Shee left her table and caught the attention of the bartender to whom Alyssa had handed her credit card.
“Hey, can I pay cash instead?” she asked, motioning to the credit card about to be plunged into a card reader.
The bartender nodded and returned her card without confirming it belonged to her.
Shee pulled a hundred-dollar bill from her shorts pocket and handed it to him.
“Can you add two pineapple ginger martinis to my bill and send them to that couple over there?”
She motioned to the couple. They were busy looking for a spot to stow a spare napkin they didn’t want to touch now that they knew it wasn’t theirs.
The bartender appeared surprised, but amenable. “Sure.”
“Give the change to Alyssa.”
He nodded, the twitch of one eyebrow the only evidence of surprise at her generosity.
Shee left the restaurant and stepped into the Florida sun. She’d done all she could for The Oyster People. Both pineapple and ginger helped digestion and the symptoms of food poisoning.
Maybe they’d get lucky. The oyster didn’t smell that bad.
She looked at her credit card and frowned.
Siofra McQueen.
Running the card would have put her on the grid for the first time in over a decade.
She’d wimped out.
Again.
&&&
Chapter Four
Five weeks ago.
“I appreciate the catch-up Viggo, but you didn’t call me to Minnesota to buy me a burger.”
Mick McQueen shivered and wrapped himself like a burrito in his inadequate twill jacket. The elevator doors opened and fingers of frost pinched his cheeks. As an ex-Navy SEAL with almost seventy years of life experience, he thought he could withstand anything, but the icy blast of a Minnesota winter had him ready to reel off his name, rank, serial number and location of ally command.
“Damn. I forgot it could get this cold. Florida’s made me soft.”
Viggo acknowledged his distress with a tight smile, and thrust a hand into his khakis to the tune of jangling keys.
Mick studied him as he looked away.
Viggo seems off.
Could be a lot of reasons why. They hadn’t seen each other in years. Now they were old men. There’d been times he couldn’t have dreamed they’d live so long. Viggo by his side used to mean they were in some foreign land doing God-knows-what.
Now, where blond Viggo once strode into battle like avenging Odin, a paunchy, hunch-shouldered giant in khakis walked with the hint of a limp thanks to a recent hip replacement. With the addition of kinky gray hairs, his once-golden locks looked more like a sun-bleached pile of straw tangled on his thick skull.
They were nearly to Viggo’s car when Mick’s musing ended and he realized his friend hadn’t said a word since they left the restaurant.
Maybe his lips froze together.
“Veeg?”
Viggo stopped and looked down at him.
A sour taste struck Mick’s pallet.
I know that look.
His friend took a subtle step backwards, the wrinkle between his eyebrows telegraphing sorry.
Mick’s brain screamed its own word.
Move.
He pushed off his left toe.
“What have you done?”
His words were eaten by the blast of a rifle. Something struck the right side of his head. Force spun his body and Mick collapsed against a car.
He could still see.
He could still breathe.
I’m here.
The shot hadn’t killed him.
I have to move—
His elbow cracked against the paved floor of the garage.
When did I fall?
Betrayed by his limbs, he remained motionless, the wounded side of his skull pressed against the pavement.
He watched as Viggo’s feet shuffled toward him. Heard a voice.
Veeg, help me—
The garage disappeared, replaced by the flickering image of a little girl playing in the sand by the water’s edge. He smiled.
Shee.
The sun dimmed. Darkness oozed across the beach scene as if it were a jammed filmstrip frame, burning beneath the heat of the projector’s lamp.
The girl turned to look at him as the world around her melted.
No, no, no—
&&&
Chapter Five
Present Day
Shee opened the box and wrestled foam away from the treasure nestled inside—a DJI Mavic video drone. Quadcopter, to be specific. She’d bought it using the other credit card, the one embossed with the name Hunter Byrne.
Her cheesiest alias to date.
She’d picked Hunter because she’d been in a bar plotting how to hunt her latest quarry when a chatty bartender asked her name. New town, new target—it had been time for a change.
With the Talking Heads’ Girlfriend playing over the embedded ceiling speakers, she’d blurted Hunter Byrne, guessing the young bartender wouldn’t know David Byrne from a rack of oversized jackets.
He definitely didn’t know she hunted men.
Well, usually men. Not sexist, just a fact.
She’d been a skip tracer-slash-bounty hunter since she was eight years old. Over the years, she’d had a thousand names. Most of them she made up on the spot—a talent more difficult than the average person would imagine.
In a panic, names like Foghorn Quackenbush jump to mind, but she’d learned to resist the urge to blurt nonsense. She didn’t want to end up in a conversation about her silly name, or worse, inspire a mark to doubt her. Tell someone your name is Cockney Schnizzlefritz and they’ll blow you off on the spot.
