Agnes and the Hitman (23 page)

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Whatever it is, I’m really sorry, and I will get you back home as soon as I can,
I swear,
and I will have that idiot Downer roasted slowly over hot coals while I’m at it, but
please
stop honking—”

“She’s lonely,” Garth said from behind her, and Agnes turned to see him standing there, as gawky as before in the same dirty denim,

but now frowning with purpose, holding a bunch of papers. “I looked it up, like you said, on the Internet.”

“What?” Agnes said, dumbfounded, Garth and the Internet not compatible in her mind.

“They taught us in school,” Garth said, indignant. “Computers. I graduated elementary school and junior high.”

“Of course you did,” Agnes said, feeling awful for feeling surprised. Bad grammar did not mean bad brains, she knew that. “Uh, congratulations.”

Garth nodded. “I’d go back next year, but Grandpa says there’s no use for it.”

“Hey,” Agnes said. “There’s use for it. You go back.”

“You could talk to Grandpa about it,” Garth said, looking away. “That would be right nice of you. Like in the movies.”

“Uh,” Agnes said, wondering what the hell movies Garth had been watching. Probably something where the nice lady got shot. “Yeah. Let’s cross that bridge later. Flamingos first.”

Garth went back to his Internet printouts. “I went and Googled
flamingos.
And flamingos, they ain’t ever alone, they’s always in big bunches, lots of them. It ain’t right that there’s just one.”

He looked at the still-vocal Cerise with real sympathy, miserable for her, and when Agnes looked back at Cerise and saw the wildness in her eyes, her heart clutched, too.

“Fucking idiot Downer,” she said as her throat closed, and then she pulled her cell phone out and punched in Maria’s number, listening to Cerise, who wasn’t honking anymore, not to Agnes’s ears— now Cerise was moaning, “Alone, alone, alone, I’m so alone, alone, alone. ...”

“Oh,
God,”
Agnes said, and thought about all those damn nights in that little housekeeper’s room, waiting for that rat bastard Taylor to come out so they could move up to that lovely cool pale blue room in the attic because moving up there would mean they were starting their new life, and if she didn’t wait, if she moved up there alone, it would mean she’d be alone forever—

Alone, alone, alone, alone ...

And before that, those lonely nights after her engagements had broken off when she’d wondered what was
wrong
with her that men always lied to her and left her alone, and before that those miserable days after Lisa Livia had taken baby Maria and followed her job west with her lying boss, who’d promised never to move his business, and before that those godawful holidays alone in boarding school before Lisa Livia had come along, brassy and defiant to anybody who’d tried to make her miserable and who’d brought her home to beautiful Two Rivers and Brenda for every summer and holiday after that so that for a while Agnes hadn’t been—

“Hello?” Maria said, answering the phone.

“Get that shithead Downer to send this poor bird back where it belongs,”
Agnes said, close to tears. “They’re
never
supposed to be alone. Her heart is
breaking. She’s not supposed to be alone.”

“Oh,
no,”
Maria said. “I’ll
kill him.
I’ll get Palmer on it right
now.”

“Thank you,”
Agnes said, and clicked off the phone.

“I called Jimbo for some shrimp,” Garth said over Cerise’s moaning. “He should be bringing it right up to the dock any minute now. Maybe food will make her feel better.”

“Not even three pints of Dove’s Caramel Pecan Perfection,” Agnes said from experience, staring miserably at Cerise, who stared miserably back.

Alone, alone, alone ...

Lying bastards.

Carpenter came out to join him, Rhett at his heels.

“That’s a flamingo, right?” Shane said as he watched Agnes start toward the house, her red sundress flipping around her legs in the breeze again.

“Yeah,” Carpenter said, looking as bemused by the whole thing as Rhett did.

“Thought so.” He watched her move up the path, the ties of the sundress jaunty on her shoulders, and he wondered why she’d bothered with ties since she didn’t have to untie anything to get it off, the whole thing just slipped off over her head. Probably so he’d think about untying it. Which he was doing right now—

His phone vibrated and he checked it and saw a text message from two hours ago. He pulled out his sat phone and punched in speed-dial l and Wilson answered on the first ring.

“Where have you been? I transmitted the intelligence to Carpenter’s van two hours ago.”

Eating pancakes. Checking out a bomb shelter. Thinking about ways to get Agnes alone.
“Checking out what I can here.”
What intelligence?

There was a long silence, which indicated what Wilson thought of that.

“Check the intelligence ASAP” The phone went dead.

Shane closed the phone. “Wilson sent some intel, probably on Casey Dean. Can you check and prep it for me?”

“Roger that,” Carpenter said, and nodded to the drive. “Isn’t that Agnes’s fiancé?”

Taylor
’s Cobra was coming down the road followed by a van with the county logo stenciled on the side. They bumped over the bridge and parked at the side of the house, and Rhett ambled down the path to investigate.

“Yep, that’s him.”

The county van meant some kind of inspector. That was going to annoy Agnes. Maybe even make her furious.

Carpenter looked at him with interest. “You don’t seem to mind him being here.”

“Nope.” Shane watched Taylor get out and confer with the self
important
little man who’d gotten out of the van. Agnes was going to hate him, too. Anger, coming right up. “I’m feeling pretty cheerful right now.”

Carpenter shot him an odd glance, then shrugged. “So about the intel?”

Shane looked at his watch. “I can give you half an hour. Then I’m going to have to save this idiot’s ass again.”

He went over to the van and climbed inside with Carpenter who got the air-conditioning going full blast. One wall of the van was lined with computers, communication equipment, and other machines Shane didn’t know the purpose of. The other side was lined with lockers holding the various tools of their trade.

Shane sat in one of the swivel chairs bolted to the floor while Carpenter took his in front of the large computer screen and brought up the intel that Wilson had sent.

“The FBI intercepted a call to Don Fortunato,” he said, looking at the screen. “Traced back to a pay phone in Savannah directing the Don to go to a pay phone away from his house and await a call in fifteen minutes, which would have been untraceable, but Wilson had a tail on the Don with a directional mike. The tail followed him to the pay phone and picked up most of the Don’s end of the conversation.”

Shane read the screen over his shoulder:

(six-second pause)

df
: How the fuck do I know?

(eight-second pause)

df
: No shit.

(four-second pause)

df
: Hell yeah, I still want the job done.

(four-second pause)

df
: Fuck you. We agreed on a price.

(seven-second pause)

df
: All right. All right. Fuck it. We got a contract. You make sure you do your part. The rest can come on the back end. My consigliere only got the cash we agreed on with him for the front end.

(three-second pause)

df
: Yeah, that’s the target. How’d you know?

(eight-second pause)

df
: N
o
shit? But you do nothing until I get there. I wanna be there. I wanna see it. I’m giving you an extra hundred large for that. Which you get when it happens, but not before the wedding. Got to be after. Got to show some respect.

(eight-second pause)

df
: Today? Fuck. Yeah, he’s in Keyes. My consigliere. And he’s got the down payment in cash. But—

(nine-second pause)

df
: The what fucking bridge? Talmud?

(two-second pause)

df
: Okay, Talmadge. Two
p
.
m
. local. Breakdown lane, southbound, center of span.

(five-second pause)

df
: Yeah, yeah. The money’s packed like you said.

(two-second pause)

df
: Y
ou
better be fucking worth it.

End of conversation.

Shane was already checking his watch. The payoff was taking place in an hour. “Where’s the Talmadge?”

“Did you cross a large suspension bridge coming out of Savannah heading into South Carolina when you came up here?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s it.”

“How far away?”

Carpenter got out of his seat and slid open the door leading to the driver’s compartment. “I’ll make it in fifty minutes unless we get caught in traffic.”

“That’s cutting it close.”

“Perhaps we should have been monitoring instead of in that tunnel.” Carpenter got in the driver’s seat and started the van.

“That’s not helpful now.” Shane opened up the weapons locker.

“What about Agnes?” Carpenter said, but he was already heading down the drive.

Shit.
“Maybe she won’t kill him.”

“What if she does?”

“What’s one more body among friends?” Shane said.