Dead Six

change anything?

Sighing, I shook my head. Five o’clock in the morning was no time to be making big life decisions, especially not on an empty stomach. I pulled into the empty parking lot of Shifty’s and parked my Mustang. Jill liked to walk to work. It appeared I’d be her first customer.

The place was dark. Weird, I thought. Where is she? Jill should’ve been there for at least half an hour already, but the diner was still locked up. No one had been in.

Suddenly worried, I looked around the parking lot. Jill had left Hawk’s house an hour ago. It didn’t take that long to walk to the diner. I hadn’t seen her anywhere along the way. It’s hard to miss the hottest girl in town in a pink miniskirt jumper and white sneakers, after all.

I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. I was so upset I was on the verge of panic. If somebody had just driven up and grabbed her on the way to work, how would we ever know? Oh, God. Oh, God, no . . .

Something caught my eye then. A faint glow in the darkness, coming from the weeds across the parking lot. It was only there for a moment, then disappeared. I broke out into a run, pulling a small flashlight out of my pocket as I did so. It had come from near the entrance to the parking lot. There were some scrubby little weeds near the edge of the sidewalk.

There. On the ground was Jill’s cell phone. The screen had illuminated for a moment and I was lucky to have seen it. Nearby was her purse, its contents spilled out onto the ground. A little bit farther away from the sidewalk I found Jill’s gun.

Picking up the little S&W compact, I checked the chamber and magazine. It hadn’t been fired. She’d either drawn it and been disarmed or it had been found and tossed. Jill had been taken. There was no doubt about it. They’d snatched her off the side of the road. I lifted her phone, intending to call the sheriff. Jill had been kidnapped, and there wasn’t any time to worry about that.

It hit me then. What if they were looking for me? What if they took her because they thought she could lead them to me? A knot formed in my stomach. It didn’t make any sense, but what else could it be? Why would anyone kidnap a waitress in Quagmire freaking Nevada? It couldn’t be a coincidence. I couldn’t call the sheriff. They’d be waiting for me. But if I didn’t call, how would I ever find Jill? I had to do something. They were going to hurt her, or kill her. Damn it! What do I do?

I noticed the screen on her phone then. It was open to her address book. There were only two entries, and one of them was Hawk. The other . . . well, holy shit.

The phone rang six times before it was answered. On the other end of the phone was a voice I’d not heard in a long time.

“Jill?” he said.

“Guess again, Lorenzo.”

LORENZO

Somewhere in Arizona

June 28

I had just hung up on the Fat Man. The meeting had been arranged for a few days from now.

Reaper’s snooping had shown that Eddie, like all good international playboys, had a penthouse in Vegas. I had arranged the handoff for some innocuous shopping center with plenty of eyewitnesses, just like they would have expected. My gut told me that though Eddie wouldn’t dare show his face at the handoff, he wouldn’t be able to wait to see his treasure. So it seemed logical that he would be staying at his local residence.

And the night before the handoff, I was going to break in and take care of business. The place wasn’t in his name, rather owned by one of the Montalban family’s shell corporations. Reaper, more dedicated than I had ever seen him, had been doing a lot of digging and had compiled quite the list of properties, from private islands to penthouse suites spanning the globe; Big Eddie certainly got around.

The Fat Man had sounded suspicious. They’d probably thought I would have still been somewhere in the eastern hemisphere. Screw them. Las Vegas seemed like as reasonable a place for a drop as any. I could have picked a hundred other cities in twenty countries and Eddie probably had a place there, too.

He wouldn’t be expecting me to take the fight right to him. Reaper was en route, and the plan seemed to be coming together. Plotting revenge gave me a feeling of smug satisfaction.

I would be in Vegas before lunch, leaving me with plenty of time to scout the place, take care of some business, catch up on some sleep, and get some Thai food. There was this one little hole-in-the-wall place off the strip . . . My phone rang. I was expecting Reaper, but the caller ID was a surprise. I stared at it for a moment. I had arranged for the drop to be in Nevada once I had figured out that was the prefix from Jill’s phone, but now with the handoff arranged . . . She sure has lousy timing.

I flipped the phone open. “Jill?” I asked.

“Guess again, Lorenzo.”

It definitely wasn’t Jill. The voice was familiar . . . from Zubara. It can’t be. “Valentine?”

“Yeah.”

It took me a long moment to wrap my brain around this. How had Dead Six found her? Valentine, the killer with the .44 Magnum, and he was only alive because of my stupidity. I should have killed him when I had the chance. “If you hurt her, I swear I’ll—”

He cut me off. “Shut up. Listen to me.”

“No, you listen to me! I’ll cut your eyes out if you don’t put her on,” I shouted into the phone.

“Goddamn it, if you want that girl to live, listen to me.”

“What did you do with her?” I asked before he could say anything else.

“For Christ sakes, I didn’t do anything with her. Somebody else did. They took her.”

“Who did? Where?”

“I don’t know. Who else have you pissed off?”

Answering that accurately would require a lot of time and thought. “Where was she taken?”

“Quagmire. It’s in Nevada.”

“I’ve never been there, but I know where it’s at. I’m a few hours away,” I said, stomping on the gas. The terrorists’ Ford wasn’t built for speed, but I would make it work. “What happened?”

“They grabbed her on the way to work. I was going to stop in and say hi, get some breakfast, but she never made it. I found her stuff on the ground in the parking lot.”

“Wait, what are you talking about? What’s Jill doing hanging around with you?” My hand tightened on the phone so hard I thought it was going to break.

“She was in Quagmire when I got there.”

“Then what are you doing in Quagmire?”

“None of your goddamn business,” Valentine said. “Try to keep up. I was in Quagmire. I met the girl there, your little sidekick that shot me in the back in the Zoob. Something happened. She was taken. I don’t know who did it. I found her phone. I called you. Still with me?”

“Yes,” I said, trying not to let my frustration bubble over into anger. “Could it have been Gordon? Jill told me about a run-in at the embassy with somebody named Gordon Willis.” There was no response. “Valentine?” I wondered for a moment if the line had gone dead.

“Yeah, you’re right. I thought they were looking for me. But I think they were looking for her. They’re good at cleaning up the loose ends.”

“You know this Gordon Willis?”

“Long story. Look, if they have her, they’re going to make her disappear. We don’t have any time.”

“That’s not going to happen. I’ll be there in a few hours,” I repeated.

“Can I ask you something?” Valentine said after a long pause.

“What? Go ahead.”