I held the SIG stretched out loosely in front of my body, elbow resting on the ground to take the weight of the gun. I kept checking both ways like a kid whose parents have drummed road safety into them.
With an effort, I regulated my breathing. Slow in, pause, slow out. Nice and easy.
So when the shallowest outline of a man appeared around the brickwork at the end of the service road, I was already lined up on him.
“Like I said before, Charlie — nice reflexes,” Joe Marcus said.
CHAPTER THIRTY
This time when Riley arrived to pick us up Joe Marcus climbed into the rear of the Bell with me. The Aussie pilot didn’t comment on the fact we both had weapons drawn. I kept one eye on the landscape below as we lifted off, as if hoping I might catch a glimpse of a fleeing figure.
Needless to say, I did not.
“OK mateys,” Riley said after a few minutes in the air, “Somebody want to tell me what the bloody hell that was all about?”
Marcus tucked the Colt away under his shirt and slouched in his fold-out seat.
“One of the things I’ve always liked about you, Riley, is the fact you know when to follow orders without asking dumb questions.”
“Great. Thanks. Put it in a letter of commendation,” Riley said with dismissive irritation in his voice. “Now answer the bloody question — dumb or not.”
Marcus shrugged even though Riley couldn’t see it. “May have been a looter.”
“You think?” Riley’s words could have been my own. “Most folk aren’t making it this far in. Still plenty of stuff to be grabbed from the outlying food stores and electrical wholesalers. Keep ’em quiet for another day or so yet, I reckon.”
“That was no random looter,” I said and Marcus’s stony gaze swept briefly over me.
“You think it might have been the jewellery store robber?” Riley asked. “Come back to grab the rest while he had the chance?”
“Maybe,” I said, not taking my eyes off Joe Marcus. “Or maybe the answer’s a little closer to home.”
That got Marcus’s attention. He came upright in his seat. “Be careful what you say now, Charlie.”
“Or what?” I said. “I have a convenient accident of some kind, hmm? I mysteriously fall out of a helo or get taken down by some rampaging looter. What a shame there are no rebels handy.”
Riley said nothing, all his focus suddenly taken up with the business of flying the Bell, but Marcus’s eyes narrowed ominously.
“And why exactly would you think something like that might happen to you?” he asked in a soft lethal tone.
“Why not?” I threw back. “Isn’t that what happened to Kyle Stephens?”
Marcus sat back in his seat again and crossed his arms as if afraid of what his hands might unconsciously betray.
“Why would we have wanted Stephens dead?”
“Because he got careless,” I said, echoing Riley’s own explanation on the day of my arrival. “And then he got unlucky.”
“Oh?”
I sighed, rubbed a hand around the back of my neck. It came away gritty like the rest of me.
“Look, let’s cut to the chase shall we?” I said tiredly. “I know about Hope.”
That got a reaction — from both men. I felt the slight tremor through the airframe as Riley’s hands twitched at the controls. Joe Marcus’s reaction was a more straightforward flare of compressed anger.
“What do you want, Charlie?”
“A good question. The truth might be a good start.”
Marcus gave a snort that broke up into a mirthless smile. “And what do you intend to do with this ‘truth’ once you’ve gotten it?”
I shrugged. “I’ll burn that bridge when I come to it.”
From his face he did not find my mangled metaphor amusing.
“Hope is part of this team,” he said with deliberation. “We think of her as family and we look out for each other as family.”
So what did that make Kyle Stephens?
“Your apparent loyalty is admirable. Shame it doesn’t extend to everyone on your team.”
“Not everyone needs protecting,” Marcus said. “Surely you get that we would want to look out for her?”
“Even though she’s been lying to you since she joined R&R?” I asked mildly. “This can’t have been a first time for her — not the way she’s got her moves down—”
Marcus launched out of his seat. In the space between heartbeats he had his hand fisted in my shirt, his forearm wedged across my throat and his face thrust close to mine.
“Don’t say another word about that kid,” he bit out, “or you will be getting out of this aircraft before the next stop.”
In reply I jerked both hands up, grabbed his ear with one and his chin with the other and started to wrench his head round. Marcus wisely dropped his chokehold before the vertebrae in his neck gave way. As he lurched back his eyes were wary and, I like to think, just a little more respectful. He made an exploratory movement of his head and winced.
Well, good.
“Looks like you’re right,” I said. “Not everyone does need protecting.”
“Like you said, I’m loyal to my team,” he said tightly. “You attack one of us, you attack all of us.”
“But that proviso didn’t extend to Kyle Stephens, did it?”
As soon as I spoke I knew it was the wrong thing to say. Marcus lost his defensive posture and seemed to uncoil. He sat back, his whole body relaxing.
And in that moment I knew I’d been on the cusp of an important discovery, and somehow I’d blown it.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
I was photographing teeth when Parker Armstrong called from New York. It was early afternoon, after Riley had returned me and Joe Marcus to the army camp. Almost immediately Dr Bertrand commandeered me. Apparently my skills with a camera were not as bad as she’d feared.
Besides, I didn’t think spending further time with Marcus — or seeking out Hope — was a good idea.
So I spent several hours working with a forensic odontologist from the UK, who was carefully sorting through a scattering of teeth and allocating them to individuals. He was currently gluing them onto strips of card that resembled a dental X-ray. From this, he told me, it might be possible to identify victims too badly damaged to otherwise put a name to.
“There’s always DNA, but that’s expensive and often there’s nothing to match it to,” he told me, inspecting another tooth. “Superglue and cardboard is the more cost-effective option.”
I snapped each completed mouthful with the URN giving the team who’d found the victim, the area they were found in, and the unique number. Only when the body was finally identified and reconciled to their family would that number finally be put aside.
I was so absorbed in the work that the buzz of my cellphone made me start. I checked the incoming number and gave an apologetic smile to the Brit odontologist.
“This could be important. I better take it, if that’s OK?”
He waved me away cheerfully enough, his glasses perched on the end of a long nose.
“I’ll shout when this one’s complete,” he mumbled, distracted. “Now then, upper left second bicuspid… Ah, there you are!”
I took the call, moving away into the far corner as I did so.
“Hi boss, what do you have for me?” I asked, careful not to use his name just in case.
“You first,” Parker said. “How’s it going out there?”
I suppressed a sigh and gave him a brief rundown of earlier events. He listened in loud silence. When I was done he expressed a desire, again, to recall me. Again I refused.