Decker rose to his feet, but didn’t immediately turn to leave. ‘Can I assume Sean will be informed of this before I get to his office? Otherwise he’ll just tell me to go away again.’

‘You may assume this. Any other questions?’

‘What tapes am I supposed to check?’

‘We get an audio feed from each tracker. All conversations are recorded. I don’t think they’re actually on tapes anymore,’ he added with a self-deprecating eye roll. ‘But they are recorded, and the recordings are stored.’

‘For how long?’

‘You don’t need to know that. They’re stored far back enough for you to determine what happened this morning. Obviously there’s no need to check the tapes made before the alarm went off. It could be that the wearer of the tracker escaped and has since been recaptured. If that turns out to be the case, I’d expect a call from the customer to whom the tracker was assigned, requesting a replacement. I would provide one once I knew how the wearer managed to escape and what has been done to ensure that doesn’t happen again. If the wearer is dead, I want to know how and when. The customer to whom the tracker is assigned is required to inform me, but they don’t always do so in a timely fashion. I’d expect you to deal with that.’

Decker nodded grimly. ‘I understand.’

‘You also understand that you’ll be under very close scrutiny.’

Another nod. ‘That’s a given. I’ll get to work.’

Ken waited until Decker had closed the door behind him, then punched ‘1’ on his speed dial. His chief of security did not pick up and the call went to voicemail.

Shit. Where the fuck are you, Reuben? he thought, dialing the next number. Demetrius, the director of purchasing, picked up on the first ring, his smooth, deep bass booming over the car noise in the background. ‘This is Demetrius.’

‘Demetrius, it’s me. Have you seen Reuben?’

‘No, I was about to call you to ask the same thing. He and I had a meeting scheduled with a supplier for nine thirty, and Rube never showed. I ended up closing the deal myself. That boy’s got some serious ass-kissin’ to do to make this up to me. He was supposed to keep Morticia occupied while I negotiated terms with Gomez, but noooo. I had to concentrate on the contract and keep that damn little bitch’s hands off my privates at the same time, without breaking any of her bones. Which I really wanted to do,’ he finished in a growl.

Ken glared at the speaker phone on his desk, totally confused. ‘What the fuck are you talking about, Demetrius? Who the fuck are Gomez and Morticia?’

‘You know. The Barbosas. They run shipments up from Rio. The wife sits next to the negotiator from the other team and pets him under the table, messing with his lower brain so that her husband can sneak all kinds of shit into the contract. But if you’re rude to the wife and tell her to get her mitts off your junk, she cries and the husband up and leaves. They’re a coupla scam artists. Well, duh, of course they are. But their shipments are really nice quality and Reuben doesn’t mind the petting, so he takes one for the team so that I can get through the negotiations – except for today he didn’t show. I am so gonna kick him into—’

Ken cut off the diatribe. ‘He’s missing.’

‘What? Reuben? Since when?’

‘I talked to him just before six this morning. He was on his way to the office but he never showed up.’ Ken quickly filled Demetrius in on the situation. ‘I don’t know where he is or what the hell’s going on.’

‘What about this Decker? Can he be trusted?’

‘I don’t know. I want him watched, but I wanted to be sure that Reuben wasn’t with you before I brought anyone else into this. Get back here just in case we have to do damage control.’

‘On my way.’

‘I’m texting you the address for Jason Jackson, the man Decker sent home. Stop there first and find out what the hell’s going on with him. He better have fucking Ebola or his ass is fried for sleeping on the damn job. We’ve had an unaccounted-for tracker floating around out there for three hours.’

‘I’ll call you from Jackson’s house.’

Ken hung up and called Sean in the IT office. ‘Decker is headed your way. I’m bringing him in on this missing tracker. Give him access to the audio feed for the last twelve hours. While he’s listening to that, I want you to map the tracker’s path for the last twenty-four hours and give that to him too.’

‘You’re just going to give it to him, boss?’ Sean was always careful to call Ken ‘boss’ while they were on the job. Rarely, if ever, did he call him Dad, even when they were alone, but Ken didn’t let that bother him. Sean had always been a weird kid, always tinkering with some gadget or other. He’d already been working to bring their operation into the twenty-first century when Ken had been forced to eliminate the boy’s mother a few years before.

Sean believed his mother had run away with her yoga instructor, which was what Ken and Reuben had made sure everyone believed, including their business partners, Demetrius and Joel. It didn’t pay to allow too many people to know the details of an execution.

‘Yes, but I’ll assign someone from Security to watch him. Make sure Decker doesn’t have any recording devices on him. Call me if you see anything squirrelly.’

‘Will do.’

Seven

Cincinnati, Ohio

Tuesday 4 August, 7.55 A.M.

‘I fucking love Tuesdays.’

Marcus glanced up at the growled greeting, halting the coffee pot in his hand mid-pour. Diesel shuffled in and flopped into one of the padded swivel chairs surrounding the mahogany conference table that had been Marcus’s grandfather’s pride and joy. At six-six and a muscled two-seventy-five, Diesel made the long table look like a little girl’s tea party.

Marcus finished pouring the coffee and gave the first cup to Diesel, who guzzled it down without a flinch, despite the beverage being scalding hot. After the life Diesel Kennedy had lived, he probably didn’t have any taste buds left on his tongue, and the lining of his esophagus had most likely petrified years before. God only knew what the man’s stomach looked like, because Diesel hadn’t seen a doctor in more than ten years.

Marcus knew exactly when that had been, because he’d been with him at the time. Moral support, he’d thought back then. But Diesel hadn’t needed it, leaving the doctor’s office with no emotion on his face, not a flicker of recognition that he’d just been handed a death sentence. Instead, he had taken to drinking booze, smoking like a chimney, driving his motorcycle like a bat out of hell, and drinking coffee by the pot . . . and no one said a word to him. It wasn’t like any of those vices was likely to kill him any faster than the bullet that hovered millimeters from his heart. Too delicately placed to remove, and able to kill him at any moment.

Diesel lifted the mug, wordlessly requesting a refill. The man was all about the caffeine, because he never slept, always working hard or playing harder. And it showed.

Pot still in hand, Marcus refilled the mug and waited while Diesel downed it just as fast as he had the first. Marcus poured him a third cup, then poured himself his first and sat down. ‘Why?’ he asked, and Diesel stared blankly back at him.

‘Why what?’

‘Why do you fucking love Tuesdays?’

Diesel’s mouth curved, reminding Marcus a little of the Grinch as he’d contemplated cleaning out Whoville on Christmas Eve. ‘It’s Cal’s day to bring the doughnuts. He brings the best ones.’

Marcus snorted. ‘And I thought it would be something a lot more, oh, I don’t know. Profound, maybe.’

‘You want profound, go to church,’ Diesel drawled lazily.

‘As if,’ Marcus muttered, then decided to take advantage of the fact that they were the only ones who’d shown up for the morning meeting so far. ‘You were here last night, right?’