Page 511 of The Daddy P.I. Casefiles: The Second Collection

The car grows cold but Myles says it’s too conspicuous to leave the motor running. The exhaust will plume in the night air. I’m grateful for my parka and a sleeping bag that Max breaks out to spread across our legs. He’s on a tablet, the screen black with white code running across it, barely illuminating his chin. Otherwise, there are no lights and barely any sound other than the wind rattling the bare-branched trees.

“Signal out,” Max whispers. “I think he’s making a phone call.”

“Positions, gentlemen,” Myles says. “D, we’re going to get cold fast. Find a spot out of the wind if you can. If you feel your fingers start to get numb, come back to the car no matter what. A missed shot is worse than no shot tonight. We don’t want to spook him.”

“Got it,” I confirm.

Max hands me the gun and dart pack. Myles and I ease out of the car and cross the icy ground as quietly as possible. As we come up to the house, I crouch down. The lights are on at the back, spilling long, yellow rectangles across the snow. There’s a great spot between two bushes growing against the porch. I’llbe invisible between them and out of the wind. But pushing between their branches might be noisy.

Myles breaks away from me and begins to cross the front yard. As he’s passing the car in the driveway, the house’s front lights come on.

I duck down behind the bushes. It could be motion-activated, although I didn’t think Myles was close enough to the house to trip something like that. Lifting my head to see through the branches, I load a dart and aim at the front door.

Myles crouches in the shadow of the car. He’s visible to me but the car should hide him from anyone coming out of the door. He’ll have to shoot over the car’s boot, though. It’s good cover but not a great shot.

Footsteps rattle the decorative glass in the front door. Drew opens the door a moment later, his blond hair blazing under the porch lights. He’s wearing dark trousers, a sweater, a wool blazer, and leather driving gloves but no coat. I bet he’s one of those psychos who runs around in shorts in February.

I wait for him to step out, taking the smallest, shortest breaths I can through my nose so my breath doesn’t give me away. He pulls the door closed behind him and angles his body to fit the key into the door lock. I wait until I hear the tumblers click before I fire.

My dart hits an inch to the left of his lapel, pink puff quivering against the green of his sweater. A second dart snicks into his upper arm.

He takes a ragged breath, his hand rising to pull my dart out of his chest. He meets my eyes through the screen of branches as I load another dart. That’s right, fucker. You’re not escaping justice.

He staggers back a step. Pawing ineffectually at his chest, he slumps against the door-frame, his eyelids flickering.

Myles slithers up the front steps like a shadow and catches Drew before he hits the ground. I follow him, stowing my gun in my parka pocket. I pull the keys out of the door and tuck them into Drew’s blazer before drawing his arm over my shoulder. Myles takes the other side. We carry the limp weight off the porch and onto the driveway as Ten brings the SUV up behind Drew’s car.

Max meets us at the car’s boot and helps hold open the body bag as we maneuver Drew into it. Myles zips up the bag and closes the boot.

In less than two minutes, we’re out of the cul-de-sac, heading back to the airfield. Ten follows us in his truck.

After a quick stop at the place where we picked up food so that Max can do something nefarious, we arrive back at the airfield. We part ways at Myles’ plane. Ten assures us that he’s okay to drive back to New York on his own but says he’s going to visit a friend in Boston for a few days first as cover. He leaves as we’re loading the body bag into the plane’s luggage compartment.

After a short pre-flight, we lift into the clear night.

“Pink ring around the moon,” Max says, looking out a window. “It’s going to snow.”

Snow’ll cover any tracks.

“How long do you think it’ll be before anyone looks for him?” I wonder aloud, not really directing the question at anyone.

“Doesn’t matter,” Myles answers from the cockpit a few feet away. “Cause no one’s ever going to find him.”

That ends the discussion. Once we’re at altitude and Myles tells us we can move around, we distribute the rest of the food from the paper bag and eat silently. Max sits next to me and offers me a strange phone with a black antenna sticking out of it. I check the time and see with relief that I’m not late calling my baby doll. I keep it short and just confirm that everything’s fineand I’ll see her soon. I can hear the tears in her voice as she tells me she loves me but she speaks clearly when she asks if Livvy can sleep with her tonight. I’ve read about co-sleeping with kids and generally view it with dread but agree just for tonight so Emmy’s not alone in our bed. Max leans in to joke that he and I slept together last night, which gets a small giggle out of Emily before I say goodbye.

I hand the phone back to Max so he can call Cynnie.

We land just after midnight, flying low over winter-seared fields to an airstrip that’s barely more than a cross in the darkness, lit by faint green lights. We taxi to a hangar with a black “C” painted on the high, white wall. A black SUV with tinted windows idles next to the hangar, the exhaust pluming exactly the way we couldn’t let ours do in Maine.

Myles tells us to wait on the plane. He lowers the stairs, leaving the door open, and greets two men who emerge from the SUV. They’re both bearded. One wears sunglasses even though the airfield is barely lit this late at night.

The two men help Myles move the body bag into the boot of their SUV. After quick hand-shakes, the SUV drives off and Myles climbs back aboard the plane.

“We can sleep here or in New Jersey,” he says.

“Are you going to actually sleep?” I ask.

“Probably not until we’re in New Jersey.”