Page 19 of Dead Girl Running

Mitch should have returned an hour ago.

Temo sat at the cluttered table. His prosthetic leg leaned against his chair. He was massaging his thigh and talking into his cell phone in rapid Spanish, none of which sounded like a compliment.

TEMO IGLASIAS:

MALE, HISPANIC AMERICAN—SECOND GENERATION, 25, 5’7”, 150 LBS., BLACK HAIR, BROWN EYES, FIT. SPANISH SPEAKER. ARMY VETERAN, HONORABLE DISCHARGE. PROSTHETIC LEG. BORN EAST LA. FATHER DEAD, DRUG-ADDICTED MOTHER, BROTHER TO YOUNGER SISTER, REGINA. EMPLOYED 62 DAYS. MECHANIC, HANDYMAN, LEADER.FRIEND.

She had tempted Temo, Birdie and Mitch to the resort with the offer of a job, and they had all taken her up on her offer.

Adrian had come by a different route. One day, he’d appeared, told her he’d hit the skids, offered his services doing anything. She knew him pretty well; she’d served with him for most of her deployment in Afghanistan. He never knew when to shut up and lately, when she caught him glancing over his shoulder or jumping at an unexpected noise, she suspected his big mouth had finally caught up with him.

Temo got quiet; he sat listening to whoever spoke at the other end. He met Kellen’s gaze and rolled his eyes, then launched into another tirade in Spanish that ended with him slamming the phone on the table, picking it up, hanging up and slamming the phone down again.

“Those phones don’t grow on trees, you know,” she said mildly.

“It’s not broken.” He flung it on the floor.

She picked it up, examined it. The tough case had saved it. “This is why we call you…Lucky.” She tapped his artificial leg.

“Call me by my real name… Cuauhtemo.”

She laughed. “Like I could.”

In Afghanistan, when Kellen met Temo, he had been belligerent; he hated her for being white, in charge, an officer and a woman, and he let her know it.

She hated him for being smart, mean and tough.

Then on a dark mountain road, he spotted a trap.

She rerouted the convoy, got them in a defensible position and saved his sorry ass.

They made a great team.

He lost his leg on his next assignment, in Peru, to a car bomb.

When she offered the job in maintenance for the resort, he took it sight unseen. In the first month, he discovered his boss was siphoning materials to a construction firm south of Portland. Temo went from flunky to manager of a thirteen-man crew, fixing whatever needed to be fixed: HVAC, leaky toilets, fire damage caused by a cigarette smoked in a nonsmoking room. In the spring when the guests arrived, that crew would double.

Kellen wasn’t surprised at his fast promotion. Temo’s near-fatal injuries, his long recovery, his rehabilitation had put fire to his already iron ambition. Before it was over, this guy would own the resort. Which made this display of temper unlike him.

She wiped the phone clean on her skirt, handed it over and asked mildly, “What’s up?”

“None of the new room controls for the gas fireplaces are working and those bastards who sold them to us are ignoring us. Smart controls, my ass.”

She’d been the one to recommend they try something more than a timer. “Are you going to be able to make them work soon?”

“If I had a manual written by someone whose first language is English!” Temo’s Spanish accent was fierce, but he had been educated in American schools and he had no sympathy for foreign firms who used a translation program for their communications.

“Okay,” she said in a bright tone. “About the animal carcass…”

Temo stuck his phone into his pocket. “I haven’t had a chance to get out there.”

“I’d bet none of the guests will venture out in this weather, but now that I’ve said that, some intrepid soul will go exploring. Can you send one of your guys?”

“My guys?The guys I inherited from thelast maintenance man? The guys who can’tscratch their own ballswithout an instruction manual?” Temo’s color rose. “Too bad none of them can read a manual, English or Chinese or Spanish or any other language known to man. Maybe Klingon!”

“Allof them are idiots?”

Temo sighed and subsided. “Two of them are okay. The rest of them have to go, but not until I find someone to replace them.”