“I was going to call you,” he said. “I bought it.”
Kwak looked flabbergasted.
“You did?”
“Just picked it up a couple of hours ago,” Teffinger added.
Kwak shook his head in wonder.
“I’ll be damned. I didn’t think you’d do it.”
“I shouldn’t have. It took all my money and then some,” Teffinger said.
“Do what I do,” Kwak said. “Get a cardboard sign-Need Money, Did Something Stupid. Just stay off my corner.”
Then they turned their attention to the job at hand. Teffinger wanted it processed as if it was a homicide scene, not a B amp;E. If someone left a fingerprint, a hair, or dropped his wallet by mistake, Teffinger wanted Kwak to find it.
Aspen watched from a distance, talking to the renters who had wandered over to see what all the commotion was about. All the fuss made her knees weak.
She didn’t know where she’d sleep tonight.
Not here, though.
She went over to her car, sat behind the wheel and called Blake Gray to let him know that she’d be showing up on the news again. She didn’t want him to get blindsided by it.
“I’m coming over,” he said.
“Blake, really, you don’t have to. I’m fine.”
“I’ll see you in about twenty minutes.”
When he arrived, he had a proposition for her. “This is somehow tied to the four dead women, especially if you’re correct that nothing was taken. Here’s what I think we should do. We should send you to the firm’s D.C. office until all this blows over. The firm will pick up all the expenses-air, lodging, meals, the whole thing. You need to get acquainted with the people out there sooner or later anyway, so it might as well be now. Then, when this blows over, we’ll bring you back to Denver.”
She thought about it.
“What if it doesn’t blow over?”
He cocked his head.
“Everything blows over sooner or later. The main thing is your safety. Tonight, tomorrow, and the next day.”
She almost agreed, but then shocked herself.
“Thanks, but no,” she said. “I’m not going to give in to intimidation.”
With the tattoo woman Mia Avila hogtied on the bed, terribly and disgustingly alive, Draven took a hit from the flask and watched his copy of the DVD-the secret copy no one ever knew about, the one transmitted to a second recorder located in the garage. It convinced him that the client fully intended to kill the woman and thought he had.
Draven felt better knowing that.
If the asshole had chickened out, and intentionally left him with a live mess to dispose of, Draven wouldn’t have had much of a sense of humor about the whole thing.
He didn’t mind abducting the women.
He didn’t mind that they died.
He didn’t even mind how they died.
Quick.
Slow.
Clean.
Messy.
Whatever.
But he had absolutely no respect for little spineless twits who didn’t have the balls to carry through with what they started. That had happened twice before. Afterwards, Draven hunted them both down and taught them a little lesson, about how gutless little toads didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as him any more. They didn’t even know who he was until their last ten seconds of life when he told them. Without being fully vested they couldn’t continue to live, plain and simple. Because otherwise they might end up with buyer’s remorse and feel the need to go to the cops.
The assholes.
This case was different, however.
Nothing more than an innocent mistake.
No need to hunt the guy down.
He got the call he was waiting for mid-afternoon, from Swofford, and explained that the tattoo woman had been left alive, unintentionally, according to his best guess. Swofford paused and then said, “I see three options. You can kill her, or I can call the client and see if he wants to come back and finish up, or you can offer the woman to the next client as a freebie.”
Draven chewed on it.
“When’s the next client coming?” he asked.
“He flies in Monday night, then he’ll drive up to the cabin Tuesday morning, so you need to have the stripper in place by then at the latest. He wants to be sure she’s snatched before he gets to Denver. Is all that doable?”
“I’m pretty sure,” he said.
“Handle the tattoo woman any way you want. Just be sure you have the stripper at the cabin by Monday evening. This guy isn’t the kind of person I want to screw around with.”
“No problem.”
After he hung up, Draven went into the bedroom to check on his little catch, Mia Avila. Lying there, naked and hogtied, she looked incredibly vulnerable. He played with her hair.
She made wonderful little noises through her gag.
“So, what should I do with you? Kill you myself or save you for the next guy?”
Either way, he should definitely have a little fun first.
He turned her on her back and played with her nipples, then ran an index finger up and down her incredibly smooth stomach.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?”