Page 29 of Nash Falls

So what is Rhett doing on his end that has the FBI interested? And if he’s losing his ass on these investments, how is he running a successful criminal enterprise?

He went to bed remaining unconvinced by the FBI’s claim about criminal activity. But mostly he wanted his wife and daughter to still love him no matter how all of this played out. Right now Nash didn’t see how that was remotely possible.

CHAPTER

14

RHETT TEMPLE STARED DOWN ATthe corpse—a fatherly type in his fifties.

The man kneeling next to him with a slim black-matte-finished semiautomatic pistol in hand was John Burr. He was thirty, muscled and tough looking, with the sort of permanent calm in his manner that would never acknowledge being surprised or remotely scared by anything or anyone.

“What are you going to do with the body?” asked Rhett as he studied the bullet hole in the corpse’s forehead. “Same as usual?”

Burr shook his head. “Cops eventually catch on to ‘same as usual.’ So my call is cinderblocks, chains, and deep water. But slit the gut and lungs first.”

“Why?”

“Gases build up in the lungs and gut like air in a balloon. And chains and concrete can fail. But if you cut the organs open, it can’t float.”

“Okay. But we can’t keep doing this, either,” said Rhett. “The odds against us go up and not down with this sort of stuff.”

“You have to take that up with people above my pay grade, Mr. Temple.”

“Your cleaning crew on call?”

“They’re always on call,” Burr replied tersely.

Rhett forced himself to stare down once more at Peter Lombard, until recently a respected member of his local business community. His curiosity had unfortunately propelled him down a path that would now end in deep water, with slit organs and cement booties.

Rhett rose and took in the small space. Concrete floor with plastic laid over, one door in and out, and no windows. All in the middle of nowhere. There was minimal blood and brain matter. Yet he had learned that DNA was like smoke, it got into every nook and cranny. But he also knew that Burr’s cleaning crew did a true blitzkrieg on forensic evidence.

“I want you handling the body dump personally.”

Burr nodded. “I like to finish what I start.”

Rhett knew that he had been forced to travel a long way both to see the dead man and to park himself right in the middle of a murder. Skin in the game, his partner in crime would call it. Only this was the third time now, in the last two years. And he still wasn’t used to it.

God help me if I ever get used to this.

“They want you to check in, Mr. Temple, after you… witnessed it.”

He looked at Burr. “I got the message and the address.”

“And I understand that ‘she’ will be there tonight.”

Something seized up in Rhett’s chest. “Shewill?”

“Yes.”

“Let me know when it’s done.”

Rhett left the death room, now thinking only about…her.

CHAPTER

15

RHETT REACHED THE ISOLATED HOUSEthirty minutes later and was met out front by the security team. He knew that each of them could shred an NFL lineman or a WWE warrior with their pinky. They scared the piss out of Rhett just by existing.