Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
I knock again, louder this time, and hear someone hurrying to the door.
“Who is it?” Rick asks.
“Santos Augustine.”
A moment passes where things go completely still. It’s like a kid closing his eyes, thinking he’s safe if he can’t see the danger.
“Open the door, Rick. I need your help.”
I wonder if he is calling Odin when I hear his panicked voice on the other side, but when I bang again, the lock clicks and he opens the door as far as the chain allows.
“Seriously?” I ask. Does he think that ridiculous chain will keep me out?
“What do you want?”
“I need your help. Please.”
He hesitates, but closes the door and I hear the chain slide before he opens its gain. Rick stands there in a black T-shirt and dark jeans, his phone in his hand. He looks like he’s had too much coffee and not enough sleep, like he had the last time I was here.
“Odin’s on his way!” he says, backing away as if that might mean something to me.
“Relax. Like I said, I need your help.” I push the door open and walk in, taking in the tiny apartment, the tired but neat furnishings. The smell of burnt coffee comes from the kitchen.
“My mom’s asleep,” he says. “She doesn’t like visitors so late. Can you, um, maybe come back tomorrow—”
“No, afraid not. Let’s go.” I gesture to his room, which is where he has his computer. “Take it easy, Rick. I’ll pay you for the work.”
At that he stops. “You will?”
“If you can help me.”
“Um. Okay.” He moves toward the front door, keeping a wide berth around me. He locks it but doesn’t put the chain on and walks toward his room.
“Rick? Who is it?” A woman calls out from behind a closed door.
“Just a friend of Odin’s, Mom. It’s fine. Go back to sleep.” He turns to me. “She loves Odin.”
“Does she.”
He closes the door behind us and sits on the chair in front of the computer. The room is small and crappy, everything old and used up, but it’s neat and tidy. Again, I wonder how he and Odin De Léon met. What Marnix would do if he knew this was the guy his only son, the man who should carry on the De Léon name, is in love with.
“What do you need?” Rick asks.
“This,” I say, taking the letter out of the envelope and holding it out for him to see. “I need to find out what this logo is. What the report means. And I need you to keep this between us.”
“Yeah, yeah, man. I haven’t said a word about the other thing.”
“Good.” I did pay him to keep his mouth shut so I expect that.
He takes the letter. “Pull it out of a fire or something?”
“Or something. Can you figure out whose watermark that is?”
He sets it on his desk, puts on his glasses and peers close, then starts typing using both pointer fingers. He types at a pace that is much faster than I’d expect, considering. He glances back at the sheet of paper and keys keep clicking as I look around his room. It’s not only tidy but weirdly clean almost to the point of being obsessively so. They’re poor, that’s obvious, but doing the best they can with the little they have.
I sit on the edge of the bed and wait as he works. I try not to think about the stones or that crumpled sheet of paper in my pocket.
Fifteen minutes go by, and he’s still at it. He’s so focused on his work, in fact, that he doesn’t react when someone enters the apartment. I get to my feet to check who it is just as Odin opens the bedroom door. He’s still wearing the suit he had on for the service, minus the jacket.
“What are you doing here?” he asks me, then turns to Rick. “You okay, Rick?”
Rick looks up and smiles at Odin. “Yeah. I panicked. Sorry, man.”
“No problem.” Odin turns to me. “What are you doing here, Santos?”
“I needed Rick’s help.”
“You can’t come here. He doesn’t need your kind of trouble.”
“It’s okay, Odin,” Rick says, patting his arm. “It’s fine.”
Odin looks from him to me. “Where did you go, anyway? She needed you.”
I take a deep breath in feeling guilty.
“Why aren’t you home with her now?” he continues.
“I’m going home as soon as Rick gives me what I need.”
As if on cue, Rick swivels his chair, that letter in his hand. “That logo is for a private firm called Illuminate.” He points to his computer screen.
“Illuminate? What do they do?”
“Genomic research mostly.”
“What does that mean? Like DNA?”
“Yes and no. A genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA. It’s mostly research for medical purposes, disease and treatment, I believe.”
“Disease?”
“Cancer research for one, I’d guess.”
Cancer? I see my mom’s name on that piece of paper again. But that makes no sense.