Page 70 of Hotter than Wildfire

Piet thought about it.

He’d had Montez take him to Palmer’s apartment and leave him alone in it for an hour. The human equivalent of giving a hunting dog the prey’s shirt to sniff.

In an hour, he’d gotten her measure. No drugs, no alcohol beyond a dusty bottle of whiskey in a cupboard with half a glass missing. No fancy clothes, no fancy jewelry, very little makeup. Basic cable. Lots of music on a thumb drive. Lots of books, second hand paperbacks and on a cheap ereader.

Montez said she hadn’t missed a day’s work in two years working for him.

The singing was a surprise because she had apparently kept her talent hidden, which was interesting. She’d only put her voice out there when she needed the money when on the run. Otherwise it looked like she’d been perfectly happy being an accountant, earning a reasonable but not high salary.

She was a perfectly ordinary woman who’d been on the run for a year, who’d been flushed out of one safe haven, who’d found another in San Diego, and found a protector with it. She wasn’t a warrior or an operator. Protection would be welcome.

She wouldn’t leave where she’d found it.

“She’s still in San Diego,” Piet said. “I’d bet anything on it. Let’s bury this—" he flicked a thumb at the redly gleaming corpse on the chair, “and get down to San Diego fast. I have an idea.”

In flight, over Sacramento, California

A private jet is a good way to travel, Piet reflected. It beat military transport hands down. He’d been around very rich men for a long long time now, but their luxuries still fascinated him.

He was a man who’d been flown half way around the world on retrofitted C-130s for personnel transport, sitting on canvas seats, strapped to webbing for 30-hour flights. No food, no water and you pissed in a bottle. If you had to shit, tough shit.

The South African Armed Forces for a while had used beat-up Vietnam-era Hueys. The noise level penetrated even the cheap ear baffles. It had been like riding inside a huge, metal shaker with sharp edges designed to rip you to bits if you didn’t hang on.

Miles and millions of dollars away from this Gulfstream G700. They’d flown in style and comfort from Georgia to Seattle and now were flying in style and comfort from Seattle to San Diego.

The cabin smelled of new leather and lemon polish. The Captain and his copilot had welcomed them aboard like royalty and they’d taken off from the General Aviation section of Sea-Tac ten minutes after they’d boarded.

No waiting, no fuss, no inspections.

Piet would never be this rich, and even if he were, he wouldn’t have a private plane. Keeping a plane like this meant leaving a huge footprint in the world. You had to hire pilots and maintenance crews, file flight plans, hire a hangar to keep the damned thing when you didn’t need it. It was a giant fist in the face of society—look how fucking rich I am. Montez clearly needed to wave that fist, make the point.

Piet didn’t.

They sat across from each other in ergonomic seats covered in soft butter-colored leather with a designer fibreglass table between them. Piet was peering into his computer monitor when Montez spoke.

“So why the fuck are we heading back to San Diego?” Montez’s voice was sullen. He was still mad at having lost the girl before he could have his fun, the moron. “She could be anywhere by now.”

“Mm.” Piet finished what he was doing before answering. Montez being Montez would find it a sign of disrespect but he didn’t give a shit. “It’s a question of psychology. She’s been on the run for a year and she’ll be tired of that. She went across the country and settled in the last city you can be in before falling into the ocean and stayed there until you flushed her out.”

And lost her.

The words were unspoken but a dull flush appeared under Montez’s dark skin. “For some reason she goes straight to San Diego. And it turns out that the reason she’s there is because she’s got a protector of some kind. Girl’s not ex military, doesn’t have a martial arts background. Near as I can tell, she’s just an accountant who sings. She’s got someone, I think she’ll keep him. As long as he’s around, she’ll stay.”

“Even if you’re right, San Diego’s a big town. We’re looking at three million people in an area that’s almost 400 square miles in size. And that’s not counting Tijuana just across the border.” Montez slapped the expensive leather of the seat. “Shit! We’d know where she was now if that bitch hadn’t offed herself!”

Piet doubted that. But whatever. The woman was dead and indulging in theatrical outbursts wasn’t going to bring her back to life and, more importantly, wasn’t going to help them find Ellen Palmer. Cool, calm logic would do that.

“Look at this.” Piet turned the laptop so that both of them could see the monitor. It was a map of a section of Seattle. Red lines connected dots of different sizes. It was the same map with the same data points that had helped them find Kerry Robinson.

Montez’s jaw muscles clenched. “Yeah, so? We found her friend and now she’s dead. How’s this going to help us?”

Piet didn’t sigh but he did want to punch that childish pout off Montez’s face. “Look at these routes.” Piet ran his finger from the Blue Moon to where Ellen Palmer had been living to Kerry Robinson’s apartment. The lines made huge dog legs. “What do you see?”

Montez fixed him with a hard, black stare. “I don’t like guessing games, van der Boeke.”

Geeste bul, Piet thought. Damned idiot.

“This,” he indicated with his finger, following the dogleg routes, “is how she got to work and how she went to visit her friend, Kerry.”