Page 47 of Talk to Me

“Then we explore the lead and see how far it takes us.”

“Great, everyone in the truck, I know where we can pick us up a couple of MD’s contractors.”

Locke made it to the front passenger seat before Remington. “No more dead bodies back there, so you can ride in the back.”

The man barely seemed to notice. Once we were all in, I glanced back at Remington. “They good here? Or will we need to come back to cleanup?”

I would prefer to not do a mop-up. I’d had to do them in the past when someone doing a job decided to get greedy.

“They’re well paid, and they like their work. We’ll be fine,” Remington said. “The next closest body removal specialist is two states away. At least as far as one I would trust, so I would very much like to leave the Garner brothers where they are.”

“Right-o, mate,” I said, firing up the engine.

“Don’t call me mate,” Remington said. “How far is it to our destination?”

“Probably an hour,” I told him. “Sleep if you can, I’ll give you a heads up five minutes out.”

Remington didn’t say another word but when I glanced back, his eyes were closed. Locke had his laptop open and I caught flickering from the corner of my eye. He was doing some kind of search.

“So, we’re just going to roll up to this place—MD Outfitters—and what, knock on the door and see if anyone is home?”

“I have a plan.”

“You going to share it?” Locke asked.

“Nope,” I told him. “Better to be in the moment.”

“Uh huh.” The skepticism was powerful on those two syllables. “Not sure that works for me.”

“Well, since I don’t either, I don’t care.” I could have given him more, but I didn’t have it yet. While I had a plan, it wasn’t fully fleshed out and had a lot of potential for going sideways. So, I focused on what I had with me, weapons, tools, and people.

Remington would be useful.

Locke should probably stay with the truck.

We were going to have to bag, tag, and work our way up the ladder. I doubted the grunts would know anything. “Tell me if they have any managers or area supervisors listed on their website?”

“You want me to help after that?” Locke didn’t quite scoff, but since he was typing, I let it go. “I have four names.”

“Excellent, our plan is to get to those four. Find out where they are and any other information they might have online.”

“Right, that’s more likely to be in their employee files but I’ll look.” He didn’t sound confident. That was fine.

“Good thing we’re on our way there then.”

“Yeah, good thing.” Again, with the doubt.

“You don’t like to work on instinct, do you?” I had a hunch, but Locke didn’t strike me as a go with his gut kind of guy.

“Not really, I like the specs and time to plan.”

“I can drop you off if you want out.” Not that he sounded like he wanted out, no matter how many doubts he expressed.

“Shut up and drive,” he told me.

Yeah, I had his number.

Needed to figure out Remington’s.