Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91452 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 457(@200wpm)___ 366(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
She waited, and when I nodded, she gestured at the body, now covered with a sheet. “As you suspected, Colonel Colter, this is not Owen Moss.”
“You’re sure?” I held my breath, glancing at Jing and Arden, noting that they too weren’t breathing.
“I am.”
And suddenly, I could breathe. Dante was there for me to grab his shoulder, the only thing solid enough to keep me upright. It was a relief, yes, but now the real work began. “Do we know who the man is?”
“No. The condition of the body makes any conventional identification impossible. But then, whoever gave it to you made sure of that.”
“Explain, please.”
“I don’t know if I can. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I’d still prefer to hear it, Doctor.”
“You may not like it,” she replied, glancing around the room. “Someone has altered the appearance of this body.”
“Altered?”
“Yes. And it was professionally done.”
“Meaning?” Dante asked as I became steadier on my feet. He didn’t move away from me, staying put, watchful.
“Meaning that the traces are all there—the hairline and eyes were altered.”
Chris looked concerned. “I was under the impression you couldn’t tamper with the eyes. That’s what I’ve always heard.”
“Not entirely true. As long as you stay in the recognizable category of eye color, the possibilities for hue manipulation are fairly far-ranging. You don’t have to change everything, just enough of a few things and you have a different person. I’d say this man was in his early thirties, just like Mr. Moss.”
Jing said, “They dumped the body in a polluted channel where it would be struck by boats. That was probably done to cover their tracks. Yes?”
“Yes,” Dr. Lens agreed. “And it would have, short of having a world-class pathologist examining the body. But in their haste, they missed adding the tattoo, or, to be precise, the patch where the tattoo was removed.”
Owen had been branded with the mark of the Macau sex trade—a single Chinese character, two centimeters in length, tattooed on his scalp above his left ear—before I rescued him. It took me over three months to find Owen after his parents were brutally murdered. It was a dark memory I had no wish to revisit. As soon as he was old enough to be given the choice, he’d agreed to have it removed. The scar where that had been done was permanent. And even though it was small, it was in his records, and Dr. Lens had just used it to give me my life back.
“Doctor,” Garland began gently, “would you excuse us all for a moment?”
“Of course,” she replied quickly. “I have notes to type up. I’ll be just outside with my laptop if you have any questions.”
Once she was through the doors, I felt the full weight of her discovery hit me.
“It all sounds like the stuff of spy novels, doesn’t it?” Jing asked into the silence.
“It does,” I agreed. “But that’s the world we live in.” I thought a moment. “My bet is the bodyguard is dead.”
“Or in on this pretense,” Chris suggested with a shrug.
“Yeah, you need to consider that,” Garland conceded.
I had liked Garland Murray from the moment Dante first introduced us. He was blunt—and more importantly, never afraid to be—and had a reputation for patience not many did. His brown hair and blue eyes were fairly common, making him blend into the background, an asset in itself in our line of work, but what set him apart was how still he could be, and almost preternaturally calm. In that moment, I couldn’t have appreciated his solid presence more.
Jing said, “Who would surgically alter a body to this extent, just to dump it in the river? To what end? All to sell an elaborate identity hoax? It’s a little frightening.”
There was a heavy pause.
“This man was killed on purpose,” Dante surmised, turning to me. “But why? To Jing’s point, to accomplish what?”
My mind was whirling.
“We have to assume the tattoo wasn’t a miss,” Chris offered, and I met his eyes. “C’mon, Jared, that doesn’t make any sense.”
And it didn’t. He was right. Someone had intended it as a calling card to lure me in. But lure me to what? Owen was the one bait I would not, could not, ignore, my one true trump card. Did someone know that? Everyone in this room did, of course, but outside of a fairly tight circle, no one connected me and Owen. He worked for me, but so did many others.
“You’re thinking it, how could you not be,” Dante said, that eyebrow of his arching in waiting. “Only someone who knows you well knows about Owen. So who’s looking to draw you out by using him?”
“We don’t know that,” I argued, even as a pain was forming in the pit of my stomach. “As easy as it would be to make this about me, I know better than that. There are too many variables in play to draw conclusions. The only question now is whether Owen is still alive.”