Charlene sat across from him at the tall bistro table. She’d ordered white wine and a salad that included seven of the super foods—antioxidants and slow-release proteins. She speared a forkful.
Benjamin was irritated. He’d thought a lot about his meet with Nicole in the weeks before he’d left for Montana. He’d made it the stuff dreams were made of. Only it hadn’t gone down that way. Nicole wasn’t afraid of him. She was as strong as she’d been on that last day in Denver. Maybe more so. Nicole wasn’t a woman who trembled. She didn’t flinch. Nicole was a fighter. She was everything he was not, and he hated that about her.
Across from him, Charlene lifted her wineglass. She breathed in the bubbles from her spritzer and rubbed her nose. He used to think that was charming, but today everything was off. And it wasn’t just Nicole. Things were shifting with the Big Pharm players. He answered only to one, and she’d given him loose rein. Until last night, when everything had gone to hell.
Killing the girl hadn’t been enough. She was the evidence. Evidence that could be replicated. They had needed to take out the father too. He’d suggested that but had been ignored. And now the dominos were falling. Benjamin didn’t like that. He was a believer in eliminating small problems before they became big.
“You’re not eating,” Charlene said. It was true. It was 5:40, and he didn’t like dinner before eight o’clock. Outside, the sky was in full darkness, but that made no impression on his body’s clock. He had work to do later that would interrupt his usual routine. A job they hadn’t planned, a meeting he didn’t look forward to. Esparza. The whining doctor. But Benjamin was king of the coax. He’d get the man into a state of agreement, or he’d kill him.
“You need to change,” he told Charlene.
She wore an outfit that started as a halter top and flowed into pant legs that were loose and liquid. He liked what the material did when she walked. He liked the way the top exposed her shoulders. But it was wrong for their destination.
“What?” A small frown rippled across her face.
“People will remember you. We need to blend in,” he said. Their success here depended upon their ability to get lost in the crowd.
When he’d planned the Big Pharm round table, he’d convinced himself that he could pull off the biggest deal of his career right under Nicole’s judgmental nose. But he wanted her to know he’d done it. That he had the intellect and the balls to do it. And his weakness for her esteem might have fucked up the whole operation. That made him mad.
“She got away from you, Charlene. That wasn’t good.”
“No.”
The plan had been to kill Beatrice Esparza in King’s house and tuck her into bed like she was sleeping. Charlene had suggested the master bedroom, to cast further aspersion upon the man. He’d be to the police not just a sore loser but perhaps guilty of child abuse. It would put just enough shade on the man; the police would have to dig deeper while Benjamin and the remaining round table packed up and scattered, back to life as usual.
“Tell me again how that happened.”
“She was arguing with King, and she ran.”
But there was more to it than that. Charlene was terrible at harboring guilt. She couldn’t look in his eyes. And she was full of excuses and platitudes. And diversions.
“The ME’s going to find the marks,” she said. “But he won’t know what they are. Not beyond surgical scarring.”
They weren’t worried about the bruising left by strangulation. Murder was trivial in this case. This had always been about Nueva Vida.
“He’ll know, if Esparza talks about his work.” And even if he didn’t. The incisions on the girl’s body would be investigated. By then, of course, there would be no one left to blame.
Certainly not him. His job was to broker the deal. To make sure the bidding was carried out and that Geneva was the winner. He’d done that. The only thing that remained for him to do was deliver Esparza. Then Benjamin’s reputation as a top-shelf drug dealer would be solid. And that would happen tonight. A country-bumpkin ME wasn’t going to pry the secrets out of Beatrice Esparza’s body before midnight, and by then Benjamin’s bank account would be busting at the seams and he would be floating above the clouds. He picked up his smartphone and tapped into his favorite flight app. Kalispell to San Francisco to Hawaii and eventually Bora Bora. He selected and paid for a single seat in first class.