Hudson: SEALs of Honor Book 27 Page 8

  “Just because they’re lonely?”

  “Absolutely. The world forgets about single old people, and the family always says, ‘Oh, we come around every week.’ But usually that every week is every month maybe, and they forget about them in the meantime. What are they supposed to do when they’re sitting there all alone, night after night after night, with nobody to even talk to?”

  “Well, the dinner and conversation wouldn’t be so bad,” Avery murmured, “but what you’re saying is all that just leads up to you cleaning out their wallets when they fall asleep.”

  “And I warn them, the regulars at least. I warn them that I’ll do it, so they need to keep their wallets empty. Otherwise I’ll take the money.”

  “And do they empty out their wallets beforehand?”

  She gave her a smile. “Nope, and I put that down to the fact that they’re leaving me a tip.”

  Avery laughed. “What do they say when you tell them?”

  “Well, some of them don’t believe me. Some of them do. Some of them say they don’t care. Some of them tell me about all their sons and daughters, who are being mean, or about their grandkids, who scare them. Things like that.”

  “That’s not good if anybody is actually scaring them,” Dennis said.

  “Wouldn’t be so bad but none of you guys care,” she said in a dark voice, glaring at Dennis in particular. “You’re out here trying to make my life more difficult, instead of catching the real criminals, like the families of these old men.”

  Hudson tucked his arm gently around Avery’s shoulders. “Come on. Let’s go,” he said. “It’ll take them some time to figure out whether she knows anything or not.”

  “I already said I did,” she said.

  “And you’ve also shown that you are an accomplished con artist, so you could just be making it all up,” Hudson said, with a smile at Dennis. “We’re heading off.” With that, he tugged Avery a little closer.

  The woman glared at him. “If you’d seen it, you would be telling them too.”

  “And maybe it’ll trigger what it is that you saw,” he said. “I saw that tattoo, but I couldn’t get a good enough angle on it, and I had no reason to chase after them. But you were probably studying everyone, just looking for another mark.” She glared at him, offended by his snide comment. He smiled and stepped away, knowing that half the battle of getting her to talk was to make her mad, then walk away.

  “Ring.”

  He stopped and looked at her, as he thought back. “Large silver band with a flat surface. But I couldn’t see what was on it.”

  “He lifted his hand like this,” she said, “to scratch behind his ear, so I saw it.”

  “And?”

  “It’s a military gang insignia,” she said quietly. “They’re known as a terrorist group all around the world.”

  He looked at her and said, “What’s on the—”

  “Eagle,” she said, looking smug.

  “Damn.” He turned to look at Dennis. “If they both belong to that group, then this is major.”

  Dennis frowned. “I don’t think I know this group.”

  “Well, you should,” the con woman said, turning to him. “Anytime these assholes show up, there’s trouble.”

  “But why would they kill their own guy then?” Avery asked curiously.

  “Could have been a falling out,” the woman said. “No real way to know, is there? How was he killed?” She looked over at Hudson.

  He shrugged. “That’s for Dennis to tell you—or not.”

  Dennis said, “He was shot.”

  “Right in the center of the forehead? That would be their style.”

  “Doesn’t matter if it’s their style, it still doesn’t mean that they did it,” Dennis said. “And wouldn’t you think it would be at the back of the head?”

  “No, not these guys. They’re quite happy to take people out face-to-face, including the lower echelons of their group.”

  “She’s right,” Hudson said. “There’s only two tiers, the boss and one row of inductees. Anybody new they can bring on, they train, and, if they’re not good enough, they’re done. As in dead.”

  “And you think that’s what happened here?” Dennis asked Hudson.

  “No room for mistakes. Not with this group. They’re after the best of the best. At least that’s what they’ll have you believe.”

  Dennis frowned. “I’ll have to look them up.”

  “You do, yes,” he said. “What we don’t know is why they would even be here.”

  “They’ll have a target,” the unnamed woman said with a shrug.

  “What if it was your old guy?” Hudson asked.

  “For that I would be sad then,” she said. “He was really nice.”

  “Have you seen him before?”

  “Just at brunch. I was supposed to come up to visit over dinner,” she said, waggling her eyebrows.

  “But, when you got there, he was dead?”

  “Yes.”

  Hudson frowned, not sure if he should believe her or not.

  “I’m telling you the truth,” she said, “but I can see why you may not want to believe me.”

  “You think?” he said, with a shake of his head.

  “Well, that’s all I’ve got for you,” she said. “Take it or leave it.” At that, a cruiser pulled up, and Dennis ordered her to be taken to the station. She got in quietly and didn’t say a word. As she drove away, she looked at Hudson and opened the window. “You need to find out what’s going on.”

  He nodded slowly at her, as she was driven away. Then he turned to look back at Dennis and said, “She’s right. That’s bad news. Presumably they’ve already been here, done the deed, and are gone,” he said. “But somebody here would have been a target. I just don’t know who.”

  “Could it have been an it?” Avery asked. “Would the hotel itself have come under fire as a target?”

  He frowned, as he looked at her. “They usually do bigger disasters. Unless they were trying to get back at somebody who owns it or something. Somebody they are trying to muscle to do something, and he’s not cooperating.”

  “Meaning, damage his main asset, so that he realizes the threat is real?”

  “Exactly.” He looked at Dennis and said, “This is getting much more complicated.”

  “It is,” he said. “And it’s on my head, not yours.”

  At that, he hesitated. “Happy to help if you want me in on it,” Hudson said.

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “If you change your mind, you know how to contact me.” And, with that, he looked at Avery and said, “Time to go home.”

  Chapter 5

  After leaving the seafood restaurant, Hudson and Avery took a walk, letting it all sink in. Avery was quiet, contemplative. They had settled into another café at a fairly intimate booth for a coffee and dessert, and now she felt overwhelmed, stuffed, and tired. “It’s amazing just how much that sweet treat weighed me down.”

  “Especially if you haven’t done anything to wear it off.” He stood, paid their bill, and had her walking home again.

  She laughed. “You’d think all the stress and random thoughts churning around in my mind would have done that.”

  “For some people it works,” he said. “Those professional poker players go through thousands and thousands of calories to keep that brainpower churning, but I’ve never yet had the same results myself, even though I do a lot of physical work too.”

  “Their brains must be fine-tuned machines,” she said. “Mine is not.”

  “You’re a pretty smart cookie, as I recall,” he said.

  She smiled up at him and said, “You’re just being nice. You know what? I can’t get that woman out of my mind. To think of the way she lives. And her makeup. She was just so damn good. She should work in Hollywood.”

  “I was really surprised at that too,” he said. “I hadn’t noted it until you pointed it out.”

  “She was so good that I didn’t
even really see it for quite a while. Only when she started to sweat did I realize what was going on.”

  He nodded. “Good thing you did,” he said. “When you think about it, she might have walked away without us ever knowing the little bit she gave us.”

  “But she wasn’t a whole lot of help, was she?”

  “No, I can’t say that she was. But she also saw the two men, so that helps clear the suspicion that I was making it all up.”

  “And what’s up with that anyway?” she cried out. “How is that even a thing?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said. “It seems like an odd thing for anybody to pull, especially Dennis, who knows me.”

  “It’s seriously insane,” she muttered. “But then I guess, in a job like that, you just get suspicious over time.”

  “Yep, that’s part of it too,” he said.

  She sighed. “Well, we’re almost home,” she said and led the way up to the apartment.

  As they walked in, he said, “Do you mind if I get on my laptop for a bit?”

  “You do you,” she said, with a wave of her hand. “I’ll go have a shower, and then I’m heading to bed.”

  “Are you okay?” He looked up, studying her closely.

  She smiled. “I’m fine. It’s just been a crazy wild-ass day. My brain needs to shut down for a while.”

  “Hey, understood,” he said, “as long as you’re okay.”

  “I might come out and have a glass of wine after I shower,” she said. “We’ll see how tired I am.”

  “Sometimes a hot shower makes me crash too.” He nodded in understanding.

  She headed into the bathroom, closed the door, and stripped down. She was yawning, even as she got in under the water. She scrubbed herself from head to toe, but she had just such a weird feeling of, not dirt, but almost having opened the cosmic envelope into something really ugly that she had never really experienced before. Now she wished she could back up and take all those evil whispers off her shoulders again.

  No matter how much she scrubbed, she had no sense of releasing the burden or stepping back into the world of innocence that she used to inhabit. Like she was now tainted in some way because she got to see that underworld, and she didn’t want to. Maybe her worldview was tainted now too.

  Before, she had always believed in the goodness of mankind, even though she had dealt with her sister’s death—which was more of a really bad accident—not like the bad actors she’d come to know about by spending plenty of time with Hudson and understanding more about the work he did. Yet it was always off in the distance, never this close to home. This mess was right up in her face, and it felt weird. Somehow her whole world had shifted and changed.

  By the time she was done scrubbing down, she turned off the water, took a few moments to towel herself off well, and then grabbed her dirty clothes and stepped back into her bedroom. There she put on pajamas and a light robe and walked out into the kitchen. He sat in the dining room with his laptop.

  “How’s the work going?” she asked. She headed for the teakettle, thinking a cup of herbal tea might be a better answer than the red wine.

  He didn’t look her way. “It’s going,” he said. “I’ve just been updating my team with what’s happening here.”

  “But they can’t really do anything, can they?”

  “Well, certainly it’s not the kind—well, it is the kind of job we would do,” he said, “but, in this case, of course we would be stepping on a lot of toes.”

  “Right,” she said, “and clearly from the way Dennis was acting, that’s definitely something to avoid.”

  Hudson chuckled. “It keeps everybody happy if we aren’t interfering.”

  “Hard to believe interfering is a thing in this case.”

  “But, if you think about it, Dennis wouldn’t be terribly happy to see us take over his case.”

  She winced at that. “No, when you put it that way,” she said, “I guess not.”

  “We do a lot of interactive assistance work with people,” he said, “but we’re not the FBI. It’s not like we go across state lines and have any kind of jurisdiction,” he said. “We’re under US Navy control. Where they send us, we go. If we’re on a special mission because there’s a terrorist group or a kidnapping or, you know, a government being overthrown,” he said, “that’s a completely different story. Something like this? Not really our deal.”

  “But it sounds like terrorism.”

  “Which is why it’s so interesting to me,” he said. “And why I’m trying to stay on the periphery and why I am keeping my team apprised. We may not get clearance to come help out, but I might keep track of what’s going on just because I do know Dennis.”

  “Right. You know him, but he won’t want to know you very much.”

  “Not unless we have something to offer him.” Then his laptop beeped, and she went back to making her tea. When she sat down at the dining room table, he looked at her tea and smiled. “Did you decide against the wine?”

  “I did,” she said. “I’m already really tired, and that would crash me for sure.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” he asked, looking at her searchingly. “We’ve certainly killed a bottle or two before.”

  She slumped down on the table. “We have. I’m not even sure I want the tea. I’m mostly ready to just go crash.”

  “Go ahead,” he urged. “Don’t stay up for my sake.”

  “But we don’t get to spend much time together, so I don’t want to waste any of it.”

  “And that’s part of the discussion we were having earlier,” he said, with a tilt of his lips. “Are you interested in spending more time together?”

  She lifted her head and nodded. “Absolutely.”

  “Good,” he said. “That was an easy answer.”

  “It was an easy question,” she said, putting her head down on her arm again, as she studied him. “And what about you?”

  “Absolutely,” he said. “You’re still a ways away from where I am, but I’m often gone anyway.”

  “Well, we’ve been trying to get together once or twice a year,” she said, “so how many times a year were you thinking of?”

  “I guess one question is whether you’re looking at moving or not.”

  “Yes, that’s true.” She smiled again. “It is a nice place to be, but it’s certainly losing its charm. Especially now.”

  “You just need to replace your current life with something more to your liking.”

  “And I don’t have that yet.” she said.

  “There’s no rush, absolutely no rush,” he said, “and, when you get there, you’ll find the right place and make the right decision.”

  She grinned at him. “Wouldn’t it be nice to think I could make the right decision all the time? I feel like I’ve made a lot of wrong decisions.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, looking at her curiously. “Unless you’ve kept some devious things in your history from me.”

  “I don’t think it’s possible to keep anything from you,” she said. “I mean, you’re very observant.”

  “Not observant enough,” he said. “I’m still pissed at myself for not having seen more of that ring.”

  “It’s all about angles though, isn’t it?”

  “In that case it was, but, still, it would have been nice to have seen it.”

  “You mean the fact that she saw something you didn’t?”

  “Exactly. I felt like a fool.”

  “I think that’s her stock-in-trade though. She knows how to make men feel the way she wants them to, so she can manipulate them into doing what she wants them to do. Listen to her conversation about how she would empty their wallets. So, if they didn’t want it emptied, then they should empty it themselves before they ever got to dinner.”

  He laughed. “You know something? I can see a lot of these old guys being quite tickled that she would do it too.”

  “And what does that say about us?” she said, lifting her head again to stare at
him. “What kind of people are we if that is even a thing? So, by not emptying your wallet, you’re asking to be stolen from?”

  “I’m thinking of it more as their tips, as if it were their way of helping her out and giving her something more, but in a unique way. They didn’t have to be responsible for her long-term. They didn’t have to tell their wives or their family or whoever about it or even justify where the money went to their accountants or the IRS. They can just say it was stolen from their wallet, and I’m guessing that they were more than happy to help her out. The fact that she told them upfront just adds a bit of a humor to it, something unique.”

  “I guess most of them have money, don’t they?”

  “I suspect she was getting paid somewhere between five to seven hundred a night, if not two or three times that.”

  She stared at him in shock. “Apparently I’m in the wrong business,” she announced.

  He burst out laughing. “Well, I don’t know about that,” he said. “But, if money is what you’re after, and keeping old guys company is your thing, then maybe,” he said. “But you’re probably better off doing what you’re doing.”

  “All I do is bookkeeping,” she said. “Well, okay, I’m an accountant. But still, all I deal with is numbers. And numbers are numbers are numbers. They are the same, day in and day out.”

  He smiled. “Not necessarily but I can see that, once again, her job might seem more exciting—at least from the outside, looking in.”

  “Did you find any more information about that terrorist group?”

  “It’s a group I’m already up-to-date on,” he said. “I was searching for any of the other members. It’s one of the reasons I contacted my team, to see if a couple of the more high-profile team members were hitting this town at all.”

  “But how would you know?”

  “We’d have to search traffic cameras, check passports, airports, train stations, that type of thing. Check and see where their names pop up.”

  “Do they travel under other IDs, like our con woman?”

  “Not usually,” he murmured, as he studied his laptop. “They are pretty brazen, but then they don’t leave witnesses behind either.” He lifted his gaze again to smile at her. “I’ll just stay here and work for a little bit. Why don’t you go to bed?”