~3~
Cutter swiveled on his barstool to face the new arrival.
Morgan.
The woman’s full name was Morgan Crow, and he had known her ever since she was twelve years old. She was the daughter of one of his best friends, Zen “Shouting Bear” Crow, who had been responsible for introducing Cutter to his wife, Sharon. Morgan also happened to be one of the co-owners of the search, recovery, and private security business he had all but abandoned a year ago, way back in the great state of Texas.
Cutter eyed her suspiciously. It was still difficult to focus on her, partly because she was backlit by the sun reflecting off the glassy waters of the bay and partly because his vision was still a bit blurred.
He squinted at her. “You cut your hair.”
“You like it?”
He considered for a brief moment. “Nope.”
She shook her head as he pivoted back to the drink Kiki had refilled. She then climbed onto the barstool to his left. A large man took the barstool to his right. That man was Kyle Gauge, another surviving member of Cutter’s company of thieves and miscreants. He glared at each in turn, then raised his glass to them both, drained it, and indicated to Kiki that he wanted another.
“Jesus, Jack,” Morgan said. “It’s eight o’clock in the morning. Go easy on that stuff.”
“You want one too?” he asked.
Morgan shook her head no.
“Coffee,” Gauge said from his right then grunted and set his meaty fists on the bar. LOVE was tattooed on his right set of knuckles and HATE on his left. The ink was a souvenir from a stretch he spent in prison for “accidentally” killing a guy in a bar fight.
Kiki returned with the half-empty bottle and started to refill Cutter’s glass, but Morgan put her hand over it to shield it before he could.
“Hey,” Cutter said.
“Hey, yourself, Jack. We came a long way to find you and…well, you should at least be a little happier to see us, don’t you think?”
Go away, Morgan
, he thought, but said nothing.
“Still haven’t taken it off yet,” Gauge commented.
Cutter stared down at his glass, shifting his fingers to hide his white-gold wedding ring. He had a strong desire to strike the man. But he held back. He’d done so once before and had busted two of his knuckles on the granite rock that served as the man’s a jaw. And the bigger problem with Gauge was that the man liked to hit back. Hard. The guy had a right haymaker that tended to leave anyone in its wake feeling as though they’d been run down by a battleship—or dead.
He glanced back at the wedding band on his finger.
No, of course I haven’t taken it off. They’ll have to cut it from my cold, dead finger.
Morgan cleared her throat. “It’s been what, Jack? A whole year?” She leaned forward and placed her elbows on the bar.
Cutter stabbed out his cigarette and tapped another free from the pack in his pocket. Morgan snatched the smoke from his lips before he could light it and crushed it between her fingers and let the flakes of tobacco fall away. “Don’t you know those things will kill you?” When he didn’t respond, she continued. “You are a hard man to track down, Jackson Cutter.”
Gauge let out a one breath grunt that could often be confused with a laugh.
Morgan shook her head. “It took me almost an hour this time to locate you, and then about four more for us to get down here. You are not very well hidden, Jack. Only slightly better than when you tried to play ostrich in the Keys. You’ve got to watch it, boss.”
“You’re slipping,” Cutter said. “And I’m not your boss. Not anymore.”
Morgan shrugged. “No forwarding address. No contact since the funeral. No nothing. Not even a postcard telling us what a great time you are having. We were all a little disappointed back at the shop. Gauge and I think you are…a real jerk.”
Cutter shrugged. “The word is ‘asshole,’ Morgan. Just say it.”
“No,” she replied with a trace of disgust.
“Another round, Kiki,” Cutter said as he pointed to his glass. Kiki glanced from Morgan to Gauge before shaking his head no and setting the bottle on the shelf behind the bar.
“Ok—ay then,” Cutter growled. “I’ll go somewhere that appreciates a real man like me and takes this.” He held up his roll of twenties and peeled one off and dropped it on the bar before getting up, intending to walk out.
Gauge slid from his barstool and blocked Cutter’s path.
“Out of my way, Schwarzenegger,” Cutter warned.
Gauge did not budge. He became an immovable object being met by an unstoppable force.
“Come on, Jack,” Morgan said. “We just want to talk to you. Be friendly about it. Don’t you want to know what we’ve been up to over this past year? After all, you are the one who abandoned us. We figured you could—at the very least—carve out maybe a few precious minutes from your busy laze-about schedule for us. It’s important.”
Pfffff. No way.
But the way she was looking at him told him it would be better to just shut the hell up and listen. Then he changed his mind again.
“Out of my way,” he told Gauge and stepped around him.
Gauge pivoted, and Morgan ran interference, blocking his path yet again.
“No,” she said. “You will stay here and listen to me and hear what I have to say. Trust me when I tell you that it will be well worth your while.”
“Whatever,” he grumbled. The two drinks and cigarettes were already having the desired effect on the pounding in his head. The single drummer had backed into to a steady four-four beat and might even be willing to take a fiver soon. He raked his fingers through his hair to pull it back from where it had flopped over his eyes.
“I’m hungry,” Gauge said.
“You are always hungry,” Morgan quipped, taking Cutter by the arm. “Go find a waitress and order something. We’ll take that table over there.” She shook him lightly. “Can he get you anything to eat, Jack? Something healthy for a change?”
“
No.
”
“Fine,” she said right back to him, mimicking his childish tone. To Gauge, she said, “Get me an egg-white omelet with spinach, cheese, shallots, and a dash of rosemary. Got that?”
“Two eggs, scrambled,” Gauge replied. “Check.”
Shaking her head, Morgan led Cutter to a table set next to the railing separating the eating area from the lapping water of the bay. She checked the surrounding patrons.
Morgan being Morgan
—
cautious to the extreme
. He’d lived where he had long enough not to care that much anymore. No one was after him. Not anymore. He just wasn’t worth it.
Cutter sat in one of the padded chairs by the railing. “What’s so goddamned important for you to ruin my vacation?”
“Normal people’s vacations don’t last a year, Jack.” She scanned the dock area. “I like your slippers, you know. But why bunnies?”
He lifted and glanced at his fuzzy, bunny-eared slippers then dug in his pocket for his cigarettes and lighter. He drew another smoke out, daring Morgan with his eyes before igniting it. She let it slide, so he inhaled and leaned back and blew out a stream of gray.
He displayed the cigarette to her, wrist bouncing. “You have until I finish this to tell me why in the hell you are down here bugging me.”
“Just wait,” she said, crossing her arms.
Cutter shook his head. “Whatever.”
Gauge arrived and scooted a chair out with his foot. The wooden legs clattered against the rough concrete flooring. He sat in the chair and folded his arms across his exceptionally large chest.
Eyeing him, Cutter wondered if the man had gotten even bigger since the last time he had seen him.
Maybe
. Gauge was an interesting specimen of humanity, and Cutter had always admired the guy. He was a series of odd contrasts. He’d come from Seattle, which usually didn’t produce such large examples of masculinity. And Gauge was no dummy either, though he often played one for effect.
Morgan sighed, unfolded her arms, and rested her forearm on the table. With her, half of what she said, she normally said with her hands doing half the talking. “Jack, we’ve been worried sick about you for a long time.”
Bullshit.
He said nothing. It had been a year, which meant it must have been a very long sickness for them not to have attempted to contact him any sooner.
“When you left us,” she said. “No, when you
abandoned
us, all the good business dried up. Nothing has worked right ever since. It’s like the wheels fell off the bus and nobody wants to hire us anymore. Not for any sized job, no matter how small or insignificant, and certainly not without the great and wise Jackson Cutter in charge of the operation. You know how much that sucks for us? We may even need to go get jobs in the real world soon. Maybe that will lead to us having to push papers from one desk to another. Imagine the horror in that?”
Gauge nodded along.
“And,” Morgan continued, “it also means the company is almost bankrupt.”
Cutter waited for a long moment, or about another four bars of drumming in his head.
Lying, obviously
.
With Morgan around, the company would never go bankrup
t. He took another puff from his cigarette and blew it out the corner of his mouth. He leaned forward in his chair and rested both elbows on the tabletop, causing it to wobble.
“So…what?” he said, shrugging. “I don’t care.”
“
So what—?
” Morgan repeated in an agitated tone. She leaned in even closer to him. “You started this business from nothing, Jack. You recruited me. You brought on Lumpy”—her nickname for Gauge—“and we used to all work so well together. Don’t you remember that? Now—? Now—? Well, are you just too self-absorbed in your own misery and pity-party that you can’t recognize that others might be depending on you? I hate to say this, Jack, but…we need you. Sharon would have wanted you to come back by now.”
At first, Cutter just sat there, seething inside.
A little too close to home, Morgan
. He scanned the vacationers and the few locals sitting quietly nearby and eating. Not a single damn one of them gave a shit if he lived or died.
And, in point and fact, neither did he.
“No thanks,” he said and stabbed out what remained of his cigarette while preparing to stand and get the hell out of there.
Morgan yanked on the loose fabric of his robe and pinned his arm against the tabletop.
“Let go,” he said in warning.
“We got a job offer, Jack. A big, fat, juicy one.”
“Not interested.”
“Really, it’s a big one. Biggest score we’ve ever had.”
“Still not interested.”
“What if I were to tell you that you are broke too? Completely broke.”
“You’d be lying.”
“Am I?”
She had to be
. Then Cutter thought about it for a moment, looking from her to Gauge. The big man nodded. Among her many talents, Morgan Crow was a computer security expert, a hacker extraordinaire, and a whiz with electronic gadgets of all shapes and sizes. She was one part German, one part African, one part American Indian, and a whole shitload of trouble if you ever got on the wrong side of her.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he said.
She kept quiet. She just continued to pin the arm of his robe against the tabletop staring daggers at him until he sank back into his chair.
“It’s already done, Jack. You are flat broke. Even the Cayman accounts. And if you do not agree to come along with us today, your little ‘vacation’ here will come to an abrupt end.”
Cutter reached into his robe’s right pocket and felt the roll of twenties. They were probably all he had left other than the boat. He massaged the bills between his nicotine-stained fingers.
Not yet.
He stood. “Screw you, Morgan,” he groused as he retightened the belt on his robe. Then he headed for the exit with his bunny slippers scuffing loudly against the rough concrete.
~4~
Cutter didn’t like the look of the two men sitting across the conference room table from him.
Assholes.
Something about them rubbed him entirely the wrong way. While he was not opposed to being rubbed the right way, or even the right way when it was oh-so-wrong, these guys would not be his first choice to do it. And for that matter, they would not even be on the list.
Perhaps it had been the four-hour flight he’d just endured, mixed with an hour-long taxi ride into the heart of the city that had set him on edge. Perhaps it was his anger with himself over his final capitulation to Morgan and Gauge that had allowed the trip to begin in the first place. Or, it could just be that the last time he’d worked with the guy directly across the table from him, the mission to locate a mysterious artifact deep in a mine in Ecuador had been a complete and utter Charlie Foxtrot. Whatever it was the was prickling him, he was already nearing the getting-ready-to-walk-out-of-the-room mode, catch the next flight back to where the sun shined brightest, find a fat bottle and a native girl, and crawl inside both.
But he owed it to Morgan to listen to these guys—
for a little bit, anyway.
Her arguments had persuaded him to go to Atlanta and hear these guys out.
Hell no
had he made it easy on her, but she basically had put his balls in a vise when she had drained his bank accounts. So, while she fully deserved his righteous wrath, he had to play nice, for now—
which sucked.
Damn her
.
While they had flown to Atlanta, she’d briefed him on the operation and the similarities with the Ecuadorian job—the one that had gone south and led the death of his wife, Sharon. Morgan had also dangled the validation of Sharon’s theories in front of him, too, but he questioned how that could possibly be, given the vastly different geographic locations in which these similar artifacts they’d been discussing had been discovered.
Maybe, though, just maybe, she had a point—a small one.
Gauge had returned to Texas to begin preparations in anticipation of them taking the new gig. Which to Gauge, meant purchasing and assembling the biggest guns and explosives and other armaments that a large advance payment would allow for.
Morgan is betting big on this one
, he’d thought on the plane ride. He didn’t quite have the same certainty of purpose, as he hadn’t yet decided if he would even take the job. So, in his mind, Gauge was already acting a bit prematurely. But that was Gauge. The man just liked guns—the bigger, the badder, the better. And, although he still wasn’t committed yet to the cause, Cutter was suspicious that both Morgan and Gauge were thinking the briefing in Atlanta was more of a formality than a necessity. Those two were planning to take the gig no matter what. Maybe even if he refused, as well.
Let’s see about that.
He still had serious doubts that he could go through with it and wondered if he’d freeze up and lose his focus like he had in Ecuador. He didn’t want to make another bad decision that would get more people kill. Hell, he wondered if he even would be able to step into the darkness of another mineshaft ever again. Regardless of all that, he wanted to meet whomever it was that was bankrolling the little adventure—if only to look him or her or them in the eyes and figure out why in the hell they wanted one of those damned artifacts in the first place. It all seemed a little reckless, considering what he had encountered in Ecuador.
Those same reckless souls who wanted Cutter and his team to take this mission were the same ones at the table. They consisted of one man in a suit, and one flunky Cutter had worked with before. The flunky he respected about as much as he respected television evangelists and product pitchmen, who were just slightly more respectable than network TV news anchors.
“Mr. Cutter,” the flunky across from him, said.
The man was called John Wayland. He was the same guy who had hired Cutter to take on the failed the mission in Ecuador. Cutter had to admit to himself that it took guts for Wayland to face him again, and he let him know it with the way that he sat with his arms folded across his chest, thumbs pointing upward, chin lowered.
Wayland laced his fingers together on the tabletop and began rubbing his thumbs against one another. A bead of oily sweat had formed just under the hairline of his slicked-back hair. It sparkled in the harsh light from the spotlights above and did not want to roll off his forehead. It seemed glued in place. The man wet his lips and cast a quick glance at the woman sitting next to him.
The woman was a chiseled-faced beauty about thirty-five years old, Cutter guessed. She could have easily passed for being in her late twenties, though. His guess to the higher side came from the tiny crow’s feet surrounding her eyes that she’d attempted to hide behind a pair of oversized, dark-framed glasses. She had rich, well-toned skin and did not seem the type to let vanity drive her to hide behind a painted-up face. That gave her a natural beauty which made Cutter very much wish to see her completely naked one day.
I’ve seen her before.
He was certain he had, but couldn’t place where that had been. And unfortunately, when he had seen her then, she had not been naked at the time. He was fairly sure of it. He would have remembered. But he couldn’t recall where it was that he’d seen her, which bothered him to the point of distraction.
“This is Dr. Reyna Martinez,” John Wayland said. “She teaches graduate classes at Columbia University and is the best there is in the field of speculative biology and evolution. And she has… Well, she will be accompanying you on this expedition.”
Like hell she will
. It was then that his brain connected all the dots. He knew her by reputation and by a single photograph. He’d seen her profile picture on the dust jacket of a book he’d once noticed lying open on his wife’s desk. It was all about evolution and the future of mankind, that sort of bullshit, but he could not recall what the title was. Sharon was always reading one textbook or another, and he still had not cleared them out of the home they once shared. The task still waited for him back in Texas. Whether or not he would ever go back there, he did not know. Nor did he care. Sharon was an anthropologist by trade, specifically an expert in the field of Bronze-Age man. And it was something, of which, she constantly reminded him just how well he fit in with her chosen subject matter’s knuckle-dragging ways. She used to tease him about being a direct descendant of the missing link in the chain of evolution. He rather enjoyed proving her right, too, and he continued to prove her right by licking his lips and giving Dr. Martinez a leering wink.
She glanced away with the subtle wrinkling of her nose showing her disgust.
“We work alone,” Cutter said, hiding a private smile. He interlocked his fingers behind his head and tilted back in his chair.
“That is not at all possible,” Wayland said as he scratched his neck, just under his jawline.
Leaning forward, Cutter pulled back his hair and let his hands slip off his head and come crashing down hard on the tabletop. Water in the tall glass next to him splashed out and spattered on the conference room table. He glanced down at the mess and wiped the stippled droplets with his middle finger, smearing the water around and creating an annoying low-pitched stuttering noise on the polished surface of the mahogany tabletop.
“If we do this,” he said, “we do it alone and our way this time, Mr. Wayland.”
“I have been informed—” Wayland stopped. He glanced at the man seated at the head of the conference table. The man was someone Cutter had not met until today. The guy had a round face with protruding cheekbones, which Cutter thought made the guy look a little like a chimpanzee in an expensive suit. That made sitting there and taking Wayland seriously a real challenge. Chimp-man was obviously in charge and pulling Wayland’s strings, which was a bit of a mindset shift. Cutter had always thought that John Wayland had been the man in charge all along, given his exclusive involvement in their past dealings. But it appeared, Cutter realized, that he might have been wrong in that assessment. He had seen Chimp-man before on cable TV. The guy had been on a business channel, but Cutter knew little else other than the man had thought of himself as a player on Wall Street. Gold was what he remembered the guy being into. There was something about gold mining in the guy’s background, but what that was, he did not know. Given that the failed mission to Ecuador had been to retrieve an artifact from inside a gold mine—a real Indiana Jones kind of job—it all had to be connected somehow.
Who are you?
Cutter had asked himself, and no matter how hard he flogged his brain, he couldn’t recall the Chimp-man’s name or where the connections all lined up. Pieces were missing from the puzzle. Partly, that intrigued him as well as watching Wayland squirm a little.
Chimp-man nodded, and Wayland started to say again, “I have been informed—”
Cutter held up a hand and glanced at Chimp-man. “I’m going to cut things short here and assume that, by bringing us this far, you are not planning on taking ‘no’ for our final answer. So, if you can pay the freight, the girl can come along for the ride, much as that troubles me.” He winked at her again, and she sneered. “But she takes all her orders from me, okay? I’m not going to compromise there. So are we all going to be all right with that?”
He smirked at her, and she frowned back, letting him know just how easily he could get under her skin anytime he wanted to—
or she is bright enough to let me pretend I can.
Cutter figured if they actually took the gig, he’d have to sort it out somewhere down the road.
“But not him.” Cutter waggled a finger at John Wayland. “That guy stays here. He is not to be involved in any shape, form, no how, and no way. Got it?”
Cutter set his hands down on the tabletop and stared down Wayland, wondering again if the last mission they had been involved in together had been a setup from the beginning. That mission had ended with Sharon’s death and no goddamned artifact.
Or had it?
Could that little weasel have hidden the success from him somehow?
Cutter had never quite figured that out. He’d had other far more pressing things on his mind at the time. His wife. Who’d just died. And yet, here he was, back at the negotiating table being asked to do it all over again.
There was an old adage about enemies and how close they should be kept, but Cutter also knew that whatever he said next, Wayland would get involved somehow—worm his way in, so to speak. It was just how that guy seemed to operate. So whatever was going on, or going to go on, Cutter would make sure to extract a little payback from the man before this was all said and done. And that would be much easier to do if he had cause to do so. If not, he’d trump something up.
“Agreed,” John Wayland said, nodding almost a bit too easily.
Really?
Cutter suppressed the surprise he felt, or thought he did. He glanced at the tabletop and back up again.
“Your fee, Mr. Cutter, will be two million US. Half on acceptance of our arrangement, the rest payable when the artifact is safely returned and in our possession. This is to be a simple transaction for us all, and you are expected to cover all incurred expenses related to this little…adventure. Including, of course, any transportation costs. Are we clear on that?”
Cutter glanced at Chimp-man, who remained enigmatic.
Who are you really?
The payout was far more than he had ever been offered for any job like this, so it made him extremely apprehensive to take it. The amount was about three times what they were paid up front for the failed job in Ecuador. It was tempting. Perhaps too much so. Money was talking.
What do I have to lose?
“Okay,” Cutter said without any further consideration. He sensed surprise from Morgan at his easy and rapid acceptance of the first offer. His usual play was to hold out for at least one or two more rounds. Often, he would walk out of a deal just to see if they’d come chase him down. The desperate ones did. Which was just about every job he’d been offered.
“Good,” Wayland said with just a brief hint of nervous release.
Cutter figured the guy would make an excellent mark at the poker table. He would welcome pitting himself against Wayland anytime the guy wished to play because, right now, Cutter knew that he held the winning hand and had not yet placed his final bet down on the table.
One more round. Just for kicks.
Wayland opened a thick manila folder stuffed with papers. “We have arranged papers and passage for you and your team. Your arrival will be marked as a corporate flight inbound to our mining operations in Koni. This is assuming your travel means are by private jet, which I assume you have been briefed on by Ms. Crow along with where it is you will be landing?”
Right
. Cutter nodded an affirmative. He actually did not know. She hadn’t told him yet.
Wayland glanced at Chimp-man. “But—to maintain the operation’s complete secrecy, we will be unable to supply the proper official travel visas necessary for entry into Russia. Although, I assure you, the appropriate people have already been contacted, so your entry and exit should not be an issue for a team with your…shall we say, unique abilities?”
Not good
. Heading into Russia uninvited was not the best way to make friends there. But these clowns were spending a whole bunch of US dollars to make things happen quickly. Those same greasy skids could lead to a whole mess of new troubles, or they could make him some new friends. He’d been to Russia once before and found that the appropriate paperwork only mattered in the larger cities or when one got too near the sensitive military sites. All other places were under the control of local bureaucrats, who were usually out to line their own pockets and didn’t much care about official protocol, which he’d learned was a relic of those raised in the former Soviet Union.