Bloodshot - Cherie Priest [95]
“Why?”
“Because a freshly dug grave in a graveyard is less suspicious than an empty one that somebody dug up. Are we trying to cover our tracks here, or what?”
He had me there. I sighed.
I put the bundle down on top of Isabelle’s headstone and retrieved my shovel once more. A fresh grave in an effectively abandoned cemetery was, in my estimation, only marginally less interesting to any passerby than an empty one, but Adrian was right. In the grand scheme of things, anyone who noticed would be less likely to call the cops if there wasn’t a gaping hole in the ground.
We weren’t grave robbers, after all. There’d never been a grave.
There’d only been a package of incriminating documents, left in memory of a girl who wasn’t even a girl anymore when she’d died.
Later that evening, back at the homestead and on the far side of a nice hot shower, I sat at the kitchen bar and busted out my laptop. I had a note from You-Know-Who.
Abigail,
You’re going to be in D.C. next weekend, you said? Actually, that’s pretty convenient. If you do a good job getting inside that Pioneer Square location, I’d like to talk to you about it. Assuming you pull it off, can I talk you into coming out on Friday afternoon or Monday morning?
Swing by the receptionist’s desk on the way in. Give her my name, and she’ll point you in the right direction.
While you’re here, you might want to check out some of the local parkour groups. There’s one that meets near my office called Presidential Parkour. You may find it interesting.
Below his name he’d added an address. I demanded that Google Maps give me the satellite view of the location, because two can play at that game, that’s why.
Nothing interesting. A boring building in a respectable part of town. I’d file it away and do a better investigation on it later. I’d bought myself until next Monday, after all.
So I wrote a quick email back, pulling it right out of my ass. I hoped the offhanded nature of it came across as juvenile and enthusiastic, rather than floundering in the dark, trying to figure out what the asshole major wanted me to look for—and being careful not to give him anything to rouse his suspicions.
If I played this right, it could be perfect. I’d scored the assignment to investigate my own building. And who better than me to reassure him that there was nothing at all to see there?
Major,
Went poking around at the address you sent me. I’m not sure what you’re looking for in there, but I didn’t see anything too exciting. It looks like you’re right, and there are squatters camping out, maybe. I saw some bedding and some emptied cans of food, and some soda bottles. One of the bathrooms works, and the place has electricity, but not much use for it. Just a couple of bare lightbulbs, one per floor. LOTS of old machinery, though. I think it used to be a factory or something. Everything looks rusted in place, and I don’t know what it was ever used for. I couldn’t tell. I don’t think any of it works. I couldn’t find anything that would turn on, anyway.
Is there anything you were looking for in particular? I could take another look.
~Abigail
Once that was sent off, I hung around and messed with the paperwork we’d dug out of Isabelle’s fake grave, since Adrian was still in the shower. The water was gushing noisily and the steam smelled like a lavender-and-rose-scented soap that once again reminded me that my temporary roommate was exceptionally secure in his masculinity.
While he bathed, I felt as if I almost had a modicum of privacy.
I threw away the plastic wrapper and used paper towels to take the edge off the dusty, funky, musty flakes of dirt that had accumulated over however many years the documents had been stashed underground. The paper still smelled like mold and tree fungus, and it was itchily dry to the touch, but it was mostly clean and I separated the sheets into piles according to my instinctive sense of what was useful and what wasn’t. Some of the cover sheets and filler pages could be discarded, for they were blank. Some of the rest were out of order, and needed