Page 22 of Gamma

“Okay, okay.” The man is young, barely an adult, with a scraggly goatee and shaggy hair. “I find no one.”

Duke watches him scurry off around a corner, and then scrubs his jaw in frustration. “That’s gonna come back and bite me in the ass.”

“Why?”

“He’s on the phone with Rasmussen as we speak, tellin’ him all about me.”

“So, why didn’t you kill him, then?”

He huffs. “I don’t kill people who aren’t a threat to me. Even if that scrawny little scamp had had a gun pointed at me, he couldn’t have killed me. I wasn’t about to have his innocent blood on my hands.”

“He’s taking Rasmussen’s money.”

“He’s a lookout. A local kid with no options. He’s nothing. Nobody.” He eyes me. “Ending a life is a big deal, honey. I don’t do it lightly, and I don’t do it if I don’t have to. I’m gonna have to at some point, I can already tell you that much. You might have to, too. But be sure, ’cause you can’t take it back once you do.”

“That’s what Dad told me.”

“Your father is a wise man. There ain’t many men outside of my crew who I respect, but he’s one of ’em.” Duke chews on his lower lip a moment. “We gotta get a bead on that boat.”

“Duke, where’s Anselm? He vanished the moment we landed and I haven’t seen him since.”

“That man is a ghost, sweetheart. He’ll find us.”

“What’s he doing?”

“Same thing we are, just…his own way.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Duke pulls out his phone and dials a long series of numbers, puts it to his ear. “It means he’s tracking Rasmussen, Djakovic, and Spaulding. We may not see him again for a while. Or he could show up when we go around the corner. No way to know. Anselm does his thing, and the less I know about it the better.”

“So he has a different way of getting information?”

“He’s a hunter. You ever go stalk hunting?”

I laugh. “I was born and raised on a private island in the Caribbean, Duke.”

“Oh, right. It’s when you go hunting deer or something, but instead of sitting in a tree like a lazy pussy, waiting for the deer to walk beneath you, you go out and hunt it, tracking its scent, its tracks. That’s what Anselm does, except with people.”

“And when he finds who he’s looking for?”

“Depends on the person. If they’re someone like the guys we’re after? You don’t wanna know what he does.”

I shiver. “That sounds…scary. You make sweet Uncle Anselm sound like the boogeyman.”

Duke laughs, and it’s a dark, frightening sound. “Sweetheart, your ol’ uncle Anselm is what the boogeyman has nightmares about.”

I stare at Duke. “That’s a lovely thought.”

He’s been waiting for whoever he called to answer this whole time. “Come on, fucker, answer,” he mutters. Finally, I hear a fainthelloon the other end. “Took you long enough, y’douche-waffle…yeah, I got a bead on Rasmussen. He left Lisbon yesterday on a boat calledO Espirito Algarve. A fishing boat, I guess….what, like I fuckin’ know where it is? Why does everyone keep asking me where the fuck Anselm is? I don’t fuckin’ know. Yeah, I am cranky, Lear—we were tailed by one of Rasmussen’s little lookout squirrels, and my soft ass let him go, and now they’re gonna send who knows how many more after us. And I got miss ‘I gotta rescue my man’ with me.”

I whack him. “Don’t be mean.” It’s like whacking a stone wall.

Duke ignores me. “We got any assets over here? I could use backup. You know how Anselm is when he’s on the hunt. Shit yeah, if Alexei is available, I’ll take him—I haven’t seen that cat in years. All right, well, when you get a lock on that boat, call me. I’m assuming it’s heading away from the Atlantic into the Mediterranean, but I need a destination. Yeah, just give him my number and we’ll connect. Meantime, I’m gonna track down some iron heavier than this nine, which is all I brought with me. Something tells me I’m gonna need it.”

A pause as he listens.

“You are one useful motherfucker, Lear ol’ buddy. Perfect. Send me the address. Cool. Okay, bye.”