[Henry Parker 01.0] The Mark by Jason Pinter

Author:Jason Pinter [Pinter, Jason]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
Publisher: MIRA
Published: 2007-06-19T04:00:00+00:00

23

Mauser took two Advil and popped them in his mouth. Then he thought twice and popped two more. He thanked the young kid who stood over him with the medicine bottle, grinning like a dog who’d just won first prize. Joe’s head throbbed, blood pounding in the knot over his left temple. The Advil couldn’t work fast enough. The kid in the light brown St. Louis County Police Department uniform looked thrilled just to be at the scene. Mauser thanked him again, slowly pushing off the bed where he’d been sitting for the last half hour, trying to shake away the cobwebs.

Denton was out in the hallway. The head of the Bureau of Fugitive Affairs, some guy named Wendell whose face didn’t look a day over thirty, yet whose hair was already going salt-and-pepper, was scolding him, cursing like his schoolmates had just taught him some brand-new four-letter words. Mauser had gotten the first half of Wendell’s riot act before shooing the man away, claiming his headache might trigger involuntary violent reactions to “assholes who think that their mouths are bullhorns.”

Denton had a blueberry-colored bruise on the side of his neck where he’d hit the armoire. He’d been absolutely livid, but Mauser was able to calm the man down, told him the department would give hazard pay for hickeys attained in the line of duty.

They found a knapsack that belonged to Parker. Denton tore it open, had a dismayed look on his face when all they pulled out was a tape recorder and a reporter’s notebook. Nothing on the tape except an interview with Luis Guzman, the man Parker later attacked. A perfect cover, really. Parker interviewed him, pretended to do his job, to make it look like he had a legitimate reason to be there.

Mauser eyed Len Denton. It wasn’t just anger that had gotten to him, but something had struck fear into the young agent. He was surprised Denton had pulled the trigger so easily, hadn’t even bothered to negotiate, had taken a huge chance that the bullet wouldn’t strike Amanda Davies. He wondered if the younger agent’s nervous system had hit its breaking point, like so many agents who weren’t cut out for fieldwork.

He watched them argue in Amanda Davies’s hallway, Denton absently scratching his bruised neck. Wendell turning purple, then blue, then a shade of gray that couldn’t have been healthy. The bedroom still smelled heavily of cordite and mace residue. The shell casing from Denton’s gun had already been removed by forensics, along with blood samples and fingerprints from the black-clad assassin. Despite his hesitations, Mauser would support Denton’s decision to open fire.

He’d seen the look in the man’s eyes, knew it was almost blind luck they’d shown up when they did. The man would have killed both Parker and Davies, without question.

He watched Denton, their eyes connecting and rolling in unison. Wendell was really going to town, enjoying it, too. Finally the bureau chief stopped shouting, more like he’d run out of gas than colorful vocabulary.

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