In the Company of Wolves_Thinning The Herd

by James Michael Larranaga

  He sat there, chewing again, calculating the numbers in his head. “That’s $8 million. After taxes you’d have—”

  “It’s tax-free money, Mike,” she said, knowing that would nearly knock him off his chair. Number crunchers like Mike think tax-free money is better than discovering gold.

  He’d forgotten about this expensive policy, she was sure of it now. She could see him thinking back on the past, to the days that had prompted her to purchase the insurance.

  “Originally Celia was the beneficiary, but when she was killed…” She paused to watch his reaction. They hadn’t discussed their daughter’s death much; it was the wedge that had finally divided them. “I made you the beneficiary.”

  He put his plate and carton on the table and sat back in his chair, staring at the dark lake outside the window. The one thing they’d both agreed on these last two years was that it was his fault. Their beautiful blonde daughter, with the big hazel eyes, would be alive today if he had not been drunk the day he picked her up from daycare. He didn’t deserve to be the beneficiary of her policy, not after killing their baby girl. In some small, business deal kind of way, she felt this was his chance to make things right again.

  His eyes were glassy, his cool aloofness now melting away. “I haven’t had a drink since that day,” he said. “Not a drop.”

  “I know,” she said, watching Mike reliving his own pain.

  “You have my blessing to do whatever you want with that policy and the money,” he said, wiping tears with his French cuff.

  She took a deep breath and felt lighter, as if the tight wedge between them had loosened slightly. She leaned over the side of the couch and picked up the documents she’d been studying before he’d arrived. Her years as an attorney had taught her to get everything in writing. “I’ll need you to sign a waiver, authorizing me to change the beneficiary.”

  Mike took the stack of papers into his lap. He regained his composure as he carefully read, delving into the paperwork. Poring over applications, affidavits, and waivers, Mike was in his element again.

  She felt this would be a good decision for both of them. They could sell this expensive house on the lake, and Mike could pocket the equity. She could take the cash from the policy and spend it as she wished. Whatever was left over she’d donate to Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

  “What do you think?”

  He shuffled the papers, straightening them into a pile. “Looks good to me, but do yourself a favor,” he said. “You’ve only got one company here, Safe Haven LLC. You might contact other brokers. You’ll get a better offer if you have several companies bidding on your business.”

  She nodded. “I’ll make a few calls and see if I can get some competitive offers.”

  How much more money did she need, though? She might look into it, as long as it wouldn’t slow the process down when she had such little time.

  Caching is sometimes an ineffective method of storing kill. Another animal may catch the scent and steal the food unless the wolf returns first.

  By the time Quin had returned from his drinking session with his new workmates and called Lunde, the beers were wearing off. Now a headache throbbed at the base of his neck. It didn’t take much booze to make him feel cloudy and hung over, and the ride back to the lake was so darn cold.

  “Don’t you have heat in this truck?” he asked Lunde, rubbing his hands over the vents of the man’s Ford Expedition.

  “I keep it cool in here so I don’t fall asleep when I drive,” he said, manhandling the wheel as if he were driving an eighteen-wheeler cross-country.

  Quin spun through the images on his phone and held it up for Lunde. “Wait until you see these bodies. It’s a gruesome sight.”

  Lunde winced and eased the vehicle to the edge of the ice. He squinted into the darkness beyond the headlights. “Point me in the right direction.”

  Quin checked the coordinates on his GPS watch, rolled the window down, and stuck his head out. The lake was dark, with snowdrifts casting long shadows from the headlights. Clumps of snow tripped across the tundra like tumbleweed on a deserted beach.

  He spotted the blue glow of a television through an ice fishing tent. “Over there.”

  Lunde switched the vehicle into four-wheel drive and accelerated into the darkness. Quin felt himself bouncing in his seat each time they plowed through a drift. His head hurt, his stomach felt queasy. God, he couldn’t breathe that stench again.

  “Which icehouse is it?” Lunde asked, maneuvering alongside the village of wooden shacks and plastic tents.

  “Farther up,” Quin said. “Just follow your nose.”

  They stopped at the end of the row of icehouses. Lunde flashed the high beams. “Where is it?”

  Quin looked over the long hood of the vehicle and beyond the headlights. The icehouse wasn’t there. He looked back at the glowing tent flapping in the wind and at his GPS watch. This was definitely the spot. He saw nothing but snow swirling in the headlights.

  “It’s gone,” he said.

  “What do you mean it’s gone? You were here earlier today, right?”

  Quin checked his watch and the GPS location again. “I was standing right here four hours ago.”

  Lunde was pissed off, as if he’d rather be in bed hibernating. He opened his door and stepped into the darkness. “Show me.”

  Quin joined the big FBI agent on the ice with his back to the headlights. Their elongated shadows stretched out across the lake.

  He pointed to a square impression in the snow where the icehouse had stood. “It was right here, I swear. The bodies were inside.”

  “That’s not good enough, Quin,” Lunde said, kicking a chunk of ice in frustration.

  “What am I supposed to do? Snap my fingers and make the shack reappear?”

  “Let me see those photos,” Lunde said.

  Quin pulled out his phone and showed Lunde both of the images he’d captured.

  “Here, that’s Cassy and Martin, right?” Quin said.

  Lunde shook his head. “It’s hard to tell what that is. I’m not paying you until you produce bodies.”

  Quin grew angry. “I’m telling you the bodies were here! They must’ve moved them. You think I’m making this up?”

  “You’re a bounty hunter,” Lunde said. “No bodies, no bounty. Your word isn’t good enough.”

  Take a calming breath. Find a happy place. “Do you or do you not believe me?”

  Lunde spat onto the ice. His lips wouldn’t be so chapped if he’d keep his tongue inside his mouth.

  “Of course I believe you,” he said. “But I can’t nail these men without evidence. You need to get back in there, make me copies of their records, and find out who owns that $10 million policy.”

  Quin had thought a lot about this assignment while he was drinking with his new friends. He couldn’t erase the image of Pilson’s throbbing chest, and Cassy and Martin’s frozen bodies. How could he possibly continue this assignment? This was high risk with little reward.

  “I’m not going back!” Quin shouted. The wind hurled his angry voice at Lunde.

  Lunde reared suddenly. The headlights illuminated his large, bearish face. “Where you headed, Quin? Back to the funny farm? Back to your group therapy sessions with the other psychos?”

  Quin grabbed Lunde swiftly by the coat and shoved him to the ice. He was sprawled out on his back when Quin stepped on his chest and leaned down, grabbing his thick throat. Even wearing gloves, he could squeeze the life out of this jerk. “What the hell do you want from me?”

  Lunde’s eyes widened in fear. “Settle down! Jesus, get ahold of yourself.”

  Quin eased his grip and stood up into the headlights and the whipping wind. He hadn’t had an outburst like this in months. Kirsten would be disappointed in him. He’d have to write and tell her he’d had a minor setback. Must be the medication mixing with the booze.

  “Forget about the bodies for now,” Lunde said, standing up in the snow, squinting in the headl
ights. “The agents are dead anyway; there’s nothing we can do for them. They’ll turn up eventually. Get me a copy of the company database. Find out who owns that big policy. We need to at least protect that person.”

  There was truth in what Lunde was saying; they had a chance here to make sure nobody else got hurt. But heading back to the mansion was dangerous, too. He wanted to make sure it was worth the risk.

  “How much will you pay me?”

  “I’ll double it to $50,000,” Lunde said, standing again, rubbing his red neck. “But if you walk out on me now, you’ll get nothing. You’ll never work for the FBI again.”

  This wasn’t a difficult decision in Quin’s mind. The bureau had been an important source of income for him. And who would pass up a chance to earn $50,000? Stray Dog, the outsider, might tell him who owned the big policy. And how hard could it be to copy the database?

  He looked back at the shoreline, at the lights, and the homes hidden behind the trees. “OK, I’ll do it.”

  Quin lay sprawled across his sofa bed trying to block the images of Cassy and Martin in the icehouse. Those frozen bodies and the stench were every bit as real now as they had been hours earlier. The images woke him in a cold sweat. He pulled his phone from the coffee table, turned on his EverNote app, and paged through notes he’d taken on each of his bounty hunting assignments. He wasn’t methodical about collecting details because that would be too much like detective work. Quin was more about jotting down impressions, hunches, and theories as events unfolded.

  He began logging the past two days: Harold’s need for a background check; a trigger-happy sheriff’s deputy; a dead client; missing interns whom Quin found dead in an ice-house; Lunde, who cared little about the bodies even though that was why he’d hired Quin.

  Quin leaned back, closing his eyes, thinking about tomorrow’s presentation to their prospective client, Rebecca Baron. What role would Big Ben and Stray Dog play in the meeting? How did they close the big deals?

  He felt a drowsy wave and fought sleep by moving his legs and adjusting his position, but he was too tired.

  He was in his childhood home and heard breathing at the foot of his bed. Even with his eyes closed, Quin knew the man was staring at him, maybe even right through him. He held his breath in the most important bluff of his very short life. Would the second killer reach for Quin’s pulse, or would he be fooled enough in the dark room to think the boy was already dead? He felt his heart thumping in his chest. This would surely give him away. He sensed he was only seconds from a final blow, but the man’s footsteps started again and the sound of his boots moved toward the window.

  Quin heard a truck outside, and the man who had stabbed him was again yelling and laughing. It was a familiar laugh, one that came from drug addicts who crossed the Mexican border. They were hopped up on the contraband they were supposed to be transporting.

  The two men exchanged shouts in Spanish slang that Quin didn’t understand, and then the second man climbed out the window with a light hop.

  The truck door slammed, there was more laughter, and they were gone as quickly as they’d come. Quin wondered about his sister, but he didn’t dare call for her. Had she been able to outrun the druggie? Had she escaped like he did?

  He sat up slowly, blood dripping down his arms, the knife that he had retrieved from the floor before the second attacker entered his room still in his hand.

  All Quin could think to say was, “Mom?”

  Ben paced the Tuscany conference room, chewing on a toothpick, thinking about last night. Those bodies and the sickening stench had kept him up until the early morning hours. He needed more sleep. What he really needed was a warm vacation from this place.

  Next to him, Harold rested his head in his hands, his eyes closed as they listened to Sheriff David Carlson ramble on. Things weren’t going well, and it was only eight in the morning.

  “Monica is a wreck,” David continued, shaking his head. “She’s very depressed.”

  “What did she expect? She blew Munroe Pilson to bits,” Ben said. “You think she’ll crack?”

  “I don’t know. She’s real fragile right now, and crying all the time,” David said. “I can’t even have her in the office.”

  “Give her time off,” Harold said. “That’s standard procedure in a situation like this.”

  David nodded. “Yeah, I approved it. She has to meet with the investigators again. Then she’s packing to go to Colorado to get away for a while.”

  He was warming up again. David always paused before he asked for something extra.

  Ben fed him the line he was looking for. “And what, David?”

  “She wants more money,” he said, shifting in his chair before taking a sip of ice water. “Because she did the shooting solo, she thinks she deserves a bigger portion of the settlement.”

  Amateurs, Ben thought. All they ever wanted was a bigger slice of the pie. They had no idea how much money it took to run this operation. David never should’ve involved her in this opportunity. “She can’t ask for more money now. It’s too late.”

  “She’s real fragile,” David repeated. “I’m afraid she might crack under pressure.”

  Ben listened to Harold crack his knuckles under the stress of hearing this bad news. They’d worked too hard to build this business to have it brought down by an amateur who happened to be good with a gun. They had viatical settlement companies in twenty states across the country, most of them on the east and west coasts. This was supposed to be their new Midwest office, an easy outpost because the state had almost no laws regulating viatical brokers.

  “Harold, your thoughts?” Ben asked.

  “When she shot Munroe, she was an asset,” he said. “But if she’s blackmailing us, she’s a liability.”

  Exactly what Ben was thinking. “Where’s she staying in Colorado?” he asked David.

  “Aspen Meadows Ski Resort,” he said. “She leaves in a few days. She wants you to send her the money.”

  “Harold, call our office in Denver. Have them pay her a visit when she arrives in Aspen,” Ben said.

  David squirmed in his chair, his eyes darting back and forth between Ben and Harold. “What does that mean, ‘a visit’?”

  “She’s a loose end. We can’t afford to have her walking around now,” Harold said.

  “You’re killing her?” David asked, in a weak, pleading voice.

  Ben wouldn’t answer; he simply watched David sit there in shock. This was a little reminder that no one employed by Safe Haven LLC was ever truly safe.

  “We killed Pilson as a fundraising effort to purchase a much larger policy,” Ben said, watching David’s eyes fix on the window in an almost catatonic stare. “Pilson was a means to an end, and so is Monica. Don’t start flipping out on me, David, or we’ll put you out of your misery, too.” Ben snapped his fingers.

  David blinked and sat up in his chair. When he reached for his ice water, his hand shook so much, water spilled onto the conference room table. He rubbed the wet stain nervously. Ben knew this was upsetting news. David and Monica were partners and lovers. David was the one who’d roped her into the idea in the first place.

  ”Don’t do anything yet,” David said. “I’ll explain to her that she gets the same amount of money that we all agreed on.”

  “Good, you set her straight,” Ben said.

  He checked his watch, remembering he had a morning meeting with Rebecca Baron. He had to clear his mind of all this minutiae and prepare for the meeting. “I think we’ve said enough. I have a busy day ahead of me, David, and you’re not a part of it.”

  The sheriff stood up and wiped his sweaty brow. Before walking to the door, he pointed at Ben, as if he were about to say something, but then stopped with a sheepish grin.

  Ben had no patience for David’s conversational antics. “Leave.”

  David grabbed his hat and backed out the door quietly while Harold drummed his fingers on the table.

  “You realize,” Ben said to Ha
rold after the sheriff was down the hall, “that we actually have two loose ends?”

  Harold nodded. “I’ll think of something.”

  Unlike most of the rooms in the old villa, the Lombardy conference room was bright and modern, with a series of windows facing the lake. The black leather chairs around the conference table were sleek and contemporary, and there was a stainless steel beverage cart. On the table in front of Quin was a laptop wired to a projection screen across the room. The words projected on the screen read: “Welcome Rebecca Baron.” Quin suspected she might be the same woman he had bumped into in the lobby when he first arrived at Safe Haven.

  He committed the name to memory, to pass along to Lunde. Now all he needed was a copy of the database, and he’d be out of there.

  He noticed that canned lights on the ceiling added to the conference room’s bright ambiance; each had a small security camera mounted just below the bulb. He wondered if Harold was watching as Big Ben prepared them for the meeting. Stray Dog and the boss set company information on the table and exchanged notes.

  “Quin, you understand your role in this presentation?” Big Ben asked.

  “Yes, I introduce myself as your assistant, sit back, and watch the presentation.”

  “And observe Rebecca’s behavior,” Big Ben said. “Watch for nonverbal cues. Since I’m presenting, I want you and Christopher to watch the prospect closely. If you think the meeting is going too long, tap your pencil, and I’ll wrap it up.”

  Quin nodded. He appreciated this chance to see how the alpha worked.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” Big Ben said to Quin. “Ask yourself if this is the kind of person your family back on the reservation might want to help out. We could use some investment capital on this one.”

  Stray Dog stopped shuffling sales literature for a moment and looked up at him with curiosity in his eyes. “How much money do you have access to?” he asked, as if Quin had been withholding information from him.

  “Some of the families back home have made a lot managing the casinos,” Quin explained, as succinctly as possible.