Listen to the Silence

Home > Other > Listen to the Silence > Page 21
Listen to the Silence Page 21

by Marcia Muller


  “Turn on your surveillance cam and take a look.”

  I touched the switch. The grainy picture on the camera’s screen—not the best we should have bought—showed the reception desk; I moved the cursor to take in the rest of the room.

  The figure slumped on the sofa was Gage Renshaw, all right. Older, more rumpled than I remembered him, but still with that jet black hair with a white shock hanging down over his Lincolnesque forehead.

  “Son of a bitch,” I said.

  “What should I do with him?” Ted asked.

  “Throw him off the roof garden.”

  “Come on, Shar, this is serious. He’s smarmy and obnoxious as ever, and he’s demanding to see both you and Hy.”

  I thought quickly. “Take him to the hospitality suite.” A room off second-floor reception. “Offer him food, drink, whatever. Say Ripinsky and I are in conference, but we’ll be with him shortly.”

  “Will do. You want surveillance cams activated there, right?”

  “Yes.” I cut the connection, and then buzzed Hy.

  “I need you right away,” I told him. “One of our worst nightmares has just come true.”

  Hy and Gage Renshaw went way back, to the days when they were both flying highly questionable passengers and cargo in Southeast Asia, for an outfit called K-Air.

  As Hy had put it to me, he’d suspected but didn’t want to know for sure what K-Air was involved in; the planes were delivered to the pilots fully loaded and they didn’t even know their destinations until immediately before departure. There were a few times when he’d flown passengers concealed in the skin of the plane, meaning between the outer layer and the inside cabin. A good place to freeze to death, as one of his human cargo did. He’d parachuted contraband into far-flung places. Fellow pilots had disappeared into those places and were never seen again. It was a violent world, but he’d accepted it because he had very little to return to: his father, stepfather, and mother were dead; his stepfather had willed him a small sheep ranch in California’s high desert country near Tufa Lake, the region where he’d been born but was by no means home; he’d wandered for years, but never found a place that was home, and he assumed he never would.

  The turning point came when his regular flight plan was changed by the owner of K-Air from a city in Thailand called Chiang Mai to an abandoned village near the Laotian border. He was forced down into a clearing by one of his passengers—a drug lord—where he was forced to witness a horrible massacre. That was it—Hy decided to get out (get clean, he’d said) and return to the high desert country of California.

  In the years that passed, Hy became an environmentalist, married a fellow activist, and when he lost his wife to Multiple Sclerosis, he sank into a manic-depressive state that alarmed even those friends who’d always considered him a wild man. Then I’d appeared and our life together, while sometimes tumultuous, usually had a settled quality that neither of us had experienced before.

  Meanwhile, Renshaw and Kessell had returned stateside and formed RKI, an international executive protection firm. Basically what such firms do in this era of terrorist threats is contract with U.S. companies to provide security risk analysis, program design, and defensive training. They also have contingency services: crisis-management; ransom negotiation and delivery; and hostage recovery. They’d lured Hy into the firm as a hostage negotiator with promises of big bucks and short hours; the bucks had flown in, but long hours persisted, because Hy is as driven as I am when he’s on the trail of a solution to a crime.

  Dan Kessell had been murdered a few years ago, his killer never apprehended. I had my suspicions about the murder, all of them involving Renshaw. Later, Renshaw had totally disappeared, probably because one of his nefarious ventures went sour, and after a suitable time Hy had petitioned the court and been granted sole ownership of what was first known as Ripinsky International and now as McCone & Ripinsky International (an unfortunate appellation when referred to as MRI, conjuring up visions of X-ray rooms and white-coated technicians). But now it seemed Gage was back. And no doubt with plans, intended to mess up the whole arrangement.

  Copyright © 2016 Pronzini-Muller Family Trust

  Also by Marcia Muller

  Sharon McCone Mysteries

  THE NIGHT SEARCHERS

  LOOKING FOR YESTERDAY

  CITY OF WHISPERS

  COMING BACK

  LOCKED IN

  BURN OUT

  THE EVER-RUNNING MAN

  VANISHING POINT

  THE DANGEROUS HOUR

  DEAD MIDNIGHT

  LISTEN TO THE SILENCE

  A WALK THROUGH THE FIRE

  WHILE OTHER PEOPLE SLEEP

  BOTH ENDS OF THE NIGHT

  THE BROKEN PROMISE LAND

  A WILD AND LONELY PLACE

  TILL THE BUTCHERS CUT HIM DOWN

  WOLF IN THE SHADOWS

  PENNIES ON A DEAD WOMAN’S EYES

  WHERE ECHOES LIVE

  TROPHIES AND DEAD THINGS

  THE SHAPE OF DREAD

  THERE’S SOMETHING IN A SUNDAY

  EYE OF THE STORM

  THERE’S NOTHING TO BE AFRAID OF

  DOUBLE (With Bill Pronzini)

  LEAVE A MESSAGE FOR WILLIE

  GAMES TO KEEP THE DARK AWAY

  THE CHESHIRE CAT’S EYE

  ASK THE CARDS A QUESTION

  EDWIN OF THE IRON SHOES

  Standalones

  CAPE PERDIDO

  CYANIDE WELLS

  POINT DECEPTION

  Marcia Muller has written many novels and short stories. She is the 2005 recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s Grand Master Award—their highest accolade. Her novel Locked In won a Shamus for best novel from Private Eye Writers of America, and she is also the recipient of PWA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Marcia Muller lives in northern California with her husband, mystery writer and fellow MWA Grand Master Bill Pronzini. You can visit her website at www.MarciaMuller.com.

  Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Hachette Digital.

  To receive special offers, bonus content, and news about our latest ebooks and apps, sign up for our newsletters.

  Sign Up

  Or visit us at hachettebookgroup.com/newsletters

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Many thanks to

  Saturday: SEPTEMBER 2

  Monday: SEPTEMBER 4

  Tuesday: SEPTEMBER 5

  Thursday: SEPTEMBER 7

  Friday: SEPTEMBER 8

  Saturday: SEPTEMBER 9

  Sunday: SEPTEMBER 10

  Monday: SEPTEMBER II

  Tuesday: SEPTEMBER 12

  Wednesday: SEPTEMBER 13

  Thursday: SEPTEMBER 14

  Saturday: SEPTEMBER 16

  Sunday: SEPTEMBER 17

  Monday: SEPTEMBER 18

  Monday: SEPTEMBER 18

  Thursday: SEPTEMBER 21

  Sunday: SEPTEMBER 24

  Tuesday: SEPTEMBER 26

  Thursday: SEPTEMBER 28

  More from Marcia Muller

  Also by Marcia Muller

  About the Author

  Newsletters

  Copyright

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2000 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust

  Cover copyright © 2000 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissio
[email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  1290 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10104

  hachettebookgroup.com

  twitter.com/grandcentralpub

  First published in hardcover by The Mysterious Press

  First ebook edition: March 2016

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.

  The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.

  ISBN 978-1-4555-6785-0

  E3

 

 

 


‹ Prev