Deadly Dozen: 12 Mysteries/Thrillers Read Free Page B

neither too hard or too soft. A respectful handshake. Not at all macho. She liked him already.
    He said, “It’s about an hour to Margrave. I’ve been there before. I’ll drive.”
    “Actually, I prefer to drive,” she said. She felt uncomfortable with anyone else behind the wheel. Particularly someone she didn’t know and had never traveled with before. She had no idea what kind of driver he was. Her queasy stomach might not survive, and there was no way she was going to throw up in front of this guy. Not now. Not ever.
    “I’m a good driver,” he said. “And I’ll be faster, because I know where we’re going.”
    He opened the driver’s door and moved the seat back, for his longer legs.
    Maybe not so proper or respectful.
    Maybe he was going to be one of those overbearing Latino males.
    He was all the way inside the car now. He stuck his head out the window and asked, “Are you coming or not? We’ll have to hustle to get there on time as it is.”
    When there’s only one choice, it’s the right choice.
    She got into the passenger seat and Gaspar accelerated the second she’d closed the door.

 

CHAPTER FOUR
    Carlos Gaspar was hurting, but that was nothing new. Inside and out, mentally and physically, he lived with pain. He had slept badly and given up on it before three in the morning. He had crept out of the bedroom and holed up in the kitchen and started his day with Tylenol and coffee, like he always did. Nothing stronger, although God knew he was tempted. But that way lay ruin, and he knew he couldn’t afford to get any more ruined than he already was. He had a wife and four children and twenty years to go before he could relax.
    He showered and shaved and dressed in a tan poplin suit from Banana Republic, which would have gotten him killed in DC, but which was the standard uniform in the Miami field office. He went back to the kitchen and ate more Tylenol and drank more coffee and sat still and imagined he could hear his family breathing.
    His phone rang at three minutes past four in the morning. Not his regular phone. Not his personal phone, either, but a plain Motorola that had been bubble-wrapped and delivered to him through the Bureau’s internal mail service. He knew who had sent it. He had fired it up and noted its number and run it through the databases. It didn’t exist.
    He answered it and a voice asked, “Gaspar?”
    He said, “Yes, sir,” quietly, so as not to wake his family, and because a low tone seemed to be appropriate for this guy.
    The voice said, “There are files for you in your inbox. Read them on the plane. You’re going to Atlanta.”
    “When, sir?”
    “Now.”
    “OK.”
    Then there was a pause. Just a beat, but Gaspar heard it. The voice said, “You’re going to be the number two on this. Your lead will be Otto, out of Detroit. No reflection on you.”
    Which was bullshit, of course. Everything was a reflection on him. Although maybe this guy Otto was a big deal. People who were referred to by their first name only usually were. Gaspar wondered whether he was supposed to have heard of him. But he hadn’t. He had never worked in Detroit. Knew nothing about the office or the city, except that they used to make cars there.
    He said, “No problem,” but he said it to nobody, because the voice was already gone. He put the phone in his bag, which was permanently packed and ready to go, laptop, shirt, underwear, Tylenol. The bag was made by the same people that made Swiss Army knives, which was OK, but it had wheels and a handle, which wasn’t. Trundling a bag around was one step from being in a wheelchair.
    It was what it was.
    He drove himself to the airport in his Bureau car, which was a blue Crown Vic with government plates. He could park it anywhere. He propped his laptop on the passenger seat and drove one-handed and stabbed at the keys and brought up his e-mail, not 3G wireless, but a secure satellite connection. One new message, as expected. One attached