What Doesn't Kill Her (Cape Charade #2)(16)

She didn’t knock his block off, but only because he was driving and she was thinking. Apparently, he didn’t know about the courier’s death, or even that there had been a courier charged with bringing the head to the Restorer. Why hadn’t Horst been told? It seemed that kind of information should have been passed on to heighten preparedness. Unless Nils had kept the information to himself and only passed it on to her. Nils was paranoid and suspicious, and she was the one person on this assignment he knew without a doubt he could trust.

She asked Horst, “When did this call come in?”

“A couple of hours ago. I happened to come in after a few days off, so the boss grabbed me and told me we had an emergency job. He sent me to pick you up and go to the airport.” The van reached the freeway entrance; Horst put his foot on the accelerator and they merged to the honking of furious drivers. “Lucky for me. Mostly I work with guys, and they aren’t pretty like you.”

Yeah, he was full of bullshit and ill-deserved confidence.

He pegged the van at ninety miles per hour and wove in and out of traffic, inciting honks and well-deserved hand gestures. In a way, that was good—while she was terrified for her life, she had no time to worry about her lousy parenting skills or the future of their mission.

Horst chatted as he drove, about the military, his parents’ home in Florida, speculation about the mummy’s head and gossip about the Restorer who he said was some weird whacked-out hermit.

So he did know some things about this mission.

Luckily for her, she didn’t have to lie any more about her military and security experience. He never, not once, indicated by query or comment, that he was interested in anything she had to say. Instead, she made engrossed noises, agreement noises. Or possibly they were exclamations of muffled terror as he changed lanes with inches to spare.

Her sounds encouraged him to tell her that he’d joined the military when he was nineteen because he had been caught picking pockets at Disney World. His father had blown a gasket and threatened to cut off his funds unless he joined up.

That captured her interest, and she looked Horst over again. Nothing about him shouted urban pickpocket. Mostly he seemed like a well-built guy who liked to impress women one way or another, and maybe since she’d been in the Army he was playing the bad-boy card to impress her.

When they pulled into a parking place at Portland Airport, she sagged in the seat and hoped her high blood pressure hadn’t ripped opened the still red scar on her hip.

Horst unsnapped his seat belt and checked his phone. “Let’s go. Luggage is arriving now.” He hoofed it for baggage claim so fast, Kellen ran to keep up with him, and she rejoiced as he kept up a monologue about how this head was an antiquity of great importance and if he didn’t manage to grab it on its first swing around the carousel, someone would confiscate it and it would disappear into some rich guy’s collection of illegal goods, and the archeological world would never have the time to study its origins and legends.

Kellen admired the sentiments and wondered if she should put Horst back on the good-guy list. In her mind, he was changing from bad to good to bad pretty quickly.

“Also, my boss would kill me.”

That sounded more like it. “What kind of bag is it in?”

“Small black rolling bag.”

She moaned.

He laughed. “Yeah. But it has a lime-green yarn puffball attached to the handle.”

“I guess...that’s a good idea. Who would think a mummy’s head would be marked like that?”

“The bad guys,” he said. “If there really are any, and if they’re on this end of the continent. Personally, I’ll bet this is all a lot of hooey about nothing. I’m telling you, these jobs are never exciting.”

“Hope you’re right.”

They arrived at baggage carousel eight as the first bags were tumbling down the chute. Kellen was pleased to note that Horst was out of breath, and she was not. A few weeks off for injury and she was still in good shape.

They both watched, poised to leap at the first black bag with an attached lime-green yarn fuzz ball. As time wore on, the waiting grew tense and worried, and Kellen scanned the crowd, looking for someone who fit the physical profile of a thief and killer. Foolish, that; last winter she had learned the hard way that killers hid in plain sight. Still, she watched for suspicious behavior.

She saw a large family having a rambunctious reunion...how easy to steal a bag and pass it from one person to another.

She saw a businessman standing right in front of the chute and staring hard, intent on grabbing his bag even before it slammed against the carousel’s bumper.

She saw a woman watching her and smiling, as if they were acquaintances. With a shock, Kellen realized they were; last December, that woman had vacationed at Yearning Sands Resort with her girlfriend and their children. That was the trouble with having worked for a well-known Washington resort—a lot of people knew Kellen Adams.

Kellen waved, and Horst elbowed her. “She your special friend?” He had that smarmy tone people get when asking personal questions that are none of their business.

“No.”

“You have a special friend?”

Kellen didn’t want him to develop any ideas, so she said, “Yes. Max Di Luca. He found me this job.”

“Sounds like your special friend wants you to scram.”