Dead Man's Hatch by Matthew Doggett

Author:Matthew Doggett [Doggett, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-29T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-One

THE HEXAGON IS AN interesting shape , Trouble thought. He lay sprawled on a couch, his foot propped up on the arm, the pain in his ankle subsiding. The wound on his other leg was all stitched up, thanks to Kern. But Trouble still felt like he’d fallen down some stairs. Or jumped head first down them. Bruises were already forming all over his body. A headache was deeply embedded in his brain and wasn’t going anywhere. Not for a long while.

Kern and Murke were out doing some recon. They said they’d bring back food. Trouble was alone in the supposedly safe house in McLean, Virginia. Left to think about numbers and shapes.

666. 2%. Hexagon.

Did it even matter? Murke was confident this was all happening because of Hatch. Some twisted revenge plot enacted by a man who’d been inclined toward insanity even before he’d been shot in the head and left for dead.

So why the macabre clues? It was a taunt of some kind, but one that Trouble couldn’t figure out. Still, he couldn’t seem to tear his mind from it. Thinking over numbers and shapes was better than thinking about what might be happening to Cora Dunn. He would drive himself crazy thinking about that.

So he considered the hexagon. Hex meant six in Greek. Six-sided. They showed up all over nature. In honeycombs, rock formations, insect eyes, snowflakes. There was even a hexagon-shaped cloud formation on Saturn’s north pole.

The interior angle of a hexagon is 120 degrees.

Somewhere in the back of Trouble’s mind, miraculously untouched by drug use and head trauma, was some basic chemistry. He knew that hexagons were common in chemistry, but he couldn’t remember exactly why. Something about carbon.

His head pounded. He closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, it was in response to a noise. Someone was coming into the house through the front door. Trouble reached out and grabbed his M88 pistol off the coffee table and disengaged the safety.

Murke walked in, still limping slightly, followed by Kern. The smell of hot food came with them, as each of them was carrying a plastic bag with Styrofoam containers inside. Both men looked at Trouble but neither said anything. They didn’t look happy.

Trouble engaged the safety and put his pistol down. He reached for his phone and saw that several hours had passed since he’d sprawled on the couch. He’d slept.

“What did you find out?” he asked, getting up from the couch and limping over to the small round table in the area that passed for a dining room.

“No sign of Dietrich in the usual places,” Murke reported, pulling out a Styrofoam container and passing it to Trouble with a set of plastic utensils sealed in cellophane. Trouble opened the container, the smell of shrimp and fried rice wafting into his face.

“We’re going to have to do this the hard way,” Kern said, settling into a seat.

“And what way’s that?” Trouble asked.

“We’ll contact him and ask to meet,” Murke said. “And since there’s no way he’ll come alone, we have to assume Hatch’s people will be there.

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