Jeffery Deaver - Solitude Creek

Antioch March was mildly disappointed but the Get was satisfied. For the time being. Always for the time being.

Somebody’s not happy...

His phone rang. Both caller and callee were on new burner phones. But he knew who it was: his boss. Christopher Jenkins ran the Hand to Heart website. He gave March his assignments to travel to non-profit humanitarian groups, who would then sign up for the site. Jenkins also arranged for March’s other jobs, which were the real moneymakers for the company.

‘Hi,’ he said.

No names, of course.

‘Just wanted to tell you, the client’s extremely satisfied.’

‘Good.’ What else was there to say? March had done what he’d been contracted to do in the Monterey area. He’d also eliminated evidence and witnesses and cut all ties that could potentially link the incident to the client, who was paying Jenkins a great deal of money for March’s services. The client wasn’t the nicest guy in the world — in fact, he could be quite a prick — but one thing about him: he paid well and on time.

‘He’s sent eighty percent. It’s gone through proper channels.’

Bitcoin and the other weird new payment systems were clever in theory as a mechanism to pay anonymously for the sort of work that March performed but they were coming under increasing scrutiny. So Jenkins — the businessman in the operation — had decided to resort to good old-fashioned cash. ‘Channels’ meant he’d received a FedEx box containing ‘documents’, which in a way it did, though each document would have a picture of Benjamin Franklin on it.

Antioch March had eight safe-deposit boxes around the country, each with about a million inside it.

Jenkins continued, ‘Wanted to tell you. Found a restaurant we have to try. Foie gras is the best. I mean, the best. And they serve the Château d’Yquem in Waterford. Oh, and the red wine? Pétrus.’ A chuckle. ‘We had two bottles.’

March didn’t know the wines but he assumed they were expensive. Maybe Jenkins had even poured some for him in the past. The two men had worked together for about six years, and from day one, Jenkins had treated March to fancy dinners, like the one he was describing now. They were okay. But the elaborate meals didn’t really move March, in the same way the Vuitton and the Coach and the Italian suits didn’t. He accepted the gifts but was forever surprised that Jenkins didn’t notice his indifference. Or maybe he did but didn’t care. Just like March’s lethargy at certain other times, in his connection with Jenkins.

His boss now added, ‘Just had a proposal. I’ll tell you about it when I’m out.’

They were always vague when they were on the phone. Yes, these were prepaid mobiles but listenable to if one were inclined to listen, and traceable if one were inclined to trace.

And people like Kathryn Dance would be more than happy to do both.

‘I’ll be in tomorrow night,’ Jenkins said.

‘Good.’ March tried to be enthusiastic. There was another reason Jenkins was coming to the inn, of course. Which March could have done without. But he could live with it: anything for the Get.

‘Thanks again for all your work. This is a good one. This’s a winner. And it’ll open up a lot of doors for us. Well, think we’ve been talking long enough. Night.’

They hung up.

March checked the news, but there was nothing yet about Jon Boling’s death due to a bicycle malfunction. He supposed that with both brakes out the bike would have been doing fifty or sixty when Dance’s boyfriend had slammed into the traffic or rocks at Carmel Beach. March wasn’t sure exactly how close Dance was to Boling but he knew he was more than a casual date; in her Pathfinder, at the Bay View Center, he’d found a card he’d sent her. A silly thing, funny. Signed, Love, J. March had noted the return address and driven there straight from the scene of the attack.

Motivated by both a need to distract the huntress and a bit of jealousy (he found he desired Kathryn even more than Calista), he’d waited outside Boling’s house, planning to beat him to death, a robbery gone wrong. Or coma him, at the least. But the man still hadn’t returned when March got the text about foolish Stan Prescott down in Orange County and he’d had to leave.

He’d followed Boling later and decided he liked the idea of a bike accident better than an obvious attack.

March looked at his shaved scalp in the mirror. He didn’t like it. He looked a bit like Chris Jenkins, now he thought about it. And reflected that it was ironic that Jenkins — former military, crack shot, familiar with all sorts of weapons, with friends among the security and mercenary crowd — was the businessman who never got out into the field to run the assignments.

And Antioch March, who was essentially a misplaced academic, was the one fulfilling them.

But it worked to everybody’s advantage. Jenkins lacked the finesse to set up the deaths the way March did, the intellect to foresee what the police and witnesses would do.

March, on the other hand, had no talent for dealing with clients. Negotiating, vetting to make sure they were not law, structuring payment terms, maintaining the Hand to Heart website.

March finished his juice.

The client is extremely satisfied...

Which, March thought, was the ultimate goal of his father, the salesman, as well.

He flopped down in the sumptuous bed. He had many plans to make. But at the moment he preferred his thoughts to dwell upon... who else? The captivating Kathryn Dance.

At CBI headquarters once more.

Dance had hit the restroom to scrub the face wound but she assessed it as minor. A little sting. There’d be a bruise. Nothing more.

She turned the corner to the Gals’ Wing. It being the weekend, the office wasn’t staffed with assistants. She walked past Maryellen Kresbach’s station and into her own office.

‘Hey.’ Jon Boling, sitting in the chair across the desk, smiled.

‘Jon!’ She strode to him fast and started to throw her arms around his shoulders, then saw him wince in anticipation. She stopped. ‘How are you?’

‘Fine. Relatively speaking. But sore. Really sore.’ His face was bruised and he had two bandages, on his cheek and neck. His wrist was wrapped in beige elastic.

‘What happened?’

‘Lost the brakes on Ocean.’

The main street leading down to the beach in Carmel. Very steep.

‘No!’

‘They felt funny, when I started off, so I got about a half-block from the store... the store I was at and I pulled over. That’s when they popped. Both of the brake shoes.’

‘Jon!’

‘I steered into bushes, and that slowed me down. Went through them and hit the curb and a car at the stop sign.’

‘The brakes?’ she asked. ‘You think they were tampered with?

‘Tampered with? Why would... Oh. Your unsub, you’re thinking?’

‘Maybe. To slow me down, distract me.’

‘But how did he put us together?’

‘Nothing about this guy would surprise me. You notice anybody near your bike?’

‘No. I had an errand. Left the bike outside. Only five minutes. I wasn’t paying any attention.’ Then Boling was looking her over. ‘But... what happened to you?’

‘Nothing critical. I got banged up getting into an elevator.’

‘Well, that must have been quite an entrance.’

She told him of the latest attack. ‘Nobody hurt badly.’

Then her eyes strayed to what was on her desk in front of him: Stan Prescott’s Asus computer. Beside it was a portable hard drive. ‘You cracked it?’

‘Well, my partner did.’

‘Partner?’

‘Lily.’

Dance glanced at him with a playful frown. ‘Lily. Is this where I start to be jealous?’