His eyelids were at half-mast as he concluded his doggy dissertation with a jarring non-sequitur: “The Septimus people have marked someone for death.”
“Whoa!” Hari said. “Where did that come from?”
“I was visiting a dark web chatroom last night and this guy who calls himself ‘Belgiovene’ said it looked like he was going to be doing ‘another freebee.’ I’ve been tracking this guy since February when he talked about an ‘easy-peasy freebee’ that involved pushing a guy into the Hudson and watching him go down for the third time. That’s exactly how Russ died.”
“Your brother?” Hari remembered the name from yesterday. “You think he killed your brother?”
“Sure as I can be without actually witnessing it. When someone asked him why for free, he said an organization he belongs to targets a person now and then and taps him to do the dirty work.”
“And you think that organization is Septimus?”
He shrugged. “The timing and everything else fits.”
He started to pour himself more Patrón but she stopped him.
“I think you’ve had enough. You’re already slurring.”
“You’re right. I don’t want it to affect my performance.”
“What performance?”
“You know—you and me…later.”
“Oh, you’ve definitely had too much.”
“No, just enough.”
“You do realize, don’t you, that I’m old enough that, had I been a promiscuous teenybopper, I could be your mother?”
He blinked. “You’re saying you’re fifteen years older than me—so that makes you, what, like, forty?”
“I—older than I. And yes, I’m guessing fifteen is about right.”
He gave a lopsided grin. “Well, you sure don’t look it. I’d put you at thirty, tops.”
She repressed a laugh. Yeah, right.
“Flattery will get you everywhere—almost.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. “Off to bed with you, my friend.”
He grinned. “Just what I was talking about!”
She opened her door and guided him into the hall. “I mean your bed—alone.”
“What?” He looked genuinely shocked. “You mean we’re both in this nice hotel far from home and we’re not going to hook up?”
“I commend you on your grasp of the situation.”
“Well, at least walk me back to my room.”
“I already have.” She pointed across the hall. “There’s your door.”
Now he put on a hurt face. “Seriously?”
“Don’t take it personally, I just don’t like beards.”
He rubbed his stubbled jaw. “No?”
“They chafe my thighs.”
She quickly closed the door to hide an evil grin.
Let him take that to bed.
TUESDAY—MAY 16
HARI
“Do you feel as bad as you look?” Hari said as Donny dropped into the passenger seat.
She knew she probably didn’t look so hot either. She never slept well in a strange bed, and last night had been especially restless.
“Worse,” he mumbled. He looked around. “Hey, I don’t remember having an SUV yesterday.”
He looked different somehow…and then Hari realized he’d shaved his stubble.
Oh, no. Did he really think they might “hook up,” as he’d put it? She’d always hated that term.
She decided not to mention the facial hair. The truth was, part of her restlessness had involved wondering if she should have let him into her bed. She might have fifteen or so years on him, but they were both adults, far from home, as he’d said. Where was the harm?
The harm was in getting involved with a co-worker. Highly unprofessional. And, bottom line, Hari considered herself a professional.
And even if they weren’t co-workers, he didn’t recognize Deputy Dog or the B-52s.
Hey, Nineteen had started playing in her head again.
“I switched cars first thing this morning,” she said. “Deputy Dog—if he’s really a deputy at all—might remember our Taurus if he sees it again. Also, the Tahoe here has off-road capability.”
Donny didn’t seem to be listening. “Can we get some coffee?”
“You read my mind.”
Hari already had a couple of cups percolating through her system, but she could always do with more.
They stopped at the same strip mall as yesterday. Hari got four coffees at the espresso shop while Donny hit the Taco Bell for breakfast Crunchwraps, whatever those might be. Then on to the FedEx lot where they set up watch on the Sirocco building from the same spot as yesterday.
The Crunchwraps turned out to be delicious, but she’d barely finished hers before the trucks started rolling, each tractor hauling a new semi.
“Good thing we got here early,” Donny said.
Hari started the Tahoe and followed the third truck out of the industrial park.
“We’re not gonna wait for the whole convoy?” he said.
Hari shook her head. “I’m operating on the assumption they’re going back to Norum Hill. We’re going to get there way ahead of them, even before Deputy Dog arrives. He can’t keep us off the mountain if we’re already there.”
“Yeah, but he can kick us off when he finds us.”
“Not if he doesn’t know we’re there.”
“I sense that someone has a plan.”
“You sense correctly. Let’s just hope it works.”
She stayed with the convoy until it reached 787, then passed the leaders and raced north to Route 2 where she pushed her speed as much as she dared until they reached Norum Hill. No sign of a sheriff’s unit as they wound their way to the top.
“Okay,” Donny said as the tires crunched across the gravel of the summit parking area. “We’re here. Now what?”
Hari kept the Tahoe moving toward the cell tree at the far northern end of the lot as she said, “We go over the edge.”
“No-no-no!” Donny cried, slamming his hands against the dashboard. “Are you crazy?”
“Possibly.”
Yesterday, as she’d driven the perimeter of the lot in search of the missing trailers, she’d noticed how the northern end had a gentle grade off the edge, easing down to a line of brush before the trees took over. Whoever had flattened the summit a generation or two ago must have pushed the excess earth off the edge.
Hari bumped the Tahoe over one of the low, concrete parking stops by the cell tree and eased down that grade, stopping in the low brush thirty or forty feet below the summit.
“This is why I wanted four-wheel drive,” she said.
Donny had turned in his seat and was staring back up at the summit. “But he’ll see us
