“Vulnerability.”
“Does that mean someone else is next?” Nick’s voice is low, as if someone were around to hear it.
“Not necessarily.” I stand up and brush the dirt from my jeans. “This is also sloppy work—shallow grave, leaving evidence behind—which usually means someone who doesn’t know what the fuck they’re doing.”
He nods like he knows what I’m talking about. Really, I’m just trying to get him to think in a different direction. One thing I am not is an amateur.
Jonathan returns with duct tape and a box of big trash bags, and we create a makeshift body bag. With everything gathered up, we head back into the city with Jonathan driving. Nick keeps looking in the back of the truck and then at all the other cars around us. No one suspects there’s a body in the truck’s bed, but they will if he keeps doing that.
“Will you cut that out?” I turn around and glare at Nick.
“What?”
“Looking so fucking suspicious. Smoke some weed or something. Relax.”
“I don’t have any with me,” he says. “It’s all back at my place.”
“Just drop him off,” I tell Jonathan, “before we get pulled over for his paranoia.”
“Will do.”
With Nick delivered to his apartment, Jonathan and I head out to the warehouse to deal with the body and evidence. I honestly don’t know what Rinaldo will want me to do with it all, and I figure it’s time to let him know what we found. I’m not going to do that over the phone though.
I call Cody to have him meet us at the warehouse. When we approach the building, I’m surprised to see a gate blocking the entrance to the back lot. When I ask Jonathan about it, he tells me it’s all part of the new security system.
“I can control pretty much everything from the phone,” he says. “There are still a few bugs to work out, but it’s mostly operational.”
“Whose idea was this?”
“Beni’s maybe? Could’ve been Becca’s. Since we store so much here, it made sense.”
Jonathan taps at his phone, and the gate opens for us.
“Nifty, huh?”
“Nifty?”
“Hey, you get nebbish; I get nifty.”
“You can just have that.”
We pull around, and I see all kinds of cameras and keyed entry pads that hadn’t been there before. Jonathan’s talking about how “custom” the system is, but I’m not really listening.
Why would Beni want security around the warehouse? Yes, it’s used to store merchandise temporarily, but it’s back out of the way, and no one ever comes out this far unless they’re lost. Why invest in all of this hi-tech stuff? It seems like a waste of money to me, but then again, Rinaldo isn’t lacking money.
Cody pulls up behind Jonathan’s truck. We explain the situation to him, and he helps us unload everything.
“We can’t leave her here long,” Jonathan says. “She’s already kinda ripe, and there isn’t any refrigerated storage around here.”
“Yeah, let’s get back to the hospital and find out what Rinaldo wants us to do about it.”
“Maybe call Beni and let him know?”
“Fuck Beni,” I grumble. “He can find out through the grapevi
ne.”
“What do you got against him?”