Page 22 of What Doesn't Kill Her
“You said, ‘So Horst and I could face some...challenges?’”
“How much do you know about this operation?” Kellen asked.
He shrugged. “We have to retrieve the head from the airport because it’s an important artifact that needs to be studied. Somebody dropped it off at the airport back east. We pick it up from baggage claim and head toward the mountains to deliver this thing to, um, this guy.”
“The Restorer? Is that his name? His title?”
“I dunno. I think he’s this eccentric guy who lives in the boonies and is the go-to for figuring out if an artifact is real. No one told me he had a name.”
“So he’s...the Restorer.”
“Whatever.”
“That’s all?”
“Pretty much. I’ve worked for Richart Movers for almost a year, and we’ve moved some pretty important expensive stuff for some pretty important expensive people. When I signed on, I was hoping for a little action, but so far, nothing’s happened. It’s been all driving and carrying and thanking people for the tips. Don’t worry.” He patted her knee.
She didn’t knock his block off, but only because he was driving and she was thinking. Apparently, he didn’t know about the courier’s death, or even that there had been a courier charged with bringing the head to the Restorer. Why hadn’t Horst been told? It seemed that kind of information should have been passed on to heighten preparedness. Unless Nils had kept the information to himself and only passed it on to her. Nils was paranoid and suspicious, and shewasthe one person on this assignment he knew without a doubt he could trust.
She asked Horst, “When did this call come in?”
“A couple of hours ago. I happened to come in after a few days off, so the boss grabbed me and told me we had an emergency job. He sent me to pick you up and go to the airport.” The van reached the freeway entrance; Horst put his foot on the accelerator and they merged to the honking of furious drivers. “Lucky for me. Mostly I work with guys, and they aren’t pretty like you.”
Yeah, he was full of bullshit and ill-deserved confidence.
He pegged the van at ninety miles per hour and wove in and out of traffic, inciting honks and well-deserved hand gestures. In a way, that was good—while she was terrified for her life, she had no time to worry about her lousy parenting skills or the future of their mission.
Horst chatted as he drove, about the military, his parents’ home in Florida, speculation about the mummy’s head and gossip about the Restorer who he said was some weird whacked-out hermit.
So he did knowsomethings about this mission.
Luckily for her, she didn’t have to lie any more about her military and security experience. He never, not once, indicated by query or comment, that he was interested in anything she had to say. Instead, she made engrossed noises, agreement noises. Or possibly they were exclamations of muffled terror as he changed lanes with inches to spare.
Her sounds encouraged him to tell her that he’d joined the military when he was nineteen because he had been caught picking pockets at Disney World. His father had blown a gasket and threatened to cut off his funds unless he joined up.
That captured her interest, and she looked Horst over again. Nothing about him shouted urban pickpocket. Mostly he seemed like a well-built guy who liked to impress women one way or another, and maybe since she’d been in the Army he was playing the bad-boy card to impress her.
When they pulled into a parking place at Portland Airport, she sagged in the seat and hoped her high blood pressure hadn’t ripped opened the still red scar on her hip.
Horst unsnapped his seat belt and checked his phone. “Let’s go. Luggage is arrivingnow.” He hoofed it for baggage claim so fast, Kellen ran to keep up with him, and she rejoiced as he kept up a monologue about how this head was an antiquity of great importance and if he didn’t manage to grab it on its first swing around the carousel, someone would confiscate it and it would disappear into some rich guy’s collection of illegal goods, and the archeological world would never have the time to study its origins and legends.
Kellen admired the sentiments and wondered if she should put Horst back on the good-guy list. In her mind, he was changing from bad to good to bad pretty quickly.
“Also, my boss would kill me.”
That sounded more like it. “What kind of bag is it in?”
“Small black rolling bag.”
She moaned.
He laughed. “Yeah. But it has a lime-green yarn puffball attached to the handle.”
“I guess...that’s a good idea. Who would think a mummy’s head would be marked like that?”
“The bad guys,” he said. “If there really are any, and if they’re on this end of the continent. Personally, I’ll bet this is all a lot of hooey about nothing. I’m telling you, these jobs are never exciting.”
“Hope you’re right.”
