My Brother Called From the Ocean Floor, So I Hung Up novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Technician

The motel sat on a strip of old highway south of Tacoma, between a tire shop and a closed diner.

Joan drove.

She parked across the road with the lights off, and we watched the second-floor walkway for two minutes.

"Room 14," I said.

"Stay with me."

"I will."

My mother and Kit stayed in the car. Joan had made them promise, and my mother had promised the way she promised dentist appointments.

We climbed the outside stairs together.

I knocked three times, paused, and knocked again, though I didn't know why.

The door opened on its chain.

A man looked out at us with one eye. He was in his late thirties, heavy through the shoulders, with a Rask Marine jacket zipped to his chin and a day of beard.

"Emmett Rask?"

"Yes."

"Who's she?"

"Joan Hendry, NDSI Operations."

"You said alone."

"I said I'd come," I said. "I didn't say how."

He studied Joan.

He studied the empty walkway behind us.

Then he shut the door, slid the chain off, and let us in.

The room smelled of cigarettes and cold fries.

There was a duffel bag on the bed, half packed, and a phone charger in the wall with no phone on it.

"Where's your phone?" Joan said.

"In the river. I threw it off the Puyallup bridge this afternoon." He sat on the end of the bed with his knees apart. "Quist tracks everything."

"What's your name?" I said.

"I'd rather not."

"Where's your family?"

"With my wife, at her mother's place in Spokane. Quist's people don't know about the mother." He wiped his mouth. "I think."

"Then let's make it fast."

He reached under the pillow.

He drew out a clear plastic sleeve, and inside it was a yellow carbon copy.

I knew it before he held it up. I had seen its twin in my apartment drawer.

"The original has L.Q. initials," he said. "This is the shop copy. I kept it, because I always keep it. Look at the bottom."

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