“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
Listen to the Silence Page 21