Scott Sigler - Contagious

Donald did just that. She hopped on, then raced off down the trail. The Jewell brothers watched her go.

“She can really drive that thing,” Bobby said.

Donald nodded.

“Donny, I’m going to throw out a wild guess here. You haven’t been taking your meds, right?”

Donald shook his head.

“I figured as much,” Bobby said. “What I love about you is your consistency—you never learn. Come on, Candice is working on a big lunch, and my daughter the Blond Tornado wants to watch the Pistons with her Unkie Donny. Think you can manage that without trying to beat somebody up?”

“I can give it the old college try.”

They got on the sleds and headed back down the trail. Donald felt like a complete idiot, losing his temper like that in front of his daughter. What if the guy hadn’t been Bobby’s neighbor? What if he’d just been some jackass with a gun? Then Donald, and his daughter, could have been in real danger. Maybe he’d start taking those meds as soon as he got back to the house.

Dew sat in his motel room sipping a cup of motel-room coffee. He remembered when it was all fancy to have one of those little single-cup coffee machines in your room. Now they were everywhere, and they all skimped on the vitals—who the hell made coffee with only one creamer and one sugar?

Shitty as the coffee was, he needed that caffeine kick for this conversation. He held the coffee in one hand, his old bricklike secure satellite phone in the other.

“It was a bloodbath, Murray,” Dew said.

“You screwed the pooch this time, Top,” Murray said, using the shorthand for top sergeant , Dew’s rank back when they served together. Dew hated that phrase, and Murray knew it.

“You’ve put me up against it,” Murray said. “The new chief of staff is going to have my balls on a platter for this. I told them Dawsey was under control.”

“Yeah, well, that was a pretty stupid thing to do, L. T.” Murray’s old wartime shorthand for lieutenant annoyed him just as much as Top annoyed Dew.

“It’s not all bad,” Dew said. “At least Margaret has that test for the hosts. That’s a big step.”

“True, that will help some,” Murray said. “I don’t know if it’ll be enough—Vanessa Colburn has it in for me.”

“Something else might help, too,” Dew said. “After I sent my report, the guys found the daughter, Sara McMillian, in a shallow grave in the backyard. Killed by a hammer blow to the head. So it’s not like Dawsey was butchering innocents here.”

“Nice,” Murray said. “How’s the baby and the oldest son?”

“Baby is fine. No infection. Oldest son, Tad, he’s physically okay. Psychologically… well, turns out the father made Tad dig the grave for the sister.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“I shit you not,” Dew said. “That’s what the boy said. And he’s probably telling the truth, because his hands are all blistered. It’s pretty hard to dig through frozen ground. Hence the shallow part of the shallow grave.”

“Jesus. Well, I guess I can say Dawsey actually saved Tad while I’m at it. Less psycho, more brave hero.”

“Murray, listen. I’m thinking maybe it’s time we put Dawsey away.”

A pause. “Define put him away .”

“Not that kind,” Dew said. “A sanitarium or something. A supermax. Whatever.”

“Come on, Dew,” Murray said. “You know we can’t do that.”

“He attacked two agents.”

“Baumgartner has a broken nose and Milner has a black eye, for fuck’s sake,” Murray said. “They’ve probably got worse in a pickup basketball game.”

“Doesn’t matter. Assaulting an agent is a federal offense.”

“Oh, are you going to start obeying the letter of the law all the sudden?

Let’s make that happen, Top. Maybe you and I can share a cell and have some quality time together before they give us the chair.”

Dew said nothing.

“That’s what I thought,” Murray said. “You know what? The kid’s no different from us. He just doesn’t have a badge.”

That one hit home. Was Dew actually like Perry? Willing to do whatever it took to get the job done? No, they weren’t alike for one key reason Dew didn’t want to admit—he’d killed a lot more people than Dawsey had.

“He wrecked that car,” Dew said. “He wants another one.”

“So get him another one. It’s only taxpayer money. Enough bitching about this kid already. Dew, we need a live host.”

“Why the fuck do you think I’m bitching about him? How am I supposed to get a live host when Dawsey is running around killing them like a fucking wild animal?”

Murray was silent for a second. “What the hell happened to you?”

“Oh, Christ,” Dew said. “Are you firing up a rah-rah speech?”

“Just shut the fuck up and listen,” Murray said. “And that’s an order. Your job used to be getting men to follow you, because if they didn’t, they’d wind up dead, and you probably along with them. This isn’t any different. Find a way to get the job done. Do it in the parameters set before you. I don’t want to hear about your obstacles or any kind of pressure you’re under.”

“How about you see this shit firsthand and then you talk to me about pressure?” Dew said. “I’ll switch places with you in a heartbeat.”

“Vanessa Colburn would eat you alive,” Murray said. “You wouldn’t last five minutes here, just like I wouldn’t last five minutes there. What the fuck is wrong with you? You get your partner killed and you think you’re excused from finding a way to get the job done?”

Dew took a slow breath. “You’d best be real careful how you choose your words from here on out, L. T.”

“Oh, can the tough-guy drama,” Murray said. “Malcolm is dead, Dew. Deal with it. You want payback, right?”

“You’re goddamn right I do.” That was exactly what he wanted. More than anything else, save for a magic potion that would bring Malcolm back from the dead.

“Well, you’re the one that can make it happen,” Murray said. “You sure as hell aren’t on this job because of your good looks or your physical prowess. You’re old, you’ve got a gut, and you have a bad hip. You have only two things that make you worth a squirt of piss—you shoot when you’re told to shoot, and you figure things out. Get Dawsey to play ball, and get…me… a… live… host .”

Murray broke the connection.

Maybe he was an asshole, but that didn’t shake a nagging feeling that he was right.

“That’s why they give you the tough jobs, old boy,” Dew said to the empty room. “Because you can figure things out.”

So how the hell was he going to get through to Scary Perry Dawsey?

Sometimes having a black budget was fun.

Bob’s Breakfast Shack wasn’t a shack at all. It was actually part of the motel—a nice little greasy spoon with twenty tables, four of which were kind of off in their own room. For the small price of five Ben Franklin portraits, Dew’s people had the room to themselves.

Fuck it. It was only taxpayer money.

You could spend just so much time in the MargoMobile’s computer area. Buying out the diner’s back room let them talk openly. Dew sat at a table with Clarence Otto, Amos Braun and Margaret Montoya. Gitsh, Marcus, the black-eyed Milner and the nose-braced Baumgartner sat at another. Marcus was quietly whistling the melody from the Animals’ “House of the Rising Sun.”

Dew had sent the other men home last night after they secured the scene. They were local talent, which he used for muscle when he needed it—the tactic gave him just-in-case firepower yet cut down on people who knew the whole story.