’s bedroom and shut the door. He checked the time and added seven hours. Early, but not too early.
He pulled out his phone, and a few seconds later, Liz’s sleepy voice traveled under the Atlantic Ocean and halfway across North America before slipping into his ear. “Hello?”
“Don’t you have class this morning?”
“Hi,” she said, a smile in her voice. “My early class got canceled so I don’t have anything until ten.”
After missing most of her classes in the fall due to what happened on Isla de Cervantes and the events that sprang from it, Quinn’s sister had finally returned to Paris to continue work on her master’s degree in art history at the Sorbonne.
“Sorry,” Nate said. “I’ll let you go back to sleep.”
“No. Don’t you dare hang up yet.”
“At least tell me you slept well.”
“I dreamt about you so it wasn’t too bad, I guess.”
“Look out your window. What’s it like there today?”
He heard the covers of her bed move. “Wet and cold. How about there?”
“Cold and dry.”
“In L.A.?”
“Texas.”
“Work?”
“Well, I didn’t come here to watch the Cowboys play.”
“Are you being careful?”
“I’m thinking about it.”
“Think harder.”
The line went quiet for a moment.
“I miss you,” she said.
“What, with all those French guys around? I doubt it.”
“Don’t joke. I do. I mean, these French guys are fine for sex and all, but it’s always you I think about.”
“Do I need to come over there?”
“Absolutely.”
A beat. “I miss you, too,” he said. “Every minute.”
“Come see me.”
“What about the French guys?”
“They’ll understand.”
“Please tell me you realize how dumb coming here on your own was,” Orlando said.
They had taken rooms at a motel in Pascagoula, just south of Moss Point. While Marguerite and Winger had gone off to get some sleep, Quinn and Orlando had hauled Abraham into their room.
“Apparently I didn’t come here on my own,” Abraham told her.
“You know what I mean.”
“I’m not an amateur,” he shot back. “I’ve done much more dangerous things on my own. This was nothing.”
“Really?” Orlando said. “And when was the last time—”
Taking a page out of Orlando’s book, Quinn put a hand on her shoulder to calm her down. He said to Abraham, “Why don’t you tell us what you expected to find here?”
“What I expected to find is none of your business. If I’d known you were going to meddle, I would have never called in the first place.”
Quinn could feel Orlando tense again under his palm, so he squeezed a little, hoping it would be enough to keep her in check.
“We’re not meddling,” he said. “We’re concerned, that’s all. You’ve been out of the field for a while now, and let’s face it, you’re not exactly young anymore.”
“Are you trying to win points here?” Abraham asked.
“I’m trying to have an honest conversation.”