“That was the next thing I was going to talk to you about.” Simon walked away from the edge of the roof with Neville in tow. “Five guests are unaccounted for.”
“What do you mean, ‘unaccounted for’?”
“They checked in earlier in the week and didn’t bother checking out. Their luggage is still in their rooms.”
Neville grabbed him by the arm. “Do we have descriptions of them?”
“Yes,” Simon said with a cautious tone.
Neville thought about the dead bodyguards. “Dark hair, dark skin . . . all in their twenties?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Have you talked to the employees who checked them in?”
“Yes.”
“Have you had them ID the bodies?”
“Not yet. We’re working on getting them to the morgue.”
Neville nodded. It was Sunday and they were still trying to wrap their minds around this thing. She was still trying to see how these new bizarre pieces fit into the puzzle when Simon said he had one more piece of information.
“The room with all of the surveillance equipment down the hall from Tarek’s . . .”
“Yes.”
“The hotel’s computer says the room was unoccupied and being remodeled.”
“Has anyone on the staff confirmed that it was in fact being remodeled?”
“Not so far, but I haven’t talked to everyone.”
Neville thought of the missing rope, the missing guests, who were more than likely lying on cold metal tables in the morgue, the strange behavior of the Libyan Embassy, and now this room full of surveillance equipment. “Has the forensic team finished going over the room with the surveillance equipment?”
“Yes.”
“Tell them I want them to focus on matching any hair samples with the four bodyguards in the morgue. Nice work, Martin.”
“You would have figured it all out,” he said trying to play down the whole thing.
“Maybe . . . maybe not. Let’s see if we can punch some holes in it and keep it between us until we know we have it right.” Neville headed for the steps.
“Where you off to?”
“Remember the guy from the Directorate who showed up last night?”
“Your ex-boyfriend?”
Neville was about to argue the point, but figured it wasn’t worth it. “I have a feeling he and his people know a lot more about what happened here than they’re letting on.”
“I agree,” Simon said, rushing to catch up with her, “and that’s why I’m coming with you.”
“I can handle it on my own.”
“I know you can,” Simon said as he started down the steps. “But it’s always good to have an extra set of eyes when you’re dealing with professional liars from the Directorate.”
CHAPTER 17
CHET Bramble sat in the back of the van and watched the monitors come online one by one. The static of the little ten-inch monitors flickered to black and white images of the interior of the apartment. They now had audio and video on the safe house. He could see his two men move from one screen to the next. He adjusted the lip mike on his headset and said, “You two dildos done dicking around?”
“One more minute,” the voice crackled. “I need to take a crap.”
“Very funny, dickhead.” Normally Chet would have laughed at such a juvenile comment, but not today. “I told you two this guy is a sneaky fucker. Get your asses moving and get out of there. If he walks in on you, you’ll be dead before I can get in there and save your worthless butts.”
The two men began collecting their gear and moving toward the door. Bramble leaned back in the small chair and exhaled, rubbing his right forearm. The temperature was dropping and it was starting to ache. He was a big man—six feet three inches of sculpted muscles and brawn. He had a broad forehead, a thick neck, and a pair of legs that provided a sturdy base to an immovable object. His entire persona exuded violence and he still couldn’t figure out how Rapp had beaten him more than a year ago. By rights he should have wiped the mat with the young recruit, but somehow the sneaky little fucker had put him in some move he’d never even heard of and about two seconds later there was a sound like a dry branch snapping in two. There was a moment of nothing and then searing pain, followed worst of all by the fact that his arm was bent in a way that it was never meant to bend.
Chet Bramble was the son of a Georgia pig farmer. He had only one sibling, Bob, who had spent nearly an hour hung up in his mother’s narrow birth canal. Rather than do a C-section, the country doctor yanked and pulled and twisted with a pair of forceps until little Bob was wrenched from his mother’s womb. The end result was that Bob had a deformed head and was a little slow mentally. He was two years younger than Chet, but from the age of four on, he was nearly identical in size. Bob was his older brother’s shadow for much of their youth. Chet loved him and fiercely defended him against any and all antagonists no matter their age or size, but as he became a teenager he quietly grew to resent him.
Chet’s mother spent her days baking, doing chores, listening to Christian radio, and reading the Bible. His father, Jacob, or Jake, as his friends knew him, was a massive man with a puritan work ethic and absolutely no sense of humor. He drove both his boys hard, but drove Chet harder for the obvious reason that he wasn’t half
