Suspect Witness. Ryshia Kennie

       Chapter Seven

      Josh shielded his eyes. Despite the threat of rain later in the day, the sun beat hot and relentless even in late afternoon. This was the least popular time of year, as the rain made things muggy and uncomfortable. It wasn’t usual for numbers to drop too much, but with renovations on some of the more distant accommodations, tourism was noticeably down. That was good news—less activity to monitor, fewer potential incoming threats.

      The drone of a plane’s engine pierced the sultry heat.

      It was on schedule. He watched as the plane landed.

      He’d just gotten word that, as he had suspected, the last hit had been by one of the Anarchists’s gang members. Bobbie Xavier was not the brightest tool in the shed, but he was one of the deadliest. Josh had gotten confirmation that his diversion had worked. Bobbie was on his way to Hong Kong.

      But with the recent news the stakes had just gone up. The Anarchists had hired someone else, a man who wouldn’t work in tandem with Bobbie, and one who wouldn’t depend on luck or the mistakes of a woman who had never had to disappear before. The man was a professional. He had a record of success that ended in a trail of death, and he had a record of outsourcing. That meant the numbers on her trail could and more likely would, go up. That meant that there might not just be one. In the near future, there might be two or three. They needed to get out of here, maybe sooner than he’d previously thought.

      Sid Mylo was not someone to take lightly. Why the hell were they hiring someone with Sid’s capabilities to go after someone like Erin? Sure, she had been on the run for five months, but—and that was the next mystery—why had it taken them that long to send someone after her? Until now they had depended on the muscle of the various club members across the states as the alert had gone out and the nets had gone up. But they hadn’t looked outside the continental United States.

      “Erin Argon,” he muttered. It was the real woman he would be bringing back, not the actress Erin Kelley. He wondered how she could have gotten herself into this mess. She didn’t look like the type to date bikers. But that was exactly what she’d done.

      He knew some women got off on that. Some dated criminals slated for death row, sought out men who were bent on destruction, their own as well as that of others. But it was rather disconcerting to think that a primary-school teacher would spend her free time with men who had questionable ethics. Drug dealers, pimps and murderers—and that was only the beginning of the crimes that could be attributed to various members of the Anarchists. It didn’t seem to fit anything he knew about her. And whether she’d learned her lesson after one colossal mistake, he didn’t know. Only she knew that. And it wasn’t something he needed to know. That knowledge would no more save her than hiding out in Mulu would.

      He pulled open the door of the hotel lobby.

      The concierge stood by the desk. His brown pants and jacket seemed to fade into the background. But his posture and wide smile, despite his solid but short stature, made him immediately stand out.

      Their eyes met and held in a moment of understanding before the concierge looked away.

      Josh waited a few minutes, glancing through a display of pamphlets before turning to the concierge. “Must be nice to work here.”

      He looped his thumbs into the belt loops of his shorts. In listening range was an older couple that seemed to be involved in their own discussion, but they glanced over at him with what he thought of as a tourist’s curiosity.

      “Yes, sir.” The concierge met his gaze this time with a rather puzzled expression, as if he didn’t know where the question was leading.

      “Josh.” He held out his hand. “Three,” he mouthed. It was the number of days, maximum, that he planned to stay before getting Erin out of here.

      “Tenuk,” the concierge said with a rather solemn grace and tapped his finger silently, one, two, three. It was confirmation, nothing else.