Finders/Keepers (An Allie Krycek Thriller, Book 3) Read Online Free

can’t just stop being a Brit, but you can lose the accent.”
    “Okay, I’ll take your word for it. That’s good to know, I guess.”
    “You guess? That’s it?”
    Miller didn’t say anything right away. Hank thought he could hear the little punk actually sighing, as if he were doing Hank a big favor even just talking to him on the phone.
    “Well?” Hank said.
    “I’m not sure what you want me to say, Hank,” Miller said. “Okay, you’re certain he’s from across the pond—or used to be at some point—even though no one else at the diner heard any accents. I’m going to put that in the notes as a possibility, even though I’m not sure how that helps us catch them.”
    “You add it to the profile. Three people. Two men and one woman. One of the men has a slight accent. He’s almost lost it, but it’s still there if you listen closely enough. It’ll narrow down the search.”
    “We’ll definitely do that,” Miller said, though there was a lack of conviction in his voice that made Hank grind his teeth just loudly enough that the detective heard it. “You okay, Hank? You don’t sound so good. Maybe you should get some rest and call me again tomorrow when you think of something else.”
    You mean “something else more useful?”
    “Yeah, okay,” Hank said, and before Miller could say anything else, he hung up the phone.
    He sat still for a moment, hands on the dusty oak table that his wife had bought years ago from a garage sale, determined to put it in the RV they would eventually buy when he retired and they drove around the country doing whatever it was that old married couples did. Instead, Hank ended up putting it in this used manufactured home parked barely fifteen miles from the house they had spent so many good years in together.
    He was literally sitting in his own liquids, water dripping off his head and soaked clothes onto the carpeted floor. The little rivulets of red coming from his thigh looked more pink now, and he wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
    He unbuttoned his shirt and tossed it to the floor, then gingerly went to work on his pants, grimacing every time he ventured too close to the bandaged thigh. He finally got the pants off and flung it away, but it didn’t get very far (Damn, was he getting weaker, too?) and watched it land in a pile next to the shirt.
    Hank found himself staring at his wet clothes. He was tired and didn’t move. He didn’t want to move. And there was something—
    What the hell is that?
    There was something sticking out of one of his pant pockets—the sharp corner of a white piece of…something. Hank bent down and picked the still-wet pants off the floor and stuck his hand into its pocket.
    He rummaged around, found it, and pulled it out.
    It was a folded piece of paper—one of those slips the waitresses used to jot down orders at Ben’s Diner. This one was for a cheeseburger (with extra pickles), diet soda, and a side of fries. There was no reason it should have been in his pocket. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to order before his bladder forced him to visit the bathroom first, and then the robbery had happened—
    So how the hell had it gotten into his pocket? Did someone… put it there?
    He flipped the piece of paper over and saw a phone number scribbled on the empty white spaces in blue ink. The numbers were slightly distorted because of the water and heat from the shower he had taken, but there was still enough intact that he could make out all ten digits. He didn’t recognize the area code; it wasn’t a local number.
    “Grab his phone,” the Brit had said.
    “He doesn’t have one,” the woman answered after going through his pockets.
    She had gone through his pockets. While she was doing that, it wouldn’t have taken much for her to leave something behind—like a piece of paper with a phone number on it.
    But whywould she do that? That was the part that didn’t make any sense. Why would you put a piece of