Color of Blood(64)
The man squinted. “You have the wrong guy, man,” he said. “But it doesn’t matter. Take anything. Just don’t hurt me.”
Dennis took a step forward and looked intently at the man’s face. A small, horizontal scar sat between his bottom lip and the dimple of his chin.
“Shut the f*ck up, Garder,” he said. “Turn and put your hands on the wall. You know the drill: stand back and fall against the wall. Put your hands high up on the wall.”
“You’re making a mistake, man,” he said, leaning at a severe angle against the wall to the left of the dresser. Dennis knelt behind him gingerly and felt for weapons. He could find nothing, and he stood back.
“You got the wrong guy,” the man repeated.
“Shut up.”
“You’re an American.”
“No shit.”
“Why do you keep calling me Garder? You’ve got the wrong guy!”
Dennis hit a preprogrammed speed dial on his cell phone.
“Main terminal,” the voice said. “ID number?”
“Delta 7622.”
“Access Code?”
“Forest Green.”
“What can I do for you, Delta 7622?”
“I need an extraction. It’s a code 5.” Dennis gave the address of the hotel and room number. “How long?”
“Fifty minutes, maximum,” the voice said. “Has the subject been positively identified?”
“Yes,” Dennis said. “He’s standing right in front of me.”
“Rules of engagement say the subject was to be identified, but not alerted to your presence.”
“He’s in danger of fleeing,” Dennis said. “Just get the team here soon. And remember: they knock three times on that door or I fire.”
“Three knocks—confirmed Delta7622.”
***
The hydrogen peroxide stung and fizzed as it dribbled down the bathtub drain. The bleeding had stopped, but the throbbing and fear had not.
She was still groggy from the anesthesia. The after-effects made her movements slow and jerky. They had snipped off about a quarter-inch of the baby toe on her right foot, she guessed. The raw end of the toe was black with coagulated blood, and she was relieved to not see the white tip of the bone protruding through.
While her foot throbbed with a dull pain, her mind fought its way through the pharmaceutical mental glue to replay what had just happened. Every now and then she stopped reconstructing the events with a rush of anxiety as she thought about Simon and her parents.
What should she do? Who could she trust in the office? Could she trust Daniel, her partner? Or Miller? Perhaps someone on the Crime Commission? She had to protect Simon and her parents above all else, but how could she do that without divulging what happened? She was hardly wealthy enough to whisk her family away to a new life. Besides, her parents wouldn’t believe her if the police weren’t involved. They’d think she’d gone off the deep end as a result of the divorce!
A bolt of pain shot up her leg as the severed nerve endings reminded her of their displeasure.
***
“Sit down. There,” Dennis said, pointing to one of the chairs at the small round table in Garder’s hotel room.
The man walked slowly to the table and sat with his back to the drapes. Dennis pulled the table three feet away from the man and sat in the other chair, his back to the front door and a good distance from his prisoner, the table between them.
“Put your hands flat on the table and keep them there,” he said.
The man splayed his fingers on the table and stared at Dennis. The room was perfectly silent except for the faint sounds of a TV in the room next door.
“Who are you?” the man asked.
“Shut up.”
“You just placed a call for an extraction team, didn’t you?”
“Just a second ago you acted like a civilian telling me I’ve got the wrong guy, and now you’re talking about extraction teams. Just shut up.”
The man sat back in his chair and sighed, looked absently at the unmade bed, and sighed again. After several seconds of silence, he said, “Do you have any idea what’s going on here?”
“Shut up,” Dennis said.
“You know they’re going to kill me, right?”
Dennis rolled his eyes. “I’d like to think we execute thieves, but we don’t.”
“Then you really don’t know what’s going on here. You said I was a thief. How much did they tell you I stole?”
“Will you shut the f*ck up?”
“Wait. I bet you’re the investigator they sent from the IG’s office to follow up on my disappearance, right?”
“You right-handed or left? Pick—right or left?” Dennis said. “Or should I just shoot both of them?”
“So why did they send an OIG investigator to track me down? That’s odd. Guess you must be good at finding people. In a million years I would have never figured they’d follow me to Baselworld. Unbelievable.”
Dennis tried to give him a stern look, as if it were a last warning, but he was also startled to know that Garder knew Dennis had been sent out to find him. How did he know that?
“So if you’re from the OIG, then you know next to nothing about what’s going on right now. You have no idea what they had me doing in Australia, do you?”