She sniffed. “I’ll think I’ll just pepper them in, here and there.”
“Great. So what have you been doing for the last twenty-seven years? Just exclusively writing cripple jokes or...?”
She laughed. “I’m boring, really. I’ve been doing the same things I always have, only not always for Dad. Freelance skip tracing, more or less. Have you been overseas the whole—”
“Why did you leave me?” He blurted the words.
The question caught Shee off guard. She turned to the woman beside her, as if maybe Mason were addressing her.
The old woman stared at Mason, mouth agape, before piercing Shee with a narrow glare.
Great. She thinks she’s watching a soap opera and I’m the villain.
Shee returned her attention to Mason. “I told you. I didn’t want you worrying about me.”
“But you disappeared off the planet.”
“Not because of you.”
“Then why?”
Shee pulled at a thread hanging from the bottom of her shirt. She couldn’t tell him she’d been unable to face him for so long, and then...
That’s it. I’ll skip to later.
“Someone was trying to kill me. I had to hide for my safety and everyone else’s.”
“From whom?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “There’s a chance Mick found out and that’s what got him shot.”
Mason rubbed his hand over his mouth.
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded.
“But you’re still not telling me everything,” he added.
“I am—”
He held up a palm as if he were stopping traffic, his entire aura seeming to harden. “It’s fine. Let’s concentrate on the mission. What’s the plan?”
Shee’s own shoulders relaxed a notch.
Yes. Mission. Good.
“The plan is to find Viggo and ask him what he knows.”
She reached into her purse to retrieve the sheets Croix had printed for her, bearing Viggo’s home address, family info, where his grandkids went to school and his standing in the local bowling league.
“She’s good,” she muttered, reading the top sheet.
“Who?”
“Croix, the front desk girl. I had her gather intel on Viggo.”
Mason’s brow knit. “You had reception investigate Viggo?”
“She’s ex-Navy. Everyone at the hotel is.”
“Everyone?”
“Not Angelina; she’s a con artist.”
“What? Am I missing something here?”
Shee stopped reading and sighed. “Mick’s creating his own personal squad of avenging angels.”
“Creating?”
“Was creating. Created.”
“Why?”
“I dunno. He used to talk about doing it—helping people who can’t find help elsewhere. His way of gaining a ticket to heaven, I guess.”
“Hm.” Mason took the wad of papers from her and flipped through. He scowled. “What’s this?” He pulled out a sheet and held it up for her to see.
Shee looked at the candid photo of a man’s butt as he bent to pick up his luggage.
Mason.
She snatched the sheet from him. “She thinks she’s funny.”
He smirked. “She’s not that good. My left is my better side.”
&&&
Chapter Twenty-Six
Locating an aging, Viking storm giant in Minneapolis turned out to be more of a needle-in-a-haystack situation than Tyler ever dreamed. Just walking through the Minneapolis St. Paul Airport, he spotted five old dudes over six feet tall sporting blond beards.
At Miami airport, ruminating on his spectacular failure, he remembered seeing his target and his enormous friend twice during his previous trip to Minneapolis. At the start of the job, he’d arrived early to case the parking lot where he’d been told to find them, and popped into the attached mall to use the bathroom. On his way out, he spotted two old guys talking to a young man at the host stand of a restaurant. They matched the descriptions he’d been given of his target and the friend. Later, he recognized them returning to their vehicle, this time through a rifle scope.
The way the big guy and the kid maître d’ had been laughing, he suspected they knew each other. He had to be a regular.
All he had to do was find the maître d’, get him to identify the big guy, find the big guy, get him to identify the target, and then find the target.
Easy peasy.
Then he could get his half-Cuban, Miami-born ass out of this arctic hellscape.
Tyler took a seat on a bench outside the mall restaurant, pleased to see the same young man at the host station. The kid was easy to clock—his wide eyes and easy grin said Boy Scout, the skull-heavy arrangement of tattoos poking from his crisp white shirt suggested desire to rebel.
Tyler sniggered.
The boys in Miami would eat this kid and his boyish rebellion alive.
He’d worked as a busboy as a kid. Never made it up the ladder to the guy who hands out menus. The memory of his time working restaurants made him shiver. He’d hated it, and joined the Army the day after his seventeenth birthday. His mother signed the consent form, happy to find someone else to feed him. He didn’t tell her he’d joined to shoot people.
Not that she would have cared.
“Come here, Mommy needs to sit a second.”
Tyler turned to see a woman surrounded by a whirlwind of kids and shopping bags sit beside him on his bench.
“I want to go home,” whined a girl with candy stains on her cheeks.
Another kid stared at Tyler, fingers in his mouth, a string of snot oozing from his right nostril.
Tyler tilted backwards to look past the woman.
An unoccupied bench sat ten feet away.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
He took a deep breath.
Calm down. Don’t draw attention to yourself.
He stood and walked to the restaurant.
“Can I help you?” asked the Rebel Boy Scout. His nametag read Jody.
What the hell kind of name is Jody?
Tyler nodded to a booth just inside the entrance. “Yeah. Can I get that table right there?”
“Table for one?”
He
