Sea of Crises Read Online Free Page A

phone up to his ear, but said nothing.
    There was silence on the other end. Nate waited. After a long moment, a man’s voice, deep and gravely, said, “Did we get your attention?”
    Nate bit back a retort.
    “That’s ok,” the man said. He spoke in a flat tone, with no accent and almost no inflection. “I’ll do the talking. You do the listening.”
    “You didn’t need to do that,” Nate said quietly.
    “Sure I did. You wouldn’t have taken me seriously otherwise. You see,” the man continued, and his voice took on a hard edge, “you need to know what kind of person you’re dealing with.”
    Forcing a calm on himself that he didn’t feel, Nate reached his free hand up to the bottom of the handset, pinched the tab on the jack and slid the end of the cord out, severing the connection to the base of the phone. Holding it an inch away from the handset, he said, “Who are you?” and then he immediately slid the jack back in place.
    “Who I am is not important.” The man seemed to hesitate halfway through the last word. There was a long silence. When his voice came again, it had, if possible, an even harder edge to it. It also, Nate realized, had a very distinct southern accent. “Don’t get cute with me, Cartwright.”
    There was another pause. Then, returning to the same flat intonation, the man said, “Believe me, if it were my call, you wouldn’t even get this one warning. If I were you, I’d heed it. Because, if you don’t, I’ll be back. And this time it’ll really be your dog. And then it’ll be you and your brother. You’ll be last. I’ll make you watch the first two.
    “Now,” he continued, “here’s your warning: Forget about Apollo 18. No more questions. No more investigation. It’s over. Done. Follow that advice, and you’ll live a nice, long life. Don’t, and I’ll be coming for you.”
    The line went dead.
    #
    They took down the carcass, hook and all, and put it in a trash bag, which they then placed into yet another bag. The blood they mopped up with several towels, and those went into a separate trash bag. They wiped down the counter and cabinets, using copious amounts of disinfectant.
    They worked in grim silence. After Nate had hung up the phone, he’d looked at Peter, tapped his ear and swung a finger around, indicating that there were listening devices. It was the only way the man on the phone could have heard him after he’d disconnected the phone jack. Peter had nodded his acknowledgement.
    Through his shock, Nate had realized belatedly that the body hanging in his kitchen wasn’t a dog, but a pig. The person who set up the macabre scene had mutilated the ends of the legs, but the vestiges of hoofed toes were still visible. Nate hoped the animal was one that had been acquired from a butcher and not one killed in his home. There was no sign of the head, and he didn’t think the noise a squealing pig would have made could possibly have gone undetected by the rest of the building, so he felt reasonably certain it had to have already been dead before being brought in. He also doubted that the amount of blood deposited in his kitchen could have come from just the one animal, so he assumed whoever had staged the scene had brought the blood in a separate container.
    Nate carried the two large bags to the trash chute in the small room next to the elevator. Then he packed an overnight bag. He’d carefully cleaned the collar, put it back on Buster and attached the leash they used for their walks. The little dog was delighted with the attention, his animation a stark contrast with the gloomy mood of the two brothers.
    When they left the condo, Peter took a step toward the elevator, but Nate reached out, lightly touched his brother’s shoulder, and nodded his head in the other direction. He led Peter to the stairway, picked up Buster, and they wordlessly descended.
    When they were three flights down, Nate stopped and whispered, “I don’t trust the elevator. For that matter,