“If you’re done, I want my phone back.” Without waiting for him to answer, she plucked it out of his hand and walked off with her friend. Patterson could hear the beep-beep-beep of rapid texting.
He sighed. He had just made the most expensive phone call of his life and now he had to let the principal finish bitching at him. “Better put that in your spray-tan fund,” Patterson called after the girl.
“Yeah, whatever,” she said, still texting.
CHAPTER 8
Leaning against Baron’s Jeep on the beach, Danny watched Henry take the SIM card out of the phone, break it in half, and grind the pieces into the sand with his foot. He looked pretty peeved and she didn’t blame him. She felt the same after listening to the phone conversation he’d just had with his handler—correction: ex-handler. Henry had put it on speakerphone so she and Baron could listen.
Patterson’s protests of innocence seemed sincere but in this business, everyone knew how to do sincere. And of course he was going to claim he’d had nothing to do with the assassins. What fool would admit trying to kill you? Hell, if you caught someone standing over you with a goddam butcher knife, they would still deny everything. What do you mean, kill you? I’m not even mad at you! What knife? I didn’t notice—how did that get there?
But the crucial word in the conversation had been Gemini. She knew what Gemini was and she also knew that a lot of people at the DIA weren’t overjoyed about its connection to the agency. But she’d never seen anyone react the way Henry and Baron had. They were actually spooked, and the name Clay Verris spooked them even more. Danny hadn’t thought anything could shake Henry’s composure, which spooked her. She had better find out as much as she could, she told herself, because if it scared Henry—well, she didn’t even know how to finish that sentence.
She turned to him and said, “Okay. Gemini.”
Henry’s eyes were hooded as they swiveled to look at her. “How much do you know about them?”
“Privatized paramilitary, owned by Clay Verris.” Danny watched his face carefully for a reaction to the name; there was none but Baron winced. “Agency does a ton of business with them. Is there more?”
The two men traded looks. “Baron and I served under Verris in the Marines—Panama, Kuwait, Somalia,” Henry told her. “He started Gemini after he left the Service. Tried to hire us. We both said no.”
“Except I was smart enough to move 1500 miles away,” Baron added, chuckling.
“Yeah, that was pretty smart,” Henry said, climbing into the Jeep’s front passenger seat. “I blew that one.”
Danny took a last look around at the beach and the gorgeous blue water where the Aztec was moored close to the shore. If the rest of Cartagena was this beautiful, she could understand how a person might decide to throw it all over for a place in the sun. She was far from ready to even think about that herself. But she wouldn’t have minded turning her phone off for a week or two of vacation time here.
Assuming, of course, that things worked out so well that the agency not only let her keep her job but gave her a replacement for the phone she had tossed into Buttermilk Sound.
Now she was getting too far ahead of herself, she thought as she got into the Jeep’s backseat. She had to take things one step at a time. Or in her case, one life-changing crisis at a time.
In spite of everything, Henry could feel himself untense as Baron drove them to his place. Baron had been trying to get him to visit for years—decades—and he had always managed to find reasons not to. Baron had accused Henry of dodging him and asked if it was because he was so completely out of the business. Henry had finally confessed that yes, he had been dodging him, but only because he didn’t think he’d last even half a day in a place where he couldn’t catch a Phillies game.
In truth, however, Henry had been afraid that Cartagena would seduce him the same way it had Baron and he would succumb to the pleasures of a life without stress or sniper rifles or targets, let alone the Phillies. He hadn’t been ready to give any of that up yet, not permanently, and still wasn’t. He had no idea when he would be ready; he only knew he wasn’t there yet.
Baron drove them along a river lined with fishermen; a few of them were pulling in catches as they passed. Henry could hear Danny in the seat behind him moving from one side to the other, trying to see everything all at once. It was nice traveling with kids, he thought wryly; they weren’t too jaded to appreciate the scenery. Ha ha.
Or was that less a joke than it was a message from his subconscious? He’d found himself thinking of Danny not as a daughter exactly, but someone similar, maybe a niece. Only he didn’t have any brothers or sisters, so she would be kind of an adopted niece, like the daughter of a good friend. Except he couldn’t imagine Baron or Jack Willis as her father. Not Patterson, either, not any more. And certainly not Lassiter—her species probably ate their young.
After several miles, Baron turned away from the river onto a road that he said led to the Old Town. “For some of us, Old Town is the only town,” he said as they went through a fish market filled with people haggling or gossiping or whatever civilians did in the course of a typical day; Henry couldn’t really imagine. He’d never gotten a handle on this kind of life. And yet when Patterson mentioned their having saved lives, these were among the ones he was referring to.
The fish market gave way to a church courtyard with a collection of impossibly beautiful statues of saints Henry was pretty sure he’d never heard of and wouldn’t have believed in anyway. At one time, he’d have taken it for granted that Baron didn’t, either, but now he wasn’t so sure. Not that it mattered; saints or no saints, Baron was his brother. When Henry had called, Baron had dropped everything and come to help, no questions asked.
Baron slowed down and brought the Jeep to a stop in front of a large, two-story building painted bright canary yellow. Henry thought it was one of those boutique hotels that only the ultra-rich knew about. He turned to Baron, eyebrows raised.
“Here she is,” Baron told him, obviously pleased at his reaction. “Casa Baron.”
The house was even more impressive inside. Henry turned around and around in the entry hall, goggling at the staircase curving under a skylight, the polished tile floor, and the tropical plants in hanging baskets or in planters running along the walls. Baron pushed Henry gently toward the light and airy living room, still bright even though it was now late in the day. Danny made herself comfortable on the sofa opposite a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the ocean. The water seemed to stretch out forever.
“Damn, Baron, you’re the king of Cartagena,” said Henry, taking in the high vaulted ceiling and wood beams.
“I get by.” Baron chuckled with fake modesty as he went to the nearby drinks cart. “Plus, we got an awesome hardware store down the street. Henry loves hardware stores,” he added to Danny, looking over his shoulder at her.
Danny shifted restlessly on the sofa. “Yeah, great. Let’s make small talk. I want to know more about Clay Verris and Gemini.”
Henry hesitated and looked at Baron but he was rattling glasses to show he was too busy with their drinks to answer.
“Verris tried to hire you,” Danny prodded, “and you said no. So that’s why you hate him, because he offered you jobs you didn’t want? There’s got to be more to it than that.”