“But here’s the thing—highway patrol didn’t even search for a full week. Since then, the husband had insisted that people continue to look for her, but the father has been fighting it, saying that the husband’s a loser, that his daughter surely had second thoughts and is out there somewhere in the great wide open finding herself, that’s why no one’s heard from her in two months.
“The dad’s a former Orlando police officer, worked for a district known for corruption, multiple internal affair investigations spanning decades, from which nothing ever materialized. Seems an awfully weird coincidence. My thought is that the district is so corrupt that people get caught in the crossfire. Family members. Like Amber. Could be retaliation, a planned hit from someone the district pissed off, which would explain why the search was called off so abruptly, why the dad’s so quick to brush it off—can’t have people digging too deep into the district’s dirty business.
“Sounds like somebody needs some killin’. That’s where you come in. Figure out what the hell happened to this girl. Eliminate those who need it. Details coming momentarily. Questions?”
“No.”
“Good luck, Suppressor.”
Click.
He was gone. The next time Silence would hear from him would be the next time Silence needed to do “some killin’.” Which would be sooner than later.
Silence put the phone back in the cradle.
There was a beep from one of the bedrooms. His fax machine.
The boards of the old home creaked as he walked to the back. The house wasn’t old in the same way as Mrs. Enfield’s—his was a leftover from the post-war boom, much newer—but it bellyached nearly as much as hers.
Silence waited next to the machine, which sat on a small table by the window. It buzzed as it worked, huffing out plasticky-smelling heat, warming Silence’s arm. Papers stacked up in the output tray as they printed. When the last sheet fell into place, there was a final screech of communication through the phone line.
Finished.
He picked up the stack.
On top was a brief note from Falcon, the same information he’d given over the phone, with a final sentence stating:
I’m rootin’ for ya.
Sincerely,
Your Biggest Fan
XOXOXO
Falcon enjoyed making light of the relatively short life expectancy Silence enjoyed as an Asset, one of the Watchers’ field agents.
Photocopied newspaper articles followed Falcon’s initial note.
New Bride Feared Missing
Lund Search Continues
Search Called off for Missing Orlando Woman
Husband Pleads for More Resources in Private Search for Missing Woman
Following the articles were two pages of biographical information on the three individuals the Watchers had deemed to be pertinent to the case—Amber Lund; her father, Carlton Stokes; and her husband, Jonah Lund. The information had been mined via the Watchers’ considerable talent hidden in plain sight within all levels of U.S. bureaucracy.
The last pages were photos of the three people. Some were scans from newspapers while several of the photos of Carlton Stokes and Jonah Lund had clearly been photos taken surreptitiously—candid images of them leaving buildings, ordering coffees, crossing parking lots. Commissioned photographs taken by a private detective.
Silence picked up a photograph of Stokes, one of the spy pics. White, early sixties. Silver-and-black hair, medium length, with sideburns. Dark eyebrows over a generous nose and a long, slightly jowly face. Silence could easily put this guy’s image behind a desk in a 1980s cop movie, have him fill the cranky ol’ lieutenant role. You’re a loose cannon! I’m gonna have your gun and badge after this latest stunt you’ve pulled! Knowing that Stokes was a former police officer perhaps informed the fantasy.
He flipped to another of the commissioned photos, this one of Jonah Lund. He was walking down a sidewalk in what must have been downtown Orlando, head down, hands shoved in his pockets. An open green flannel over a black T-shirt. Jeans. Sunglasses. White, twenties, average build.
Another photo of Jonah Lund, one of the newspaper photos, clearly taken long before losing his wife, a snapshot, happy times. He wore a different flannel over a different T-shirt and a casual, lopsided smile that twisted up a corner of his face, the sort of smile that had surely been a factor in winning Amber’s heart. Dark brown hair coifed. Slight cleft to his chin. A guy brimming with the breezy confidence of youth, grasping life firmly by the balls.
Silence waited to view Amber Lund’s image last. In Silence’s line of work, it was always difficult dealing with missing persons. It would be a challenge under any circumstances, but with the cases Silence worked, there was always something hideous involved.
Always.
He was an assassin, after all.
So when a person was missing, this invariably meant something awful was happening or had happened to the individual. The best-case scenario, sadly enough, was that the person was being held for ransom.
Or the person might be raped.
Or sold into human trafficking.
Or tortured.
Or dead.
That’s why he hesitated before flipping to a photo of Amber Lund.
It was a newspaper photo, a snapshot like the one of her husband. Sitting at a wrought-iron table outside a restaurant or café or coffee shop. Laughing. Sunglasses perched atop her head, consumed by blonde hair. Thin. Heart-shaped face. Slightly wide-set eyes under a slightly tall forehead. At a casual glance, someone might see simply the latest blonde-haired, blue-eyed perfection. But there was a lot more to Amber Lund. Silence could see it.
Some people viewed others only in shades of the apparent, but Silence could see more, into the depths of those around him. C.C. had told him he was empathic, that he could see people’s souls, their auras. Silence wasn’t spiritual in the same way as C.C.—his ethereal, kindly, bohemian beauty—but he recognized that he had a mostly accurate ability to sense a person’s character upon sight, even from a photograph.
And in Amber Lund, Silence saw deep humanity. One hell of a soul. She radiated it. The biographical information noted that she had cerebral palsy. Silence had observed that afflictions like this often left people with a deeper appreciation, some sort of stronger
