St Kilda Consulting 01 - Always Time to Die

he yanked up the covers over the mattress where she’d slept. Then he reached for a nearby box of tissues, pulled out one, and picked up the first card.
    If my friends could see me now, they’d bust something laughing. Mint-colored tissues. Is this any way to run a special op?
    He looked at his hands, hard and scarred from training, and the dainty green tissue sticking to the ridge of callus on his right palm.
    And he laughed. Just threw back his head and howled like a lunatic until he could barely breathe. Finally he took a shaky breath, swiped his sleeve over his eyes, and began sorting faded stereographs from a time before humanity split atoms, walked on the moon, and died in the bloody, anonymous mire of special operations.
    “Okay,” he said to himself, “the three-inch-by-seven-inch are likely earlier. The four-by-sevens are later.”
    Despite being hampered by tissue, he quickly dealt the cards into two piles based on size. He checked the tablet and sorted by the type of corner—rounded or square. Then he sorted within each category for the color of the card the individual image was mounted on.
    By the time Carly tiptoed out of the bedroom wrapped in a big towel and grabbed fresh clothes from her suitcase, Dan had filled the first sheet of tablet paper with notes. When she came out of the bedroom again, she was dressed in slacks and a sweater, and boots that could handle snow. Her hair was a damp riot of coils swept back and up and held in place by a barrette carved from driftwood. She looked at the many small piles of cards.
    “I’ll say it again,” she said. “You’re fast.”
    He smiled slightly and resisted temptation. Barely. “The spider lady and your list of what was used at which time don’t agree real often. She thinks the stuff is a lot older than it is. Or younger. Have you ever considered using transparent sleeves for all this?”
    “Not until I’m more certain of dates. It’s a pain to have to arrange and rearrange a page of sleeves. In any case, I’m waiting for an order of individual sleeves in various sizes.”
    “Run out?”
    “Lost in transit. Gotta love airplanes and baggage carousels.”
    “MATS isn’t any better.”
    “Mats?”
    “Military airline,” he said absently, placing the last card.
    “So you’re in the military?”
    Dan looked up sharply. “What gave you that idea?”
    “MATS.”
    “Well, I’m not.” Not exactly. But they sure trained me to within an inch of my life. “Civilian all the way.”
    She tilted her head, felt a trickle of water run from her hair down her spine, and decided to dig out her hair dryer after all.
    And hit him with it.
    Civilian all the way, my ass.
    “It’s true,” he said, as though she’d spoken aloud. “Never mustered in and never mustered out. Wrong temperament. Too bookish.”
    “Stop reading my mind.”
    “Don’t need to. Your expression says it all.”
    “Bookish?” she asked in disbelief.
    He took the change of subject without a pause. “Yeah. I got distracted before I finished my Ph.D. or you’d be calling me doctor.”
    At first she thought he was joking. Then she looked at his careful listing of the different cards, remembered his ability to concentrate and absorb odd facts, and knew that he wasn’t teasing her.
    “Doctor, huh? Okay, you surprised me,” Carly said. “What did it take to distract you?”
    “I don’t remember.”
    “I don’t believe it.”
    “Smart as well as sexy. Damn, I’ve got it good. What do I do with the cards that are round all the way rather than just at the corners?”
    “Divide them into black, gray, or buckskin.”
    He sorted quickly.
    She sat down beside him, booted up her computer, and began recording tentative dates based on the type of stock used to mount various images.
    It wasn’t until later, much later, that Carly realized he had steered the conversation away from his past.
    Again.

QUINTRELL RANCH
WEDNESDAY EVENING
29
    JEANETTE DYKSTRA ’ S LIPS MOVED BUT NO SOUND CAME FROM THE TV SCREEN . Celebrity images flashed, promoting her next show. The picture cut to an improbably sparkling toilet and a dancing toilet brush that threw glittering stuff everywhere.
    Winifred ignored the TV until all the commercials and station promos were finished. Only then did she pick up the remote control from her bedside table and take off the mute.
    A man in a blue shirt, multicolored tie, and gray-blue suit leaned earnestly toward the camera. His eyes were the same pale