“I’m aware. But you won’t be. If I’m caught, I’ll take full responsibility. You have my word on it.”
“That’s not what concerns me,” Gif said.
“Well, it concerns me big time,” Drex said. “I won’t let you two be blamed. Not by Rudkowski or anyone.”
After a lengthy silence, Mike heaved a heavy sigh and asked Drex if he needed any equipment shipped to him.
“No. I brought it with me.”
“So this idea didn’t just pop into your head.”
Drex didn’t respond.
“How do you plan to plant it?” Gif asked. “Where inside the house? When?”
“All TBD. I’ll keep you posted.”
He hung up before they could try further to talk him out of it.
The eyeglasses Drex wore were a prop. So was the ream of typing paper on the kitchen table next to his computer. Alongside the stack of blank sheets were the couple hundred pages of rubber-banded manuscript that had been typed by a woman in his office. Her name was Pam something. The text had been taken directly from a historical paperback novel set during the Civil War.
When he approached Pam with the request, she’d regarded him dubiously. “What do you want it for?”
“Something I’m working on.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “You can’t share?”
“Not yet.”
She’d thumbed through the yellowed pages of the paperback. “What about typos? Does it have to be perfect?”
“No. In fact, a mistake here or there would be good. I’ll be marking it up.”
The single mother of two had a deadbeat ex. She’d agreed to do the transcription for three dollars a page. When she delivered it, Drex had given her a hug and a fifty-dollar bonus.
He marked up the pages with red pencil, dog-eared some of the sheets, dripped coffee over several, left puckered water rings on others.
Now, his setup looked very “writerly,” should anyone be surreptitiously observing, which he sensed someone was.
While seated at his computer as though working on his book, he was actually reading additional material excavated by Mike. Marian Harris’s parish church had held a memorial mass. After the forensic pathologist had completed his examination and turned his findings over to the authorities, her remains were cremated and placed in a vault in the church cemetery.
Although her will had specified allocations for various charities, there was nothing in the coffers to bequeath. The only asset not liquidated prior to her disappearance had been her yacht. As stipulated in her will, it was sold at auction, the proceeds gifted to the parish.
Drex hadn’t asked Mike to research all that, but he was grateful to him for doing so. Marian Harris hadn’t been confined forever in that shipping crate. Drex took some comfort in that.
But not much.
He wanted the son of a bitch who’d done that to her. With an instinct that was almost feral, he felt he had found him.
Throughout the evening, lights in the house across the lawn came on and went off. Shadows moved across window shades. Drex watched Jasper make himself a sandwich. He ate it at the kitchen table while perusing the Sunday newspaper. He saw Talia switch on a light as she entered a room upstairs.
He got only a glance before she shut the door behind her, but he saw that her hair was messily piled on top of her head, and that she had changed out of the oversize white linen shirt and wide-legged pants she’d worn on the cruise.
When they were on deck, and the wind had struck her just right, it had blown aside the fabric of her shirt, affording Drex a glimpse of a white tank top with skinny straps, a fragile-looking collarbone, an oh-so-slight suggestion of cleavage above the snug tank.
Nothing had actually been revealed. Which had been as frustrating as hell. Also as erotic. He’d wanted to unwrap her and explore the tantalizing terrain his imagination had mapped out.
Evening descended into night. Shortly after ten o’clock, he set aside his eyeglasses, folded up his computer, and turned out the lights inside the apartment. But he stayed at the window. He watched and waited until the house across the way remained dark for half an hour.
As he slipped out of the apartment and down the exterior staircase, his pistol was a reassuring pressure against the small of his back.
Jasper, sitting in the deep shadows of his screened porch, watched Drex ease through the door of the apartment, close it silently behind himself, and quickly descend the stairs. In total darkness. Even though there was a light fixture mounted on the